Sunday, February 27, 2011

Washington Post Word Play


The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding,  subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. 


Here are the winners:


1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.


2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.


3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.


4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.


5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.


6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.


7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high


8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.


9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.


10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)


11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.


12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.


13. Glibido : All talk and no action.


14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.


15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.


16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.


17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.


The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:



1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.


2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.


3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.


4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.


5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.


6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.


7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.


8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.


9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.


10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.


11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.


12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.


13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.


15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.


16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men
* Thanks to Becky for sending this to me in an email.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

A Graphical History of the Internet

(From MBA Online though I generally find MBAs rather useless.)
MBA Online
Via: MBA Online

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Rescuing a Linux box

If you have a Linux computer that boots up through Grub (like Ubuntu does) and you don't know the user names and Grub has the Recovery Mode entry in its menu then you may be able to regain control of the computer using the following steps. (Lots of preconditions but they are pretty common for Debian-based systems.)
  1. Highlight the Recovery Mode option.
  2. Press e for edit.
  3. Highlight the kernel line and press e again.
  4. Remove the ro single kernel parameters and append the line with rw init=/bin/bash.
  5. Press enter then b to boot.
  6. Wait for all the boot-up processes to finish.
  7. Change the password(s) with the passwd command.
  8. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot.
Thanks to sisco311 in the Ubuntu Forums for that description.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

This is looking interesting


The new ebook reader from Barnes and Noble will run on Google's Android OS and appears to have access to Google Books as well as what you'd get from B&N. Definitely worth a look.

Now that the official intro is over we see it does WiFi, handles PDFs, MP3s and lots of graphics formats although the latter is kind of wasted on a monochrome screen. Unfortunately we'll have to wait until Nov 30 to see it in the flesh^H^H^H^H^Hplastic.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Chad Mitchell Trio

Back in the day when I was a high school folk singer these guys were my favorites. Here's why I sang a lot of these in the 60s.

As you'll recall we had our own right wing wackos back then and the CMT had a little something to say about The John Birch Society. Of course like plagues of locusts things run in cycles and the CMT is still around to comment. The CMT also covered this little ditty but I didn't find their version.

As always there's lots of fun and games to be had on YouTube so check out Lizzy Borden, The Great Historical Bum and Super Skier. Don't miss a young Jim McGuinn playing backup for them.


YouTube search

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Did You Know 3.0


I posted version 1.0 here back in 2007 by its AKA, Shift Happens.