I allowed myself a bit of shardenfreud at this news, but I’ll really rejoice when…

Right now, I get 23 hits for shardenfreud. Not common, but not unprecedented either.

Picking up new words from context is hard enough; picking up new words in foreign languages the phonetics and orthography of which you have no knowledge is harder yet, and makes for all kinds of wonderful misunderstandings and buggered renderings. So this sort of thing is pretty understandable, even if it makes me smile.

(As a kid, I thought that the German affirmative was “yabul”. Yabul, mine air. I am deeply sympathetic.)

Now I’m holding out for a citation that involves “shatner” somehow.

Wheel in the Sky (bluegrass cover)

Because you always wondered what would happen if Journey was actually a bar band from Montana named “Moseyin’ On”.

No more top-down bureaucracy to muddle through. No more corporate structure. No more trying to make the best of limited resources and unreasonable demands.

No more arguing with nannyfilter software about what internet content I can, as a full-grown adult, handle looking at. No more blocks on ssh connections; no more scuttled IM access; no more reloading youtube videos a dozen times hoping that this refresh is the one that won’t be borked by the local proxy cache system.

No more dresscode. No more dull, cycling fleet of slacks and button-down shirts that have been mandatory wardrobe for last few dozen months. Greetings, beloved jeans, cherished t-shirts: your weekday has come at last.

No more cubicles. I work from home. I have my own office. The office has windows, and a stereo in the next room, and a pool table downstairs, and scotch in the cupboard.

The job I’m leaving behind was not a bad one, and there are folks I will miss seeing every day. The transition will probably feel weird for the next few days. That is the sum total of my complaints.

It’s a wonderful, pants-optional world, and I am deeply grateful to have found may way to it. Thanks, Matt, for making this possible.

- Mezzacotta, which is sort of like Garkov except without the potential lawsuit from Paws, Inc. and with sentences that more consistently come to a proper end.

- Jess Johnson’s Common Lisp Joke Generator, which trumps Garkov by actually generating coherent groaners algorithmically.

Follow twitanovel as I attempt to spend next month (National Novel Writing Month) trying to breath some life into the world of literature, 140 characters at a time.

This is a very bad idea, and I’m pretty excited about it.

In fact, we got enough of the deposit back that, had we instead taken those several hundred dollars and put them into the S&P 500 when we moved in and sold when we moved out, we’d probably have done worse.

The “try not to ruin your apartment too badly” fund. Fiduciary innovation in action.

On the other hand: Eleven killed in MILF attack in Maguindanao.

[Hat tip to mefite Debaser626 for either inspiring me with related weirdness or actually scoring the coinage but for a typo. It's hard to be sure which is the case.]

(Swinger, swingest, more swing, most swing, swingiest, just plain is swing: these states are totally those creepy friends who used to hang out in your parents’ den and laugh at jokes you didn’t really understand.)

…

GIBSON: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the Alaskan sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.
PALIN: You’re darn tootin’ we’re gonna help out with those turtles that are in our American tundras that are hurtin’ in this time of economic crisis in America! Also, I’d like to talk for just a minute about energy again, which…

…

GIBSON: Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about… your running mate.
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?