Even though I took this photo yesterday, I thought it was a classic example of an oxymoron. Traffic was backed-up for MILES (MILES I tell ya!), and it was a truly awful reason for the traffic jam, but the juxtapositioning of the traffic jam and the portable sign happily flashing "DRIVE SAFELY" was more than I could ignore. I hope you see the humor that I did.This afternoon as I was navigating my way home, I was stopped on a feeder road, and there were two vehicles in front of me; a pretty new Cadillac directly in front of me and a relatively new pick up truck in front of the Cadillac. We were all stopped, obeying the traffic signal and checking our personal digital assistants when I heard a pretty loud crash. About ten seconds after the noise the traffic signal turned green, and I realized the Cadillac had crashed in to the pick up truck. From a distance of about four feet, the Cadillac did some substantial damage to both vehicles, and all I could do was try to get into the other lane before the traffic signal turned red again. And even though I thought of it, I did not take the extra seconds that would have been necessary for me to document the event for all posterity.
Schadenfreude -- Noun: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others (I like this one already!). Elena couldn't help but feel a tinge of schadenfreude when her chief rival was suspended from the basketball team.
Did You Know? Schadefreunde is a compound of the German nouns Schaden, meaning "damage" or "harm," and Freude, meaning"joy," so it makes sense that schadenfreude means joy over some harm or misfortune suffered by another. "What a fearful thing it is that any language should have a word expressive of the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others," wrote Richard Trench of Dublin, an archbishop with literary predilections, of the German Schadenfreude in 1852; perhaps it was just as well that he didn't live to see the word embraced by English speakers before the century was out.
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