Treppenwitz, a German word, and its French counterpart l’esprit de l’escalier.

These translate as ’stairway wit’, but the meaning is “any witty, clever remark that comes to mind too late to be useful” (wikipedia). Example: “Oh yeah, well the jerk store called AND THEY’RE RUNNING OUT OF YOU!” (wikipedia entry on that seinfeld episode).

The “stairs” in the translation is a reference to the stairs on the side of a stage as the character leaves.

We should have our own word for this in English. I don’t think that treppenwitz is well-known enough, and I’ll probably mispronounce l’esprit de l’escalier, but this sort of thing happens to me all the time. I once came up with the perfect comeback 5 years too late (seriously).

Google App Engine is a lot of fun (note: only if you think programming is fun). I wrote a simple app last weekend that I’ll be posting about here soon. I snagged a public invite the night it was launched, without thinking about the fact that it’d prevent a real person from getting one. Thus… I need to get some karma back, so if you’re interested in giving it a try, let me know via email, IM, comment etc and I’ll get you an invite.

For some reason I find this picture quite amusing. It’s like the old guy just got shot or something, so Hillary gave him a pink hat and a hug.

Those damn snipers…