More Entries From
The Future Dictionary of America.
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The Future Dictionary of America is a guide to the American language sometime in the future, when all or most of our country's problems are solved and the present administration is a distant memory. For more information about the book, click here.
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bald-is-beautiful [bald'-iz-byoo'-tihfuhl] adj. a description, usually directed at men who have lost a good deal if not all of their hair. What had previously been a somewhat jokey, somewhat consoling remark, meant to soothe the egos of bald men, became an official part of the lexicon in 2009, when it was discovered by beauty scientists at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, that bald actually is beautiful. A statistical analysis of Michael Jordan, the bald American eagle, several million infants, and old movie footage of Yul Brynner in Westworld helped lead to this discovery. Further proof was culled from a controlled experiment by the Carleton scientists where several thousand men with comb-overs had their heads shaved and it was revealed that 78 percent of these formerly mildly unattractive men were now beautiful. The findings of the Carleton study were then confirmed when Donald Trump, a noted financier, real-estate magnate, and mayor of New York (2008-2014), celebrated for his bad taste and astonishingly freakish comb-over, succumbed to pressure from the U.N. in 2009 and shaved his head. Images of Trump, which were proliferating around the world due to his election as mayor of the Capital of the Universe, were causing psychotic breaks from reality for fragile people with hair issues, and an international health crisis was declared. Once Trump shaved his head, people marveled at how lovely he actually was, and after serving as mayor, he began to hang out with the famously bald Dalai Lama, forging a connection between spirituality and the accumulation of wealth that previously had not existed, which benefited a good many people—the poor opened savings accounts and the rich started praying and helping the poor. This gorgeous teaming up of the Dalai and the Donald thus solidified the phrase "bald-is-beautiful" as a full-fledged member of the English language.
—JONATHAN AMES
guantanamo [gwahn-tahn'-uh-mo] 1. v. [Origin uncertain, but likely a remnant of the Hispanic-WASP patois of the late-21st-century northeastern United States: from the Spanish aguantar, to bear, endure, put up with + the early-21st-century Anglo-suburban colloquial no mo', no more, nothing else.] to be unable to bear; to find unacceptable, to refuse to endure for even one second longer. 2. n. [Origin uncertain, but in common use in Arabic-, Dari-, Pashto-, and Urdu-speaking regions; likely a borrowing from one of those tongues.] a. a purgatory. An intermediate floor of hell. b. the mythical final place of confinement of the last president, vice president, and cabinet of the United States of America, immediately following the Great Upheaval but prior to the Grand Awakening and the Glorious Final Making Amends and Mellowing the Fuck Out Forever After of that nation. 3. n. a vast butterfly-and-wildflower preserve on the Caribbean island of Cuba.
—BEN EHRENREICH
No Left-Behind Child Act, the [noh left-bee-hiynd' chiy'-uld akt] U.S. congressional act disqualifying any person from holding the office of American president who has not passed a series of rigorous examinations demonstrating psychological and emotional maturity, expert knowledge of a wide range of subjects—including American history, world history, government, economics, law, geography, political science, etc.—and a strong command of the English language.
—SIGRID NUNEZ
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More Entries From The Future Dictionary of America
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Ten Excerpts From a Magazine Found at a Philly Gentlemen's Club, Reformatted as Love Poems By Daniel Maurer
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