Category Archives: satire

Potential eponyms

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Summary – an evolving list, because sometimes there are not enough words

  1. A lawrencefox – any man who uses the occasion of a toxic divorce to show the whole world how lucky his ex-wife was to flee. Usage: “Afterwards Anne reflected that she had a narrow escape from Henry, who, it turned out, was something of a pox-ridden laurencefox.”
  2. A mcgregor – an idiom similar to a “paper tiger”, derived from the idea of a braggadocio individual who finds it more difficult to fight trained men than to rape the defenceless. Usage: “Contemplating the impasse at the Strait of Hormuz, Netanyahu realised that Israel was now exposed as a mcgregor amongst the nations of the world.”
  3. Musky – a quality that means, no matter how much money, a person will always be too weird and repulsive. Usage: “After everything about him came out in public, Jeffrey was just too musky even for the DUP.”

21st Century Candidates for Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary

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Summary: an evolving list

Ambrose Bierce defined politics in his Devil’s Dictionary as “The conduct of public affairs for private advantage”.

As Trump, Netanyahu and Putin continue to use this as their platonic ideal, here are a few more commonly used terms to better understand this brand of politics in the 21st Century.

  1. Betrayal — The dispatch of Caesar by his own signature methods.
  2. Consolation — The knowledge that nits become lice.
  3. Context — The reason a “tragic mistake” was all the enemy’s fault.
  4. Decency — An elusive quality discovered in Caesar only after the knives have safely done their work.
  5. Gullibility — A touching belief in the stories told by plutocrats.
  6. Hypocrisy — The art of applying opposite principles with identical conviction.
  7. Human moment — A politician’s self-pity.
  8. Human rights — Rights universally acknowledged until someone inconvenient claims them.
  9. Investigation — A process for discovering that a “tragic mistake” was unavoidable.
  10. Responsibility — Something that never applies to the privileged.
  11. Self-defence — Violence committed by ourselves.
  12. Terrorism — Violence committed by the enemy.
  13. Tragic mistake — Violence committed by ourselves against civilians after we got caught.
Mikaeil Mirdoraghi on his way to be killed

Yes We Mustard, by Ginny Hogan

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Summary: Catch-22 for the millennium generation

Emery gets a job with an exciting new tech-condiment-start-up, Yes We Mustard, a company whose business model and CEO bear ABSOLUTELY NO RESEMBLENCE to Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. Soon, her desire to be loved for saving the world and become an inspirational GIRL BOSS, leads her to investigate the mysterious “addictive fructose powder” that is being put into the company’s exciting condiment products.

Ginny Hogan’s satire is a glorious affair. With a joke rate comparable to a great Marx Brothers’ movie, she lampoons everything that crosses her path, from corporate culture (“now you can listen to your great and heroic CEO”), to faux-feminism (“when a man fires someone it’s mean, but when a woman fires someone it’s empowering”), to the eternal shallowness of men (“men don’t like her because she’s a good person. Men like her because she’s insanely hot”). Her real targets though are ignorance and selfishness – things that the ENLIGHTENED leaders of Facebook and their ilk are in no way responsible for just because their entire business models are based on their promotion.

Ginny Hogan has been an impressive stand-up for a number of years now. Based on Yes We Mustard she is also a gifted playwright. I look forward to more of both from her in the years to come.

Check it out on audible or here: https://podtail.com/podcast/the-audio-verse-awards-nominee-showcase-podcast/2021-showcase-yes-we-mustard/