Simple Minds

This was too good to miss and has been published elsewhere. It would appear that the Washington Post Style Invitational list has become iconic, in a farting, irrelevant kind of way, meandering like a lexicographic Tardis around the Internet. For those who missed it, here it is. Rules: add, subtract or change one letter and provide a definition for the new word formed.In some cases, the words are attributed to the Post, in some cases not. Sometimes they claim "Here are this year's winners." Well, no, actually. They weren't the winners – of what, one might ask - this or even last year, nor when the list appeared on Usenet in 2003, when they also were labelled "this year's winners." No, some of those words—like intaxication, appeared in 1998 in the Washington Post.Others, like cashtration and beelzebug, seem to not be from theWashington Post at all. Sometime during their eight-year trip through the Net, they were, like Caesar,’ripped untimely’ from another list that has itself been travelling around since 1995, when it appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. God and little green Martians only know where that list came from.

Laugh? I almost smiled…

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

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. Why, I wonder , does George Dubya (rtd) spring so instantly to mind?

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
Inoculatte:To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
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, hey, a serious bummer.
Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Glibido: All talk and no action.
Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

And finally…Ignoranus: (n): A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

The image is of a T shirt from the Bozone microbrewery in Bozeman, Montana, the original home of Gibson guitars. A real must-have, then...