Think of Ambrose Bierce, brought up to date to take in higher mathematics, lower mathematics, quantum physics, music, art and philosophy which are all treated with scant respect, Here, there are puns, misleading origins (feghoots, which are like punny shaggy dogs: look them up) and dubious scholarship, derived over 40 years of sitting in boring committee and board meetings: one learns to look busy, and shows great wisdom. Buy it, read it, and you will be ready to become an anarchist/surrealist bureaucrat. Give it to your enemies, let them read it and be reduced to babbling confusion
It starts simply enough: ability. Commonly a serious impediment to success, especially in politics and military affairs. It is probably contagious, since its presence usually causes discomfort in other people.
abscess. A hole of a very nasty sort. When it occurs in a lung, the abscess may collapse that organ, allowing the heart to migrate across into the vacated space in the chest cavity, in accordance with the widely-accepted observation that an abscess makes the heart go yonder.
absinthe. A liqueur, made from wormwood roots, macerated and steeped in alcohol. Now banned because of the cardio-vascular health risks it causes, it having been shown conclusively that absinthe makes the heart go thunder.
absorption cost. In economics, the cost of absorbing some of the more bizarre theories of the economic rationalists. This cost can be minimised, just so long as widows and orphans are assessed correctly, based on their scrap value.
It ends like this:
zeitschrift. An academic paper dealing with the anatomy, taxonomy and cultivation of tame breeds of zeitgeist for the export market.
Zener diode. More Zen than Zen, a poem written on both sides of a Möbius band about the sound of one band flapping.
Zeno's paradox. It is unlikely we will ever be able to get to the end of this.
Zero's parrot flocks. These mythical birds no longer exist, because they were fed with plaster of parrot.
zero sum. A worthless piece of mathematical work which gains no marks.
Zeus. The Greek god who coined the phrase 'take me to your Leda'.
ziggurat. A smoking device, popular in Mesopotamia. It is made with tobacco rolled in paper, but then bent into a zigzag shape, which the Mesopotamians believed would trap carcinogens.
zither. The third (vertical) dimension equivalent of hither and thither. Zither music often reaches great heights.
Origins.
As a teenager, Ole Koblers gained an endowment to become "a linguist and etymologist", to help with his dyslexia, but he thought he was to become a "Lindquistian entomologist", like Per Lindquist, the student of Australian ant lions. Seeking ant lions in an Australian rock shelter, Koblers found the manuscript of this work in a zinc-lined and wax-sealed box. From the internal evidence, the text was the work of two cousins named Robert Bruce. Nobody knows much about the cousins, and their names only appear in one small newspaper clipping with no date, found pasted to a yellowed quarto sheet of paper at the top of their bundled manuscript. The clipping may have come from The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, but this is conjecture, and it yields little information, in any case.
The cousins were self-educated philologists, one born near Glenorchy in Scotland, the other in Pontypridd in Wales. The Scot, ('Robert the Bruise' to his friends), was always jumping to contusions (the cousins say this in their text). He wore brick ear-rings attached to the helices, the upper parts of his external ears, and these pulled the ear-flaps down. As he explained it in broad Scots, "I'm hard of ear-ring, laddie!" This collection contains several similar puns that may have come from Robert the Bruise.
No true words have been wasted here,
