From: Jim E Cochran To: mbarton@basspro.com Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 23:19:49 -0500 Subject: NEW WORDS FOR THE NEW CENTURY Message-ID: <20000421.232006.-891551.3.jimeco@juno.com> X-Mailer: Juno 4.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Full-Name: Jim E Cochran X-Status: Sent X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 0-6,8-15,17-21,23,25-28,30-33,35-37,39-47,49-51,53-55,57,59-61,63,65-70,72,74-78,80,82-85,87-90,92-95,97-98,100-103,105,107-110,112-115,117,119,121-128,130,132,134-135,137-244 X-Juno-Att: 0 X-Juno-Fcc: Sent Items X-Juno-Size: 7395 X-Juno-RefParts: 0 from Carrie... NEW WORDS FOR THE NEW CENTURY BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who swoops in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything and then leaves. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles. IDEA HAMSTERS: People who always seem to have their idea generators running. MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. SITCOMs: (Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage) What Yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. STARTER MARRIAGE: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets. STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny. SWIPED OUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use. ALPHA GEEK: The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather then working hard. CHIPS & SALSA: Chips = hardware, Salsa = software. "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa." FLIGHT RISK: Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave a company or department soon. GOOD JOB or "GET-OUT-OF-DEBT" JOB: A well paying job people take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit as soon as they are solvent again. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trails were a prime example. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the heck out of an electronic device to get it to work again. UNINSTALLED: Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voice-mail of a vice president at a downsizing computer firm: "You have reached the number of an uninstalled vice president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance. (Syn: Decruitment) VULCAN NERVE PINCH: The taxing hand position required to reach all the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the arm re-boot for a Mac G3 PowerBook involves simultaneously pressing the Shift key, Function key, Control key and then the Power On key. YUPPIE FOOD STAMPS: The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATM's everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal: "We each owe $8, but all anybody's got are yuppie food stamps." SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end. ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. DILBERTED: To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip character. "I've been Dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week." 404: Someone who is clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. "Don't bother asking him... he's 404, man." GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls or subdivisions. Used as in "We were so lost in generica that I forgot what city we were in." OHNOSECOND: That miniscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made the BIG mistake. -------------------- from Johhny... These comments come from test papers and essays submitted to science and health teachers by elementary, junior high, high school, and college students and compiled at the NEA Life Sciences Symposium, Kansas City, Kansas. As the originator noted, "It is truly astonishing what weird science our young scholars can create under the pressures of time and grades." Please note that the original spelling has been left intact. 1. "The body consists of three parts - the branium, the borax, and the abominable cavity. The branium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowels, of which there are five - a, e, i, o, and u." 2. "Nitrogen is not found in Ireland because it is not found in a free state." 3. "H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water." 4. "To collect fumes of sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube." 5. "When you smell an oderless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide." 6. "Water is composed of two gins, Oxygin and Hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water." 7. "Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillars." 8. "Blood flows down one leg and up the other." 9. "Respiration is composed of two acts, first inspiration, and then expectoration." 10. "The moon is a planet just like the earth, only it is even deader." 11. "Artifical insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull." 12. "Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire." 13. "A super saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold." 14. "Mushrooms always grow in damp places and so they look like umbrellas." 15. "The pistol of a flower is its only protections agenst insects." 16. "The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to." 17. "A permanent set of teeth consists of eight canines, two molars, and eight cuspidors." 18. "The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon. All water tends towards the moon, because there is no water in the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight." 19. "A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extinct it is." 20. "Equator: A managerie lion running around the Earth through Africa." 21. "Germinate: To become a naturalized German." 22. "Liter: A nest of young puppies." 23. "Magnet: Something you find crawling all over a dead cat." 24. "Momentum: What you give a person when they are going away." 25. "Planet: A body of Earth surrounded by sky." 26. "Rhubarb: A kind of celery gone bloodshot." 27. "Vacuum: A large, empty space where the pope lives." 28. "Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative." 29. "To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose." 30. "For a nosebleed: Put the nose much lower then the body until the heart stops." 31. "For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered in several days, then kill it." 32. "For head cold: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat." 33. "To keep milk from turning sour: Keep it in the cow." _____________________________________________________