THE FEMALE STAGES OF LIFE
-------------------------

AGE .....DRINK

17 .....Wine Coolers
25 .....White wine
35 .....Red wine
48 .....Dom Perignon
66 .....Shot of Jack with an Ensure chaser

EXCUSES FOR REFUSING DATES

17 .....Need to wash my hair
25 .....Need to wash and condition my hair
35 .....Need to color my hair
48 .....Need to have Francois color my hair
66 .....Need to have Francois color my wig

FAVORITE SPORT

17 .....shopping
25 .....shopping
35 .....shopping
48 .....shopping
66 .....shopping

DEFINITION OF A SUCCESSFUL DATE

17 ....."Burger King"
25 ....."Free meal"
35 ....."A diamond"
48 ....."A bigger diamond"
66 ....."Home Alone"

FAVORITE FANTASY

17 .....tall, dark and handsome
25 .....tall, dark and handsome with money
35 .....tall, dark and handsome with money and a brain
48 .....a man with hair
66 .....a man

HOUSE PET

17 .....Muffy the cat
25 .....Unemployed boyfriend and Muffy the Cat
35 .....Irish setter and Muffy the Cat
48 .....Children from his first marriage and Muffy the Cat
66 .....Retired husband dabbles in taxidermy, stuffs Muffy the Cat

WHAT'S THE IDEAL AGE TO GET MARRIED?

17 .....17
25 .....25
35 .....35
48 .....48
66 .....66

IDEAL DATE

17 .....He offers to pay
25 .....He pays
35 .....He cooks breakfast the next morning
48 .....He cooks breakfast the next morning for the kids
66 .....He can chew breakfast

----------------------------------------------------------------------



THE MALE STAGES OF LIFE
-----------------------

AGE .....DRINK

17 .....beer
25 .....vodka
35 .....scotch
48 .....double scotch
66 .....Maalox

SEDUCTION LINE

17 .....My parents are away for the weekend.
25 .....My girlfriend is away for the weekend.
35 .....My fiancee is away for the weekend.
48 .....My wife is away for the weekend.
66 .....My second wife passed away.

FAVORITE SPORT

17 .....sex
25 .....sex
35 .....sex
48 .....sex
66 .....napping

DEFINITION OF A SUCCESSFUL DATE

17 ....."tongue"
25 ....."breakfast"
35 ....."She didn't set back my therapy."
48 ....."I didn't have to meet her kids."
66 ....."Got home alive."

FAVORITE FANTASY

17 .....getting to third
25 .....airplane sex
35 .....menage a trois
48 .....taking the company public
66 .....Swiss maid/love slave

HOUSE PET

17 .....roaches
25 .....stoned-out college roommate
35 .....Irish setter
48 .....children from his first marriage
66 .....Barbi

WHAT'S THE IDEAL AGE TO GET MARRIED?

17 .....25
25 .....35
35 .....48
48 .....66
66 .....17

The Wayfarer
by Padraic Pearse

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

The Fool
by Padraic Pearse

Since the wise men have not spoken, I speak that am only a fool;
A fool that hath loved his folly,
Yea, more than the wise men their books or their counting houses or their quiet homes,
Or their fame in men's mouths;
A fool that in all his days hath done never a prudent thing,
Never hath counted the cost, nor recked if another reaped
The fruit of his mighty sowing, content to scatter the seed;
A fool that is unrepentant, and that soon at the end of all
Shall laugh in his lonely heart as the ripe ears fall to the reaping-hooks
And the poor are filled that were empty,
Tho' he go hungry.
I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth
In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.

Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God.
I have squandered the splendid years:
Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,
Aye, fling them from me !
For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not hoard,
Shall do the deed of to-day, nor take thought of to-morrow's teen,
Shall not bargain or huxter with God ; or was it a jest of Christ's
And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?
The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces,
And said, `This man is a fool,' and others have said, `He blasphemeth;'
And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life
In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things,
To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold.

O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?
What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?
Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin
On the truth of Thy dreadful word. Do not remember my failures,
But remember this my faith
And so I speak.
Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I speak to my people and say:
Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save;
Ye shall venture your all, lest ye lose what is more than all;
Ye shall call for a miracle, taking Christ at His word.
And for this I will answer, O people, answer here and hereafter,
O people that I have loved, shall we not answer together?

Bean Sléibhe ag Caoineadh a Mhac
(A Woman of The Mountain Keens Her Son)
by Padraic Pearse

Grief on the death, it has blackened my heart:
lt has snatched my love and left me desolate,
Without friend or companion under the roof of my house
But this sorrow in the midst of me, and I keening.

As I walked the mountain in the evening
The birds spoke to me sorrowfully,
The sweet snipe spoke and the voiceful curlew
Relating to me that my darling was dead.

I called to you and your voice I heard not,
I called again and I got no answer,
I kissed your mouth, and O God how cold it was!
Ah, cold is your bed in the, lonely churchyard.

O green-sodded grave in which my child is,
Little narrow grave, since you are his bed,
My blessing on you, and thousands of blessings
On the green sods that are over my treasure.

Grief on the death, it cannot be denied,
It lays low, green and withered together,---
And O gentle little son, what tortures me is
That your fair body should be making clay !

(I'm not feeling very well these days, thus the absence of humorous material; instead here's a poem.)

The Rebel

By P. H. Pearse


I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow;
Who have no treasure but hope,
No riches laid up but a memory
Of an ancient glory
My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,
I am of the blood of serfs;
The children with whom I have played,
The men and women with whom I have eaten
Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,
And though gentle, have served churls.
The hands that have touched mine, the dear hands whose touch
Is familiar to me
Have worn shameful manacles, have been bitten at the wrist by manacles,
Have grown hard with the manacles and the task-work of strangers.
I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly, I am bone of their bone
I that have never submitted;
I that have a soul greater than the souls of my people's masters,
I that have vision and prophecy, and the gift of fiery speech,
I that have spoken with God on the top of his holy hill .

And because I am of the people, I understand the people,
I am sorrowful with their sorrow, I am hungry with their desire;
My heart is heavy with the grief of mothers,
My eyes have been wet with the tears of children,
I have yearned with old wistful men,
And laughed and cursed with young men;
Their shame is my shame, and I have reddened for it
Reddened for that they have gone in want, while others have been full,
Reddened for that they have walked in fear of lawyers and their jailors,
With their Writs of Summons and their handcuffs,
Men mean and cruel.
I could have borne stripes on my body
Rather than this shame of my people.

And now I speak, being full of vision;
I speak to my people, and I speak in my people's name to
The masters of my people:
I say to my people that they are holy,
That they are august despite their chains,
That they are greater than those that hold them,
And stronger and purer,
That they have but need of courage, and to call on the name of their God,
God the unforgetting, the dear God who loves the people
For whom he died naked, suffering shame.
And I say to my people's masters: Beware
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people
Who shall take what ye would not give.
Did ye think to conquer the people, or that law is stronger than life,
And than men's desire to be free?
We will try it out with you ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed,
Tyrants...hypocrites...liars!

A Day in the Life of a Decision Scientist

2:00 P.M. Need to be at Dulles airport by 5:30 for flight to Kansas City (via Chicago) for Judgment and Decision Making (JDM) conference. Need to decide whether to take 3:15 or 3:45 bus to Dulles. Gut says 3:45 since the benefit of an additional half hour at home is greater than the slightly increased risk of a missed flight. Head says it's Friday afternoon, might be big crowds on highway and at airport, better safe than sorry. Decide to take 3:15 shuttle but don't leave house in time. Take the 3:45 instead. Get to Dulles in plenty of time.

4:00 P.M. Get in long line of United Premier members. After 10 minutes, realize there are two lines - human vs. non-human check-in machines. I'm in the twice-as-long human line, even though I have an e-ticket. If I switch now though, I'll be behind people who arrived 10 minutes after me. In order to avoid feeling like a loser, I stay in human line. Check bag (even though this was not my original intention) to justify the extra wait.

6:00 P.M. United terminal in O'Hare airport. Go to Berghoff Café for dinner. Order cheese pizza and small beer. Price of pizza ($3.50) is written on menu. Price of beer is not. Reach cashier and learn that price of beer=price of pizza=ridiculous price for 14 oz. of beer. Feel flash of anger at sleazy marketing ploy. Forgive Berghoff's because pizza is really good.

8:00 P.M. United flight to Kansas City. Wish I had a magazine. Sit down and see Newsweek in seatback. Feel excitement and small surge of irrational pride. Remove magazine. It is Polish Newsweek. Experience disappointment. Feel worse than I did when I first sat down. Derive satisfaction from observing the endowment effect and loss aversion in action. Combine satisfaction with disappointment and arrive at slightly less than neutral.

10:00 P.M. Arrive at Hyatt hotel. Am told the type of room I'd reserved (non-smoking king) was sold out. Do I want a king suite instead? I am tired and experience change aversion. I want the room I reserved. I ask if the suite will cost more. Am told the only difference is that the suite is larger and has a Murphy bed instead of a regular bed. Interrogate desk clerk to determine whether quality of Murphy mattress is greater than or equal to quality of regular mattress. He assures me there is no difference. Get to room, turn on light and inspect bed visually and dorsally. Try to retrieve memories of other hotel beds. Due to recency and frequency, all I can think of is my own bed. Too tired to continue research. Go to sleep.

-------------------------

Rap Song Inspired by "Thinking and Deciding"

I woke up and had a revelation
Correlation does not imply causation.
The situation is quite terrible
When you've got a confounding variable.
Another reason to think carefully:
Does B cause A or does A cause B?

Popper said "I wonder why?
Einstein's theory lived but Freud's has died.
It seems to me the difference is
That Einstein's could be falsified."

Suppose one day I say to you,
"Hey listen up: 'If p, then q!'"
And then I tell you: "p is true."
Could you be sure that q's true too?
And what if I'd said: "q is true."
Could you conclude that p's true too?"

[Not you again!]
That's right! It's me!
Is it "not q" if it's "not p?"
[Please go away!]
One more to do!
Is it "not p" if it's "not q?"

Peter Wason is the name
Of a man who liked card games.
But unlike me and unlike you
He played with four, not fifty-two.

Letters on the front
Numbers on the back.
"A" and "B" and "2" and "3"
Are all that you can see.

A rule has been proposed.
You don't know if it's true.
"A card that has a vowel
Has an even number too."

Which cards must you inspect
To verify the rule?
[Why not check them all?]
No, that would not be cool!

You've got to check the A
(Don't bother with the B)
The 2 can't give you trouble
But watch out for the 3!

Doc Wason's back
He's got more tricks
Here's a game
Called 2-4-6.

Your job is to name sets of three
To test different hypotheses.
[3-6-9?]
Yes!
[1-2-3?]
Well that works too.
[I'm smart as you!]

[6-8-10?]
Way to go, my friend!
[3-2-1?]
No! Please try again.

[10-12-14?]
That's peachy keen!
[2-3-4?]
Oy, how many more?

[1-2-10?]
Yes! We're near the end!
[5-6-8?]
Right! You're doing great!

I'm ready, now. I can guess your rule.
I'm the one that you cannot fool.
The rule you use for sets of three:
Increasing numerosity!

-------------------------

Daily Affirmations for the Unstable

I no longer need to punish, deceive or compromise myself. Unless, of
course, I want to stay employed.

A good scapegoat is nearly as welcome as a solution to the problem.

As I let go of my feelings of guilt, I can get in touch with my Inner
Sociopath.

I have the power to channel my imagination into ever-soaring levels of
suspicion and paranoia.

Today, I will gladly share my experience and advice, for there are no
sweeter words than "I told you so."

I need not suffer in silence while I can still moan, whimper and complain.

As I learn the innermost secrets of the people around me, they reward me in
many ways to keep me quiet.

I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are
someone else's fault.

I honor my personality flaws, for without them I would have no personality
at all.

Joan of Arc heard voices too.

When someone hurts me, forgiveness is cheaper than a lawsuit, but not nearly
as gratifying.

The first step is to say nice things about myself. The second, to do nice
things for myself. The third, to find someone to buy me nice things.

As I learn to trust the universe, I no longer need to carry a gun.

Just for today, I will not sit in my living room all day watching TV.
Instead I will move my TV into the bedroom.

Who can I blame for my own problems? Give me just a minute... I'll find
someone.

Why should I waste my time reliving the past when I can spend it worrying
about the future?

I will find humor in my everyday life by looking for people I can laugh at.

I am willing to make the mistakes if someone else is willing to learn from
them.

Philosophy Airplane Jokes

* During a flight to Paris, a stewardess walks up to Rene Descartes and asks, "Would you like something to drink?" After a moment the French philosopher answers, "I think not." And he disappears.
* As a flight to Elea is preparing to take off, a stewardness rushes up to Parmenides. "I'm sorry, Sir," she says. "I'm afraid you're in the wrong seat. Could you please move?" "Of course," he replies. And he disappears.
* As passengers were disembarking from the flight to Ephesus, HeracIitus discovers that his legs have gone to sleep. Noticing that he hasn't disembarked, the stewardess asks him, "What's wrong?" "I can't move," he replies. And he disappears.
* A stewardess pushes the refreshment cart up to Thales seat, and asks him if he wants some water to drink. "No," answers the Melisian. "I'll have a Pepsi." And he disappears.
* A passenger on the flight to Elea leans over to Pyrrho and asks if he knows the time. "Yes, I do," answers the Skeptic. And he disappears.
* On the flight to Bermuda, a passenger asks Bishop Berkeley if he had a watch. The Empiricist searches his coat pockets for several moments and finally admits, "I appear not." And he disappears.
* Anaximander enjoyed several cups of wine on his trip home to Miletus. When the stewardess asks if he would like one more, the Philosopher belches and says, "Oh, no. I've reached my limit." And he disappears.
* Plato and the rest of the passengers on the flight to Athens had been waiting for takeoff for thirty minutes when finally the pilot comes on the speaker and says. "Sorry for the delay, folks, but we're having a little engine trouble. We'll be on our way in about an hour." "An hour!" the philosopher exclaims. "Now I'll miss my appointment! I wasn't informed!" And he disappears.
* Aristotle, on the same flight, shrugs complacently and says, "Oh, well. No matter!" And he disappears.
* Zeno is flying to Elea when he asks the stewardess where they are. "Why we're flying over Athens right now," she answers. The Monist replies, "Excellent! We're over halfway there!" And he disappears.

------------------------------

TOP 10 REASONS TO STUDY ECONOMICS

1. Economists are armed and dangerous: "Watch out for our invisible hands."
2. Economists can supply it on demand.
3. You can talk about money without every having to make any.
4. You get to say "trickle down" with a straight face.
5. Mick Jagger and Arnold Schwarzenegger both studied economics and look how they turned out.
6. When you are in the unemployment line, at least you will know why you are there.
7. If you rearrange the letters in "ECONOMICS", you get "COMIC NOSE".
8. Although ethics teaches that virtue is its own reward, in economics we get taught that reward is its own virtue.
9. When you get drunk, you can tell everyone that you are just researching the law of diminishing marginal utility.
10. When you call 1-900-LUV-ECON and get Kandi Keynes, you will have something to talk about.


ECONOMISTS do it at bliss point
ECONOMISTS do it cyclically
ECONOMISTS do it in an Edgeworth Box
ECONOMISTS do it on demand
ECONOMISTS do it risk-free (in reference to the risk-free interest rate)
ECONOMISTS do it with a dual
ECONOMISTS do it with an atomistic competitor
ECONOMISTS do it with crystal balls
ECONOMISTS do it with interest


Top Ten Economist Valentines
10. You raise my interest rate thirty basis points without a corresponding dropoff in consumer enthusiasm
9. Despite a decade of inflation, I still dig your supply curve
8. What do you say we remeasure our cross-elasticity
7. You bring the butter, I'll bring the gun
6. Let's raise housing starts together
5. Further stimulus could result in uncontrolled expansion
4. Tell me whether my expectations are rational
3. Let's assume a ritzy hotel room and a bottle of dom
2. You stoke the animal spirits of my market
1. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou beside me watching Rukeyser

------------------------------------

A Cowsmic View Of World Organization

(Yes I know I've posted some of this before but this is the extended version!)

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

SINGAPORE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed animals in an apartment.

MILITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors kill you and take the cows.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the Feng Shui is bad.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership"is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE: Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk. Far out! Awesome!

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

JAPANESE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You give the milk to gangsters so they don't ask any awkward questions about who you're giving the milk to.

EUROPEAN FEDERALISM: You have two cows which cost too much money to care for because everybody is buying milk imported from some cheap east-European country and would never pay the fortune you'd have to ask for your cows' milk. So you apply for financial aid from the European Union to subsidise your cows and are granted enough subsidies. You then sell your milk at the former elevated price to some government-owned distributor which then dumps your milk onto the market at east-European prices to make Europe competitive. You spend the money you got as a subsidy on two new cows and then go on a demonstration to Brussels complaining that the European farm-policy is going drive you out of your job.

EASTERN EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You sell the milk (diluted with some water) at a high price to the neighbors or to anyone at the open-air market. If somebody asks for receipt, you charge for a two times higher price, so nobody will request an invoice. For concerned families with small babies you claim that the milk is "bio", though you collect the grass for feeding at the side of the highway and you keep the milk in plastic barrels used previously as containers of dangerous chemicals. Later, your neighbor or anybody from town will steal the cows and will buy their meat for a high price, and if you ask for a receipt, you will be charged for a two times higher price.

FINNISH SOCIALISM: You have two cows. Soon you have to kill one of them because in the Netherlands there is an overproduction of milk and the European Union rules say so. When you do so, you realize that it was not necessary, only the system was too slow in getting you the up-to-date news. From the stress, you get an ulcer in your stomach so you go to a doctor. The doctor realizes that this ulcer is a serious one, so you need an urgent treatment. Therefore, you soon get a call to the local hospital. The call's date is for 3 months later, because there is a queue with more urgent cases. Then your ulcer becomes even more serious because you remember that 40 percent of your income is taken for social tax.

[The Meaning of Liff is a humorous dictionary of toponomy and etymology, written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, published in the United Kingdom in 1983, and first published in the USA in 1984.]


In Life*, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.
On the other hand, the world is littererd with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.
Our job, as wee see it, is to get these words dow off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society.

Douglas Adams
John Lloyd


*And, indeed, in Liff

DALRYMPLE (n.)
Dalarymples are the things you pay extra for on pieces of hand-made craftwork - the rough edges, the paint smudges and the holes in the glazing.

DAMNAGLAUR (n.)
A certain facial expression which actors are required to demonstrate their mastery of before they are allowed to play Macbeth.

DARENTH (n.)
Measure = 0.0000176 mg. Defined as that amount of margarine capable of covering one hundred slices of bread to the depth of one molecule. This is the legal maximum allowed in sandwich bars in Greater London.

DEAL (n.)
The gummy substance found between damp toes.

DEEPING ST NICHOLAS (n.)
What street-wise kids do at Christmas. They hide on the rooftops waiting for Santa Claus so that if he arrives and goes down the chimney, they can rip stuff off from his sleigh.

DES MOINES (pl.n.)
The two little lines which come down from your nose.

DETCHANT (n.)
That part of a hymn (usually a few notes at the end of a verse) where the tune goes so high or low that you suddenly have to change octaves to accommodate it.

DETCHANT (n.)
(Of the hands or feet.) Prunelike after an overlong bath.

DIDCOT (n.)
The tiny oddly-shaped bit of card which a ticket inspector cuts out of a ticket with his clipper for no apparent reason. It is a little-known fact that the confetti at Princess Margaret's wedding was made up of thousands of didcots collected by inspectors on the Royal Train.

DIDLING (participial vb.)
The process of trying to work out who did it when reading a whodunit, and trying to keep your options open so that when you find out you can allow yourself to think that you knew perfectly well who it was all along.

DILLYTOP (n.)
The kind of bath plug which for some unaccountable reason is actually designed to sit on top of the hole rather than fit into it.

DIBBLE (vb.)
To try to remove a sticky something from one hand with the other, thus causing it to get stuck to the other hand and eventually to anything else you try to remove it with.

DITHERINGTON (n)
Sudden access to panic experienced by one who realises that he is being drawn inexorably into a clabby (q.v.) conversation, i.e. one he has no hope of enjoying, benefiting from or understanding.

DITTISHAM (n.)
Any music you hear on the radio to which you have to listen very carefully to determine whether it is an advertising jingle or a bona fide record.

DOBWALLS (pl.n.)
The now hard-boiled bits of nastiness which have to be prised off crockery by hand after it has been through a dishwasher.

DOCKERY (n.)
Facetious behaviour adopted by an accused man in the mistaken belief that this will endear him to the judge.

DOGDYKE (vb.)
Of dog-owners, to adopt the absurd pretence that the animal sh*tt*ng in the gutter is nothing to do with them.

DOLEGELLAU (n.)
The clump, or cluster, of bored, quietly enraged, mildly embarrassed men waiting for their wives to come out of a changing room in a dress shop.

DORCHESTER (n.)
A throaty cough by someone else so timed as to obscure the crucial part of the rather amusing remark you've just made.

DORRIDGE (n.)
Technical term for one of the lame excuses written in very small print on the side of packets of food or washing powder to explain why there's hardly anything inside. Examples include 'Contents may have settled in transit' and 'To keep each biscuit fresh they have been individually wrapped in silver paper and cellophane and separated with corrugated lining, a cardboard flap, and heavy industrial tyres'.

DRAFFAN (n.)
An infuriating person who always manages to look much more dashing that anyone else by turning up unshaven and hungover at a formal party.

DREBLEY (n.)
Name for a shop which is supposed to be witty but is in fact wearisome, e.g. 'The Frock Exchange', 'Hair Apparent', etc.

DROITWICH (n.)
A street dance. The two partners approach from opposite directions and try politely to get out of each other's way. They step to the left, step to the right, apologise, step to the left again, apologise again, bump into each other and repeat as often as unnecessary.

DUBUQUE (n.)
A look given by a superior person to someone who has arrived wearing the wrong sort of shoes.

DUDOO (n.)
The most deformed potato in any given collection of potatoes.

DUGGLEBY (n.)
The person in front of you in the supermarket queue who has just unloaded a bulging trolley on to the conveyor belt and is now in the process of trying to work out which pocket they left their cheque book in, and indeed which pair of trousers.

DULEEK (n.)
Sudden realisation, as you lie in bed waiting for the alarm to go off, that it should have gone off an hour ago.

DULUTH (adj.)
The smell of a taxi out of which people have just got.

DUNBAR (n.)
A highly specialised fiscal term used solely by turnstile operatives at Regent's Park zoo. It refers to the variable amount of increase in the variable gate takings on a Sunday afternoon, caused by persons going to the zoo because they are in love and believe that the feeling of romance will be somehow enhanced by the smell of panther sweat and rank incontinence in the reptile house.

DUNBOYNE (n.)
The moment of realisation that the train you have just patiently watched pulling out of the station was the one you were meant to be on.

DUNCRAGGON (n.)
The name of Charles Bronson's retirement cottage.

DUNGENESS (n.)
The uneasy feeling that the plastic handles of the overloaded supermarket carrier bag you are carrying are getting steadily longer.

DUNTISH (adj.)
Mentally incapacitated by severe hangover.