Humans: An A-Z

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a


adultery The result of husbands and wives following the advice of parents, teachers and career advisors. (‘Stop dreaming, start doing.’) advertising An art form designed to sell a product or service, by making people identify a hole inside themselves that can be filled by spending money on said product or service. If you are selling a beauty product, make them feel ugly. If you are selling insurance, make them feel unsafe. If you are selling a dream, remind them they are stuck inside a nightmare. ambition A state of eternal wanting which arises from a lack of parental love/peer-group acceptance. animal Among humans this word generally means any Earthbased animal except one. ants The most technologically adept species on Earth. They don’t need computers. They have twigs, and leaves. anxiety An inevitable result of thinking. app Boredom avoidance tool with opposite long-term effect. appearance The thing you will be judged on. architecture On Earth, buildings are all static and stuck to the ground. This is the predominant architectural style. Furthermore, the human geometric imagination is largely limited to simple forms – squares, rectangles, triangles. This species has yet to discover the link between right angles and psychosis, and hence have a lot of anger issues they can’t quite explain. artist A human who notices the ridiculousness of being a human and paints, writes, builds, sculpts, films, acts, plays, sings, cries about it. astrology Some humans believe that the time of year they are born indicates their personality and fate. This has to do with


constellations of stars, which ancient humans decided looked like certain animals and utensils. A human might say ‘I am feeling crabby today because I am a Cancerian,’ or ‘I’m so indecisive because I am a Libran.’ They know there is no scientific basis for this, but both the human partition of time (calendars) and the human partition of space (star patterns) are going to appeal to a species that has no mystery over time or space. Moreover, by believing in astrology humans can not only pretend to tame the chaos of the sky, but also imagine they can tame the anarchy of existence itself.


i


idleness Although humans feel guilty about most of the things they do, doing nothing is equally frowned upon. imagination The only place freedom stands a chance. immigrant There are essentially two types of immigrant. There is the type who moves to a new country out of necessity, as they have no other means of feeding their family or of escaping the threat of violence and death. Then there is the type who doesn’t need to leave their country at all, but fancies living somewhere a little bit warmer. If you need to be an immigrant, you will find you have a better reception as the latter than the former, because humans respect the luxury of choice above the necessity of life. See foreign, luxury. individual What a human believes him or herself to be. A myth, created by capitalism and bad poetry. information An abundant commodity. See knowledge. ingredients Most living things in the universe are made of the same stuff. Even weird, alien things like humans. It’s just about rearranging the ingredients – the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium and so on – and turning them into something uniquely disgusting to look at. Of course, the ingredients aren’t exactly the same. We Vonnadorians, for instance, have a lot more lithium inside us – and bismuth, and zirconium – while humans are big on calcium, with which they build their bones and teeth. But it is still important to remember that when you are looking at a human, you are – in some strange sense – looking at yourself. With different ingredients. innuendo Humans are the only species in the universe who have innuendo. They need it, as it is a way of saying something about sex without saying something about sex. It is very easy to imply you are making an innuendo by widening your eyes at the end of a phrase, or through a clever use of inverted commas. Widening your ‘eyes’ at the end of a ‘phrase’. See euphemism.


instinct Human instincts appear to have been specifically designed to prevent them ever feeling satisfied. For instance, a human craves security, but also excitement. A parent has an instinct to educate their child, but if the child is successfully educated they will end up hating their parents. The human species has an instinct to develop technology that will end up destroying them.


xyz


xenophobe Someone who has an active distrust of the 99.9 per cent of humans who don’t live in his/her country. yoga A form of exercise based around stretching limbs, breathing slowly, and feeling superior. Zabii The nearest inhabited planet to Earth. Small, fast rotation, good party scene. A mere 4,632,215 light years away. Humans have no idea it exists. zoo Place where depressed non-human animals are on display for the entertainment of human visitors. One of the ways – along with safari holidays, horse racing, farms, science labs, fast-food restaurants and shoe shops – in which the humans tell other animals they are the boss.



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