Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Heistery, Handijackery, and Dusty Crackery

What's in a word? When I thunk up zeitheist, it was a fancy, a googaw, a verbal doodad. Little did I know that 9 years later it would proliferate to the point of saturating the interwebs.

It all started here in 2001, at a little site called LiveJournal. Remember those heady days, when there was no Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or Friendster? Heck, the whole blogosphere wasn't happening yet.

We've come a long way, baby.

Zeitheist now appears at Twitter, "to test your Twitter trend knowledge" -who doesn't need this? Priceless!

In my feeble mind, zeitheist always meant "stealing time." As it turns out, I was mistaken. According to an intrepid verbalist at addictionary.com, it has a far more dire (and amusing) connotation:

noun, The jerk that takes up a handicapped parking space without a tag and who is obviously not handicapped.

USAGE zeitheist means blatant disregard for the law in combination with thoughtless self-indulgence - both have become the spirit of the times.

SYNONYMS handijacker, lazy-parker, tresparker, infiltraturd, SPACE-INVADERS, Impajerk, heel on wheels, handifaker, Handi-jerk, handicrap

We have a connection to 9/11, to wit:

yes, zeitheist.... it's a heist of many hungry minds away from truth with the use of a dusty old cracker.

And... ZeitHeist The Motion Picture!



At this rate, world domination is but a few short years away. You read it here first!

5 comments:

Ian Wolcott said...

Possessed by the zeitgeist. You are a trailblazer, friend.

Jonathan said...

I was just reminiscing about LiveJournal the other day. I regret now that I deleted my entire LiveJournal because I used to be a "power user" on that site and I had a couple of years of entries. Ah, memories..

Unknown said...

Mr Woolcott, just doing what I can to follow your great example.

Jon, it was thanks to you that I started on LiveJournal! You've been the biggest influence on me when it comes to online presence and the "digital ego."

Angel said...

LOL.. I'm sure you didn't imagine it would mean like that when you first thought the name. Or you did? :) No matter what though, wish you'll keep up the good work. i always love visiting here.. :)

Unknown said...

Thanks, Angel, and right back at you -you're page is always top of the reading list for my day. I wish mine was half as pretty.

It's funny what can happen to one little word. I'd be interested to know why anyone else chose it. As for myself, it seemed totally arbitrary at the time!