Godling's Glossary: E

Earth.
[From ME erthe, dirt] The Third World, sidereally speaking. The planetary placenta of the universal uterus; the afterbirth of Homo celaestens (a cowering fetus that presently refuses to be born, despite growing labor pains).
Ebola.
AIDS for the impatient.
Euphemism, n.
A diplomatic locution; i.e., one which doesn't quite say what it means. For example:
I wouldn't mind burying my bone in his backyard.
I need a Prince Albert like I need a hole in my head.
Evolution, n.

The process of variation and selection that brings forth order out of chaos. Known as "natural selection" in biology, "scientific method" in epistemology, "trial and error" in everyday life, "the way the cookie crumbles" in business, and anthropomorphized under various names by the ignorant. The partially learned conceive of biological evolution as a teleological process producing what we consider "progress". In fact, natural selection is concerned only with what succeeds, not with what human beings find aesthetically pleasing. If there is some statistically significant survival value in being ugly enough to scare maggots off a shitpile, then biological evolution will happily beat all creatures with the ugly stick. (AIDS, which makes sexual attractiveness life-threatening, might be an example of one such selection mechanism.)

Chip Morningstar has pointed out that the failure to understand evolution is both the crucial flaw in, and the central difference between, the conservative and liberal ideologies. Conservatives don't like variation -- they want everybody to look alike, dress alike, think alike, and love alike, preferably the way Grandmaw and Grandpaw did. Liberals, conversely, don't like selection -- they can't bear to see any person, institution, occupation, or culture go down the drain. Both attitudes stifle natural growth and progress, one in the name of keeping people "good," the other of keeping them "safe". Where conservatives prescribe a jail cell, liberals prefer a padded playpen.

Exon, J. James.
A former United States Senator who once sought, through legislation, to keep pornography (whatever that is) off the Net (whatever that is). The fact that computer networks transcend national boundaries does not seem to have penetrated his consciousness. The King Canute of carnality. He is not affiliated with the more famous petroleum company, a distinction immortalized in verse by Ogden Studebaker:
The one-X Exon, he's a prude.
The two-X Exxon, she spills crude.
And my home page, with GIFs of sex on,
soon will have a triple-X on.