Word Mutants

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational had asked its readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. I thought that was fun, so here's my attempt:

With a letter added

• prayfer: a prayer for the appearance of a specific object in the Christmas stocking


• compunter: a computer that helps you place bets on software-offshoring companies in yet-to-be-developing nations


• sufferling: a child of insufferable parents


• abstinthe: to abstain from drinking absinthe while reading Wodehouse


• extravagrant: to stay out of suitcases in the presidential suites of grand hotels


• celeberate: when clueless celebrities gather in a TV studio to berate the policies of the government

With a letter deleted

• banstand: a covered outdoor platform, across the busiest crossing of a city, where crowds gather for lighting candles to fight terrorism


• univerity: a college that preaches universal truths


• faceboo: to join a Facebook group created for taking potshots at a person, an object, or an idea

With a letter changed

• inferface: a biometric interface that has sensors to figure out if your face has the characteristics of a jihadi killer


• singelton: a gay singer


• designame: to create self-explanatory designations from proper nouns. For example, Chief Satyam Officer


• conpetition: a pre-judged competition on a TV reality show


• euphomia: the feeling of intense happiness experienced by a megalomoaniac

Wishing my blog readers a happy 2009

I am writing this blogpost three days in advance because:

• I want to beat the Web jam likely to happen on 31st night (when "night" happens several times over, starting from Japan and travelling right across to the US of A).


• I want to ensure the post gets uploaded to cloudspace before Blogger decides to cap everything (because Blogger too may have a hangover).

I am writing this post to:

• wish you a very happy 2009.


• share my new-year resolution (I shall henceforth suffer all fools gladly provided they take no more than 10 minutes of my time), and ask you about yours.


• send across my new-year gift-box especially packed for you with the following items:
  
  
  
  • Some very special dangling modifiers, which were being given away free to anyone who purchased a copy of the book "I saw Janus peeking through the doorway".
  
  
  • A book called "Zen, and the Art of Agile Documentation", which is a special kind of book - to read the book you need to constantly run after it - that tells you how to generate Requirements out of Thin Air and create Online Help for Usage Scenarios.
  
  
  • A life-long chance to officiate as the Executioner of Capital Offense Committers, where you execute an "Off with the head!" command every time you come across a sentence such as "The Data Manager retrieves Queries and Historical Trends and presents them as Tables, Charts, and Graphs".
  
  
  • A sneak preview to my new book titled "My Life: In Bulleted Lists".