jrob's definitions

dread merchant

A person who makes a living by predicting disasters and worst-case scenarios.

Guy1: What's the news, man?

Guy2: Bird Flu, terrorists, hurricanes, global warming, the price of gasoline and natural gas and electricity skyrocketing, death toll in Iraq . . .

Guy1: Boy, the dread merchants are busy lately!

by JRob November 7, 2005

Digilanti

Combining digerati expertise with vigilante initiative, the digilanti anonymously police the Internet, exposing scams and fighting spam in the interest of making the Web safe without government intervention.

Oh-oh - watch out for Dan The Digilanti! No swears while he's online.

by JRob August 8, 2007

midair passenger exchange

Seen on blogs, this is grim air-traffic-controller speak for a head-on collision. Midair passenger exchanges are quickly followed by "aluminum rain".

Controller 1: Man, THAT was a close call!
Controller 2: Yeah - we almost had a midair passenger exchange!

by JRob January 1, 2012

Supermarionation

Supermarionation (a portmanteau of "super", "marionette" and "animation") is a puppetry technique devised in the 1960s by British production company AP Films. It was used extensively in the company's numerous Gerry and Sylvia Anderson-produced action-adventure series, the most famous of which was Thunderbirds. The term was coined by Gerry Anderson, possibly in imitation of Ray Harryhausen's stop motion technique.

Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation".

by JRob April 15, 2007

grandiloquent

gran-DIL-uh-kwuhnt, adjective:
Lofty in style; pompous; bombastic. Full of fine words and fancy expressions - marked by the use of impressive-sounding but mostly meaningless words and phrases.

He became more than usually grandiloquent as if to make up for the years of silence with words of gold.

by JRob July 26, 2006

tarantism

(TAR-uhn-tiz-uhm)- An uncontrollable urge to dance - After Taranto, a town in southern Italy where this phenomenon was experienced during the 15-17th centuries. It's not clear whether tarantism was the symptom of a spider's bite or its cure, or it may have been just a pretext to dodge a
prohibition against dancing. The names of the dance tarantella and the spider tarantula are both derived from the same place.

"The director is in a wild delirium, spinning in circles as though stricken with tarantism, his whirring camera held at arm's length, panning, tilting, arcing and oscillating and making other moves that have no name."

by JRob August 25, 2006

coin-operated employee

An employee brought in for a particular project or set time period.

Management is not sure if we are over the hump yet, so they are brining in some coin-operated employees to help with this project.

by JRob January 8, 2010