The Future Dictionary of America
Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave Eggers, Nicole Krauss, Eli Horowitz, eds. The Future Dictionary of America 2004
words of the day
reality [ree-al'-uh-tee] n. anything experienced in private. ANT.
unreality n. anything appearing on or experienced through the mass media. - ROBERT OLEN BUTLER
I had previously seen this book reviewed either in the New Scientist or The Economist a short while ago, yet reckoned I would be lucky if I ever came across a copy. This book is also worthy of a far deeper analysis than the superficial coverage I give it here, as it also includes in its various endpapers the Declaration of Independence, the Charter of the UN, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a future, fictional declaration on the illegality of the Iraq War.
rumsfeld [ruhmz'-feld] n. one who can stomach casualties. - KURT VONNEGUT
cheney [chay'-nee] vi. to parlay one cushy job into another, esp. via personal connections. e.g. Ron clearly hoped to cheney his way from Chairman of the Board at Marduk Industries to the Ambassador of Luxembourg, preferably using other people's campaign donations. - SCOTT PHILLIPS
Think of Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, Adams & Lloyd's The Meaning of Liff, Gustave Flaubert's The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, and set them five hundred years in the future with a strong anti-Neocon slant: this is of course very contemporary, it is also a very science fictional and sardonic retrospective on words and colloquialisms that will enter the English language (this is the 'sixth' edition). There is also a loosely cohesive future history imagined here, and one that is brighter than that which the Neocons are currently offering America (though possibly equally weird, and for far funnier and less sinister reasons). It is not all political, there are other cultural and domestic quirks explored some of which are begging for science fictional expansion, for instance the entry Starwatch, in which the month of September is renamed thus, has a particularly good back-story.
outFox [owt-fahks] v. 1. to be more dishonest and deceitful than one's rivals. 2. to lean more heavily to the right. - RYAN HARTY
Over 170 writers contributed entries (for free), with proceeds going to Democrat causes, and it was published prior to the November election. But here the Democrats won and the Bush Gang and the religious Right are consigned to eternal damnation and ridicule.
secularity blanket [sek-yoo-layr'ih-tee blan-ket] n. 1. a small blanket or other soft cloth, often embroidered with the likeness of Noam Chomsky, clutched by an atheist or agnostic person who has failed to register according to the American Religious Resurrection Act of 2012. 2. anything that gives a person a feeling of safety or freedom from fundamentalist or absolutist oppression. - GARY SHTEYNGART
There are also strange cartoons from Art Spiegelman and others, and the CD has music from R.E.M., David Byrne, Tom Waits and more. Enough eulogising. Let me just end with my least favourite place on Earth:
guantanamo [gwahn-tahn'-uh-mo] 1. v. [Origin uncertain, but likely a remnant of the hispanic-WASP patois of the late 21st-century northeastern United States: from the Spanish aguantar, to bear, endure, put up with + the early 21st-century anglo-suburban colloqial no mo', no more, nothing else.] to be unable to bear; to find unacceptable, to refuse to endure, for even one second longer. 2. n. [Origin uncertain, but of common use in Arabic-, Dari-, Pashto-, and Urdu-speaking regions, likely a borrowing from one of those tongues.] 2a. a purgatory. An intermediate floor of hell. 2b. the mythical final place of confinement of the last president, vice-president and cabinet of the United States of America, immediately following the Great Upheaval but prior to the Grand Awakening and the Glorious Final Making Ammends and Mellowing the Fuck Out Forever After of that nation. 3. n. a vast butterfly and wildflower preserve on the Caribbean coast of Cuba. - BEN EHRENREICH