New Age adj. A particularly insidious form of music, long on technology and vacuously short on content, which, could, for the most part, be beneficially replaced by recordings of seashore sounds. Also applied to books whose principal attribute is that they contain the highest known ratio of context to content.
novel n. A thousand pages of impenetrably turgid drivel (see also writing) that will earn its perpetrator a Pulitzer Prize, undying fame in highbrow circles, and obscene wealth from the movie rights; or half that amount of vivid prose that will earn its author nothing beyond popular acclaim and a meager living.
| It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing... It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing. | |
| --George Bernard Shaw, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol. 1 | |
nuclear weapon n. A supremely effective device for population control, designed to be used without the consent of the population to be controlled. May produce minor side effects such as an extended prospect of excellent skiing weather.
| Everybody's going to make it as long as there are enough shovels to go around. Dig a hole, put a door over it... | |
| --T. K. Jones, US official, speech, 1981 | |
nudity n. The state of complete deshabille, admired in sufficiently aged depictions of the human form and reviled in depictions otherwise identical but lacking the respectable encrustation of the centuries.
numerology n. The arcane practice by which an adept practitioner can, by discovering the appropriate collusion of digits, prove whatever is desired. In other words, hokum.
| The sum of the numerical positions of the letters in "Hitler" is 72, or 8x8+8 (a square and a remainder). Hitler died in his 57th year, 57 being 7x7+8 (also a square, with the same remainder). By forming these digits into numbers and adding them (888+778), and then subtracting the failed 1,000-year Reich, we arrive at 666, the Number of the Beast. Hence, Hitler is conclusively proven to have been the Devil. | |
| --computation by the author | |