Fun & Games

New words for 2008

Essential vocabulary additions for today

CUBE FARM:
An office filled with cubicles

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.

SEAGULL MANAGER:
A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, messes on everything and then leaves.

SALMON DAY:
The experience of spending a day swimming upstream.

MOUSE POTATO:
The on-line, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.

GENERICA:
Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls and subdivisions.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE:
The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

Spoofy measurement conversions

Unofficial measures and their equivalents

• Ratio of an igloo’s circumference to its diameter = Eskimo pi
• 2,000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton
• 1 millionth mouthwash = 1 microscope
• Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier = Mach turtle
• 365.25 days of drinking low-calorie beer because it’s less filling = 1 lite year
• 16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling
• Half of a large intestine = 1 semicolon
• 1,000 aches = 1 megahurtz
• Weight an evangelist carries with God = 1 billigram
• Basic unit of laryngitis = 1 hoarsepower
• Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line
• Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond
• A half bathroom = 1 demijohn
• 453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake
• The first step of a one-mile journey = 1 Milwaukee
• 1 million microphones = 1 megaphone
• 1 million bicycles = 2 megacycles