..being seriously ill.

I has a pretty good idea what it meant but I decided to look it up anyway.

::sigh::

another dropout programmer.

where do all the educated programmers hangout?

I just used that word in an email.

educated?  or dropout?

I'm still waiting on that essay on Double Bind.

wow, that reference went toally over my head.

double bind?

Yeah, that's rolling around in the back of my head.

A double bind is a "no win situation." A-la "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" It's used a lot in abusive relationships.

Using reasonably obscure words in meetings is my favourite game -- you tell people there that they have dubious ancestry, that they have small brains, that they engage in deviant sexual practices, etc., safe in the knowledge that a) no-one's going to risk looking stupid by asking what you mean, and b) they'll have forgotten exactly what you said by the end of it so they won't be able to look it up.

"I just used that word in an email."

Must have been a great email!

"you tell people there that they have dubious ancestry,...<snip>..."

uhh..you *do* realise that ?off isn't normal, right?  you *cannot* say things like that too people in real life, right?  you dont do you?

do you?

mat?

We're English we can call you cunts and you'd never know it, you might feel insulted but you couldn't put your finger on it.

As in 'I suppose that is how you do things there'.

You can, providing they don't know that's what you're saying.  Tuck "baseborn" into some long ramble about end-to-end value-managed processes (which I also throw in a lot just for fun -- sort of an inverse buzzword bingo), and no-one's any the wiser...

if you insult someone.  and they dont notice.  has anyone been insulted?

Seriously, I dont see the point.  if you think someone is a cunt, and you want to express this feeling....why hide the utterances?

Because we're English and if you understood you'd be English too and understand the joke we play on the rest of the world.

It's like that whole "Why climb a mountain?  Because it's there." kind of thing -- I do it because I can.

Also, if I have to waste half my day trying to drum some fairly simple concepts into the heads of people who a) don't really *need* to understand, b) lack sufficient background to be *able* to understand, c) will be asking me inane questions for days to come, d) are too *stupid* to understand, and e) with the knowledge that sooner or later I'll have to explain the same thing to a different bunch of knuckleheads, then goddamn it, I'm going to have some fun.  Plus, calling them idiots directly is both unsporting and unwise...

(I've also arranged graphs in Powerpoint presentations to resemble a giant phallus or the goatse image.  Childish, but it's that kind of thing that keeps me going... :)

So'English' is another word for 'too fucking cowardly to speak out minds' ? 

that explains a *lot*

Oh, no, I can call you a cunt-faced douchebag, but you can't get me fired...

"Go forth and multiply" was always one of my favourites...

I would meander into a long winded joke, but I can't be bothered.  To cut a long story short, god told the animals to go forth and multiply, and they all did apart from a couple of snakes.  They told him they needed some chopped up wood, so he duly provided it, and lo there were baby snakes.  Curious, he asked why, and the snakes said "We're Adders; we need logs to multiply."