@klaatu, I think the killer description that `parallel` needs to explain it to people who have some experience with unix pipes and the tooling around them is this:
> If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU parallel very easy to use as GNU parallel is written to have the same options as xargs.
It's near the top of both home page and man page today, but maybe it wasn't back in 2008, and thus turned you off for a decade by just looking inscrutable and intimidating. :-)