New Meanings for Trendy Phrases Like ‘Ethnic Cuisine’

Considering our choked freeways, overflowing landfills and exploding population glut . . . perhaps it’s time we update the definitions of some popular and trendy phrases:

Cultural diversity : Being unable to comprehend many groups, let alone understand what they’re saying at all.

Global community : When the native country is deserted because of too many problems and it is easier and more profitable to move here.

Pacific Rim trading area : Someone from Cleveland can buy a trade-licensed cartoon character doll at Disneyland manufactured in Asia.

Ethnic cuisine : Buying a pizza in California with Wisconsin cheese made by Hispanics from a Japanese-owned convenience store chain.

Foreign aid : Loaning additional millions to a Third World country that will not even pay the interest on previous millions, so we can become known as a “kinder and gentler nation.”

Fair trade : Rebuild and finance a country that would have never amounted to a “hill of beans,” so it can produce and dump beans here that are grossly underpriced. Entices our growers to go over-the-hill.

Melting pot : (a.k.a. “Tower of Babel Tossed Salad”): Living here and not having the foggiest idea of what’s going on--but living better than any of your ancestors.

Rags to riches : Finding out through a translator that you have won the California Lottery. Other scenario of “Rags to Riches to Rags”: Engaging an attorney to present your ticket (too late).

Racial discrimination : Discovering (through another translator) that the Declaration of Independence was originally written only in English.

TGIF : Formerly “Thank God It’s Friday,” now meaning “This Gobbledygook Is Futile.”

California dream : The age before all the above.

BILL LAWSON

Costa Mesa