fearman's definitions

atheist

Someone who refuses to bow to the alleged power of any alleged supernatural entity, however great that power is alleged to be. One of a group of people far wiser and more common than they are usually given credit for. Someone who thinks in terms of reason rather than fear. In particular, someone who refuses to let their perfectly natural fear of death overwhelm their reason. Someone who accepts that even if there were a god worth worshipping, which cannot be proved, the divinity would be worth worshipping precisely because it supports or represents such things as justice, truth, love and compassion, which are universal human ideals and are not, contrary to the propaganda, derived from any religion. Someone who accepts that, as guides to the good life, such ideals therefore come before all else. A humanist. Atheists are often accused, by religionists who have found support in postmodernist relativism, that atheism is a religion like any other. If anorexia could be considered a favourite food, these postmodernist types might have a point ... but I'm doubting it.

Someone once said there are no atheists in foxholes. Firstly, oh yes there are: and secondly, even if it were true, that would be more an argument against foxholes than against atheism.

by Fearman September 6, 2007

Quare on the Square

Dublin rhyming slang ("Quare" from the originally derogatory "queer" for gay, homosexual) for the reclining statue of Oscar Wilde, carved in County Cork from rocks of various colours. The statue is mounted on a boulder at one corner of Archbishop Ryan Park, Merrion Square, Dublin, opposite two metal columns inscribed with quotes from Wilde.

You've just got to come and see the tart with the cart and the quare on the square.

by Fearman February 10, 2008

necro-reiteration

Mental experience in which you come to believe on numerous occasions that someone must have died a while back, often persisting for many years until you hear for certain in the media that they have just actually died.

I had necro-reiteration about Joan Miro and Evel Knievel for at least a decade before they popped their clogs.

by Fearman January 6, 2008

cable hair

One of those hairs often found growing in facial hair that seem to consist of at least ten normal hairs welded together and that you simply can't resist the urge to pull out; fortunately, frequently an easy operation.

Oh, look. Cable hair. (Pinches and pulls.) Oooohh ahhh, that's lovely.

by Fearman August 30, 2007

Modern Art

Someone bought more burgers and fries than they could eat at a drive-thru McDonald's in the boondocks. Thirty miles down the road they tossed the leftovers out the window. The leftovers fermented in the sun and five days later a great big dog wandered by, thought the mess smelled appetising and ate it. The meal played havoc with the dog's nervous system and it went quite wild. The next time a car came by the dog took a flying leap through the windscreen at a relative speed of almost a hundred miles an hour, killing itself and likely the driver and sending the car out of control. The car flipped over four times and lay on the road, subsequently catching fire and burning out. A milk lorry came over the top of the hill and crashed into the mess, and was followed by five or six more vehicles before the authorities got the faintest notion what was going on and partitioned the area off. Shortly afterwards a Boeing 747 carrying, among other things, a few large containers of yellow paint suffered a blowout and had to descend. The paint squirted out of the plane and splashed down on top of the pile-up. A hitch-hiker came by with a camera and thought the whole thing looked intriguing. He took some pictures and downloaded them onto his computer later on. The pictures were Photoshopped to look a little spooky and later printed in this new form on T-shirts. The photographer's girlfriend wore one of these to an art gallery and he photographed her pulling faces and balling her fists while wearing the T-shirt. Later on, these photographs were projected onto a screen in a display room in another gallery and a painter executed a painting of people in the room watching the slide show. Shortly afterwards everyone involved in the production of all this art - the hitchhiker photographer, the girlfriend, the painter, and all - had the good sense to overdose on cocaine at a party and die shortly thereafter, thereby sensibly removing themselves from the means of production and terminating their financial interest in the process. The painting was sold for £300,000 at Sotheby's and artie journalists claimed it was emblematic of the ultimately existentiallistically meaningless search for meaning within the postmodernist aesthetic.

And that more or less is a typical story of Modern Art.

by Fearman March 5, 2008

rosaproboscideaphobia

Morbid or irrational fear of pink elephants. A motivating factor in many Prohibitionist or Temperance movements.

She's off the drink after developing a severe case of rosaproboscideaphobia.

by Fearman March 6, 2008

might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb

Expression used in resentment as a reason for doing something deemed unethical when one knows one is going to be accused of doing that thing anyway, particularly when there is much to be gained by doing it.

They are going to accuse me of doing nothing and/or of working and drawing the dole at the same time, so I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.

by Fearman December 28, 2007