Ladies and gentlemen, I can now post links in my blog again. Thank you, Chris Higgins, and thank you, Firefox.

A few weeks ago, I promised that "tomorrow" I would post something about unusual German words. That promise, like almost all blog-related promises I have ever made in my entire life, was not kept. And I'm sorry for that, although since neither of my parents mentioned it, and since they are my primary blog readers, I don't think it tore anybody up too much.

But anyway, An Abundance of Katherines (see I can ever do italics!) is about this 17-year-old washed-up child prodigy named Colin Singleton. Colin is extremely good at anagramming (he could tell you in pretty short order, for instance, that Britney Spears' name anagrams to Presbyterians). And he's also pretty good at languages. He speaks 11 fluently, including German.

Colin and his best friend frequently use what was until recently my favorite German word, which is sitzpinkler. Sitzpinkler literally means "a man who sits to pee," and in Germany, it is slang for wimp. It should also, clearly, be slang for wimp in America. So you should really get on that, youth of America.

But ever since I watched the finals of the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee with the incomparably brilliant Lindsay Robertson, I've had a new favorite German word: Weltschmerz. Weltschmerz, which adorably Canadian Finola Hackett misspelled on her way to finishing runner-up, means the depression that results from comparing the actual world to the world as it ought to be.

For instance, when I think about certain American Presidents, I feel the weltschmerz. Or when I think about Britney Spears' enduring fame.


p.s. The contest continues.