Mouth off!
Okay, enough of all that heavy life stuff! In order to maintain the balance in your chi, I offer the following list of the 14 funnest (not funniest, but funnest) things in the world to say. I encourage you to say them aloud. Often. Loudly. In crowded rooms!
First up is my childhood favorite: flabbergasted. There’s something inherently funny about “flabber”, and “flabbergasted” is a pretty righteous thing to say in any circumstance.
Closely related is the slangy term: bogus. Much funnier and more useful than the similar “boathouse”. It always reminds me of the 1990s kid’s program Mr. Bogus, with the animated star being a tiny, yellow, gremlin-like character.
My first job out of school was mostly manipulating data from hospitals. I made up the name of a fictional hospital that I always used for my test data, and it was pretty fun to say: Loofey Gronk Memorial Hospital. Though that’s a bit lame, being the only made-up word in my list. The rest are all bona fides, more or less.
Speaking of work, there’s a new word at work, and it’s all the rage. Web Services Description Language, aka: WSDL, pronounced wizzdle. Technical terms and acronyms are always good fodder for entertainment.
Another good source is foreign languages. There’s a couple words from Russian that I think are particularly nice. First up: yablicka, which is the word for “apple”. It’s just plain fun to say.
The other is a Russian phrase that’s always applicable: shto eesho, which translates as “Hey, what’s next?”. Like I say, it’s eminently useful.
The other foreign word that makes our list is the perennial favorite Thai dish: duck choo chee. Pure brilliance! Beats the hell out of “duck in curry sauce”.
Then there’s the fun of: chunder, slang for vomiting. Not a pretty thing, but it sure rolls off the tongue, so to speak…
And then there’s people’s names. For some reason, people love to name their children something painfully stupid, as evinced by the longstanding stupid names thread on B3ta.com. One of my favorites is the “software methodologist” who created the Unified Modeling Language: Grady Booch. His name is so fun that it wound up being the team cheer for one of my project teams back during the Internet bubble.
More tech terminology. The group of users who have “root” or administrative privileges under unix is called the root group. Almost as much fun as duck choo chee, but without the fowl.
Okay, let’s get serious, now. We’re down to the four funnest things you could possibly ever say. Exciting, isn’t it?
Well, number four is an Indonesian island best known as the site of one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in recent history: the infamous Krakatoa! That one’s so much fun that it was a random exclamation of mine for years…
Number three is a bit of tongue twister, and requires some lead-in. If you’re a consultant, you have to bill your time to the client. If you run a consulting company, it’s important that your consultants’ time is always “billable”, because they’re only making money for the company when they’re billable. In other words, you have to maximize their billability. Who’d’ve thunk that consultants would be on the leading edge of language, in addition to technology?
Number two is budget. I shouldn’t need to explain this one. Just say it! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget! Budget!
And now we’re up to the last, final, most fun thing you could ever possibly say. It’s the name of a Serbian player on the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. Yes, ladies and gentleman, I offer up to you the magical name of Zarko Cabarkapa! Usage note: the ’Z’ is really a ’zh’, and the ’C’ is really a ’ch’, so the proper pronunciation is actually “Zharko Chabarkapa”. But any way you spell it-even in the native Cyrillic-Zarko Cabarkapa means Big Fun!
Have you got additions to this list? What’s your mouth’s favorite thing to say?