VALENTINE (from) Saint Valentine, a Roman Christian martyr. The original Valentine's Day was Rome's Lupercalia, a festival of sexual license. February was sacred to Juno Februata, Goddess of the 'fever' of love. The Christian church was unable to eliminate the Pagan holidays and replaced Juno with a mythical martyr, St. Valentine, in the 3rd Century A.D. He was executed the moment he received his sweetheart's valentine! No longer do we celebrate the Love Gods and Goddesses Eros, Cupid, Kama, Priapus and Pan, which is unfortunate, for there is so much more life in celebrating living saints than dead ones.

VAULT (from) Latin volvere, to turn. As a noun, a vault is a place of safekeeping. As a verb it is to jump or leap, surmount. As the value of America's money decreases by increasing volume, it will soon be impossible to vault a vault. Rather than save money (in vaults), to save its value is to turn it today. Try to vault by assaulting a vault and you will land in a vault.

VEGETARIAN - Coined by the Vegetarian Society, Ramsgate, England, 1847. The number of people in the world who do not eat flesh, for whatever reason, is staggering. The further we live from the equator the more we seem to need some animal fat in our diet. Near the Arctic people live on blubber. In the tropics it is possible to exist wholly on fruit. It is certainly helpful to understand that we humans have an herbivorous animal's digestive system and that we need only moderate to small amounts of animal fat, not flesh, in order to live well in North America. Most true carnivores prefer vegetarian animals as a food source so I've decided that if my carcass would make good bear, shark or worm chow I have no right to complain. One last thing. I enjoy helping clean up after dinner in the homes of friends. I have noticed that it is far easier to clean up after vegetarians than carnivores due to the lack of animal fat cooked onto utensils, walls and appliances, and spread around dishes, sinks and waste containers!

VERMIN (from) Latin vermis, worm. Any of various animals, including humans (particularly humans in this case), that are injurious to health. Such persons collectively are ...
"...the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth." -- Swift

VICE VERSA (from) Latin, "the position being changed": < vicis, change + vertere, turn. In "primitive" cultures around the world (where the devil had been working evil for thousands of years before Christianity properly identified and condemned it) certain evils were traditional. Because missionaries had a hard turn changing the position of heathens to understand that their ways of life were sinful, vices more familiar to the missionaries were introduced, the foremost being alcohol. Said vice then became the subject of missionary condemnation and he would recite his verses against vice, or vice versa.

"The majority of those who put together collections of verses or epigrams resemble those who eat cherries or oysters; they begin by choosing the best and end by eating everything." -- Chamfort

VIRTUE (from) Latin virtus, manliness, strength, capacity, from vir, man. Just goes to show how much the Romans thought about females, and look what happened to Rome.

"The effort to get property stimulates the social virtues." -- William Sumner

"First secure an independent income, then practice virtue." -- Greek saying

VITAMIN (from) Latin vita, life. Any of various organic substances in plant and animal tissue essential for the control of metabolic processes. Not to be confused with highly processed by-products compacted into pill form.

VOLUME (from) Latin volvere, to roll < IndoEuropean wel-, to roll, turn. Derivatives refer mostly to enclosing objects, for example, "Has the volume of your excessories exceeded the volume of your house?" In order to give this volume any socially redeeming value, I shall include the formula by which one computes the volume of a circular cube: V = pi times the radius squared, or is it 2 pi D?

VOTE (from) Latin vox, voice. Worth nothing without a trip to the poll.

VULCAN (from) Roman Mythology. The god of fire and metalsmithing. The first large scale arms manufacturer, he hired Cyclopean labor in subterranean forges. He is always depicted as lame, which is appropriate because it is arms manufacturing in our time that is crippling our world.

VULGAR (from) Latin vulgus, the common people. Being common, I am also vulgar enough to suggest that Nature is going to destroy us before we destroy Earth. We must soon face the vengeance of Vulcan, Thor and Neptune, and from our Stygial redoubt perhaps we may yet remember sweet Gaea tried so hard to touch us with love while we burnt her sweet breast with the awful effleunt of our technocratic discivilization of consumption and greed. We deserve whatever vulgarities we get.