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Technocracy
The nerd's Utopia: a society in which a technological elite controls the machines, and the machines control everybody else. |
Teenager
An oddly proportioned creature propelled by hormones, prone to unsightly skin eruptions and given to a variety of mindless pastimes; in short, the human animal in its healthiest state. |
Televangelist
In the U.S., a charismatic good ol' boy with the power to perform miracles, such as transforming the donations of dirt-poor believers into a thirty-room mansion with a pink limousine out front. |
Television
An electronic breast that has suckled and comforted most of the civilized world, offering the illusion of human companionship without the attendant risks and disappointments - or the nuisance of compiling actual personal memories. |
Temporary Insanity
The plea of a tattooing victim the morning after, or of a small investor who just sank five thousand pounds in yet another doomed penny stock. |
Temps
Migrant workers in business clothes. |
Tennis
A socially acceptable outlet for the ferocity of white suburban achievers, who must work even when they play, must compete feverishly even in the presence of friends, must not only beat an opponent but reduce him to a quivering pile of gelatinous pulp, while in the distance the birds make melody and the summer breezes beckon. |
Termination
Corporate euphemism for involuntary cessation of employment; firing; sacking; banishment from the land of the living. 'And cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth' (Matt. 25:30). |
Terrorist
1. An armed fanatic who blows up innocent people in an attempt to enlist public sympathy for an obscure cause. 2. A toddler on the -loose. 3. The parent of a child star. 4. A grown child who writes an unauthorized biography of a famous parent. |
Thermodynamics, Second Law of
The natural tendency of all things to deteriorate and get messy over time: civilizations, relationships, ripe bananas, tidy flats or human bodies. |
