New Year's @ Club ICONS

Yo, readaz! I hope by now most of you had planned their celebrations for the New Year. However, if you happen to be in central Illinois and still don’t have any definite plans, I recommend showing up at ICONS, downtown Peoria, for some serious partying. The New Year’s gig should be overseen by TJ himself, who is always on for some good times. As he put it himself, “it should be a mega-bash!”

New Words & Phrases for 2006

I got these off my mail and some of 'em are simply brilliant. Surely, we can all relate. I need to say no more.

TESTICULATING
Waving your arms around and talking boll*cks.

BLAMESTORMING
Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER
A manager, who flies in, creates a lot of noise and shit, and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS
The process by which people seem to absorb success and advancement by sucking up to the boss rather than working hard.

SALMON DAY
The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream, only to get screwed and die.

CUBE FARM
An office filled with cubicles.

PRAIRIE DOGGING
When someone yells, or drops something loudly in a cube farm and peoples' heads pop up over the partitions to see what's going on. (Also applies to applause from a promotion, because there may be cake.)

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

SITCOMs
Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children, and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids, or start a 'home business'.

STRESS PUPPY
A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

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

BRITNEY SPEARS
Modern slang for 'beers'. e. g . "couple of britneys please".

JOHNNY NO-STARS
A young man of sub-standard intelligence, the typical adolescent who works in a burger restaurant. The 'No-Stars' comes from the badges displaying stars to show the level of training.

MILLENNIUM DOMES
The contents of a 'wonder bra'. i.e. Very impressive when viewed from outside, but actually nothing in there worth seeing.

MONKEY BATH
A bath so hot, that when lowering yourself in, you go "Oo! Oo! Ho! Ah! Ah! Ha!"

MYSTERY BUS
The bus that arrives at the pub on Friday night while you're in the toilet after your 10th pint, and whisks away all the unattractive people, so the pub is suddenly packed with stunners on your return.

MYSTERY TAXI
The taxi that arrives at your place on Saturday morning before you wake up whisks away the stunner you slept with, and leaves a 10-pinter in your bed instead.

NELSON MANDELLA
Rhyming slang for 'Stella' (the lager).

PICASSO BUM
A woman whose knickers are too small for her, so she looks like she has four butt*cks.

SALAD DODGER
An excellent phrase for an overweight person.

ADMINISPHERE
The rarefied organisational layers, beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the 'adminisphere' are often profoundly inappropriate, or irrelevant to the problems they where intended to resolve. This is often compounded by the dreaded 'administrivia', needless paperwork and process.

404
Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message '404 Not Found'. Meaning the requested document could not be located.

OHNOSECOND
That miniscule fraction of time in which the realization dawns that you've just made a BIG mistake. (E.g. you've just hit 'reply all'.)

NEW OXFORD DICTIONARY
DEFINITIONS

BEER COAT
The invisible, but warm coat worn when walking home after a booze cruise at 3am.

BEER COMPASS
The invisible device that ensures your safe arrival at home after a booze cruise.

BREAKING THE SEAL
Your first pee in the pub, usually after 2 hours of drinking, followed by repeat visits every fifteen minutes.

Death in Chicago

A few days have passed since the shooting at the Citigroup Center in Chicago and I still can't get it out of my system. I wasn’t going to blog this if it had to do with just another murder somewhere in the city. However, yet again, the legal community has suffered a loss. It seems that Chicago lawyers are becoming sort of endangered species. I remember that couple of years ago a few lawyers suffocated to death by being stuck in a staircase during a high-rise fire. Then, we had the grizzly shooting of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, the scene of the carnage was the Citigroup Center, where an obviously disturbed client (wanting a patent for a toilet for truck drivers) went crazy and stared shooting at the offices of an intellectual property law firm. This is quite disturbing. You don’t really expect disgruntled clients to show up, out of the blue, and blow you away, especially when it comes to IP law practice. I thought that at least intellectual property lawyers were not that threatened.

Where would it stop? I remember couple of years ago someone had a video of a California lawyer hiding behind a tree from a guy who was trying to blast him away outside a courthouse. Luckily, the lawyer made it and a journalist (I think) was able to tackle the attacker (police were just watching, as far as I remember). I am curious if there is statistics out there on how many lawyers become victims of client violence each year.