KEY POINTS:
Worried you won't understand the trends and their resulting lingo this year? The Independent has compiled a list of words and phrases you'll need to know in 2009. Highlights of its Buzzword Glossary include:
Co-rumination: Excessive chattering about problems, real and imagined. Leads to the amplification of real
anxieties and creation of new ones. Blame email, messaging, texting and Facebook for giving the self-obsessed a multitude of outlets.
Junior moment: Like a senior moment. Adults who suddenly lapse into immaturity, or youth displaying the lack of thoughtfulness associated with them.
Extended financial families: Several generations of the same family living in one home. Arising out of the need for elderly care or child minding, with the added benefit of cash savings.
Edible estates: Digging up your lawn and growing veges in its place.
Brickor mortis: Property market where few homes are being sold.
Upcycling: Giving existing objects a new use.
Enoughism: The idea that we have too much "stuff" and ought to cry "enough!"
Unplugging: Where someone realises that the time they spend online, on the mobile, curating the Facebook page, etc, is no substitute for living. So they put themselves on a digital diet.
Instapreneur: Instant entrepreneurship, via online shops and selling services, allow anyone with something to sell - even a design or idea - to go into business right now.
Pinkwashing: The dark art favoured by certain companies (you know who you are) of using ostentatious support for breast cancer research to promote your products or services.
* * *
Waitakere father Vaughan Harvey is following through on his threat and has listed his son for sale on Trade Me after he failed to clean the house as promised. The listing reads: "I now offer for sale one toothpick with a FREE son included (I'm sure there is probably some law which forbids me trafficking in humans, hence the toothpick) ... Being a teenager he requires large amounts of food (meat and candy mostly, despite the fridge being full of fruit and veg). [He] uses power enough to run a small town (computer, TV, PlayStation and assorted electrical gadgets as well as always leaving the fridge door open). Unfortunately he is short-sighted and unable to see unwashed dishes, grime, towels on the floor or skid marks. Requires 14 hours of sleep per day. You would need a soundproof room as he either slaughters pigs in there or plays heavy metal (sounds the same to me)."
* * *
A mother writes: "To the guy who watched my daughter boogying to the music in her car while she waited for the lights to turn green. He obviously enjoyed this so much he posted his business card through her open car window. She's gorgeous, isn't she? But sorry, she's taken and you won't be hearing from her."
* * *
Today's Webpick: A Year in 40 Seconds. If you thought 2008 flew by, check out this video, made up of images snapped at the same spot throughout the seasons of one year, in Oslo, Norway. Watch it here.
These are the very best online videos from Ana's online magazine Spare Room.
