And now, a quick plug for David Black’s collection of demi-entendres:

A demi-entendre is an expression or phrase that comes from accidentally combining two common expressions…

For example, when you combine

Give us something to hang our hats on.

with

Give us something to sink our teeth into.

you get

“Give us something to hang our teeth on.” (Atlanta advertising agency director Selena Smith, as quoted in the New York Times).

See the follow-up commercials here and here.

I spent last weekend down in Auburn, for the Auburn Knights Reunion, and since I had some time to kill on Saturday afternoon, I thought about going to see The Simpsons Movie. Luckily, I decided not to, since Denise now tells me that she wants to see it too. This is even though she gets on to me for watching the show. I knew she was a closet fan. This morning someone pointed out the new “Simpsonize Me” web site (a sort of joint promotional thing between the movie and Burger King). It’s a lot of fun: just provide a digital photo of yourself, and get a (tweakable) “Simpsonized” version of yourself.

Update: D’oh! Forgot the link. The web site is here.

Heh. Courtesy of Labnotes, Google Maps directions from Stanford, California to Stockholm, Sweden. (Hint: Step 34 is a doozy).

The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary is a sort-of Urban Dictionary for the workplace. I’ve heard a lot of these before, but some are new to me, e.g.

Malicious Obedience [n.] The act of following a boss’s instructions explicitly, while hoping for failure. It can also involve remaining quiet about any poor judgement or discovered mistakes.

I just went to CNN.com and this caught my eye:

Hussein listened silently to the witness. But he lost his temper when one of the lawyers described Kurdish guerrillas, known here as peshmargas, as freedom fighters.

“You are agents of Iran and Zionism. We will crush your heads,” Hussein shouted.

The story does not report whether Saddam was squinting through his pinched-together thumb and index finger when he made this threat.

Amy Hoy of Slash7 has written a guide to help software developers spot “help vampires”:

Identifying Help Vampires can be tricky, because they look like any ordinary person (or internet user, whichever is lesser). But by closely observing an individual’s behavior using this handy checklist, you too can identify Help Vampires in the field:

• Does he ask the same, tired questions others ask (at a rate of once or more per minute)?
• Does he clearly lack the ability or inclination to ask the almighty Google?
• Does he refuse to take the time to ask coherent, specific questions?
• Does he think helping him must be the high point of your day?
• Does he get offensive, as if you need to prove to him why he should use Ruby on Rails?
• Is he obviously just waiting for some poor, well-intentioned person to do all his thinking for him?
• Can you tell he really isn’t interested in having his question answered, so much as getting someone else to do his work?

Read the whole thing, especially if you’ve taken to sleeping a lot more during the daytime as of late.

Some people have way too much time on their hands.