|
Neon Light
The symbol of modern urban nightlife: a twisted tube that glows seductively and contains nothing but gas. |
Nerd
A poor ungainly misfit, usually a male adolescent, who is scorned and ostracized by his peers for failure to cultivate a sexually knowing persona - until he graduates from engineering school and secures his first job at twice their salary. One who finds refuge in personal computers and ranks mathematics above style in the eternal hierarchies. Also: Geek A nerd without mathematical aptitude. |
Nervous Breakdown
The overwinding of a wristwatch; the snapping of a rubber band; the slipping of a fan belt; the unravelling of a yo-yo; a malfunction known to occur in higher primates who agonize endlessly over mental abstractions, when they should be out picking bananas and frolicking in the trees. |
Networking
The art of socializing with people you detest so that you might be able to work with them in the near future. |
Neurotic
Sane but unhappy about it. |
New Age
The illegitimate offspring of a spiritual liaison between California and the Orient; a system of nebulous beliefs and therapies centring on a philosophy that may be summarized as follows: 'God is love; I love; therefore I am God.' |
New York Intellectuals
A moribund Manhattan-based tribe of deep thinkers whose members effectively cornered the market on moral indignation throughout the mid-twentieth century. Stern guardians of leftist orthodoxy and chastisers of the Philistines. |
Nirvana
The ultimate extinction of the individual soul; a transcendent state sought by Hindus and Buddhists through right living, although it may be attained more easily by working for a Japanese corporation. |
Nonconformist
A conformist with a relatively obscure role model. |
Nonsexist Language
The neutering of our vocabulary to gratify feminist sensibilities. Examples: chairperson, ombudsperson, henchperson. Founding Parents, cattlepersons and Indians, 'O Absalom, my offspring, my offspring!' |
Nose Job
Cosmetic truncation of a prominent proboscis, commonly performed on upper class adolescents as a rite of passage and deliverance from the bonds of ethnicity; the attempted suppression of a genetic heritage that, to the chagrin of everyone involved, tends promptly to reassert itself in the next generation. |
Novel
A bundle of truths couched in several hundred pages of lies. An archaic form of entertainment still enjoyed by patient armchair enthusiasts, who gladly surrender a month or more of their lives for the chance to inhabit an artificial world. Persists today in various incarnations both high and low; the former are useful as filler for remainder catalogues, while the latter tend to become successful TV mini-series. |
