“So don’t go anywhere, folks. The Schadenfreude is about to begin.” – Dodgeball
Wikipedia chose Return to the Convent, by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868 to symbolize schadenfreude. Good choice. There’s no better source of humor than monks. Oh, I meant clowns. Wait, both of those things are scary. And have odd hair.
The German language is delightful, if you think delightful is a sound that people make when they are angry and choking. But the Germans have some amazing words – kummerspeck – literally “grief bacon” which means the weight you gain because you eat too much when you’re sad. Another good one is treppenwitz – literally “staircase joke” which the feeling you get when you’ve figured out the perfect thing to say in the argument. The argument that already ended.
But the Germans also have a much more common word – schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is feeling happy when something bad happens to someone you don’t like. How awful, right? Well, one day I had the biggest single case of schadenfreude that I’ve ever had, and it didn’t involve something embarrassing happening to Tom Brady, like him breaking his leg after he slipped in his hair gel in the shower and having accidently lost all of his money so now he’s an Über driver that’s taken up smoking. Yeah, that would make me happy inside.
But my case was totally Brady-free.
Some background: I had worked with a person that was uniquely difficult to work with. I won’t bore you with the details, but this person wreaked havoc across multiple departments – including mine. Sadly, in the blind thrashing around, that passed for “work” that this person did, well, more than one person was set up to take the fall for the odd behavior. I’m keeping the details vague, because it really doesn’t matter – and if you’ve spent more than five or so years working, it’s nearly certain you worked with an idiot someone like this.
Heh heh – Scott Adams should be knighted. But first, we need a King . . . maybe King
One happy morning, I heard that they had been escorted from the building. I felt schadenfreude in abundance. While working out on the treadmill that day, I just listened to Mack the Knife on a loop. Why Mack the Knife? Dunno. It felt right.
It’s a good song, even though the first time I heard it was in 2007. Thanks, YouTube!
Part of my schadenfreude that day was a sense of justice – this person had personally made life difficult for several of my friends. And for me. Even though getting fired was hard for that person to go through, the entire company was better off now that they were gone.
But, even though I’d like to engage in more schadenfreude (it’s fun to enjoy the pain of others and sniff the sweet, sweet smell of their tears), I try to avoid it. Why?
Karma. Treat a person badly, and it comes back to you, with interest. Maybe not from the same person, but I do think there is a balance in the universe. Unless that person has wronged you – so watching Charlie Sheen implode wasn’t any fun – he’d never wronged me.
Long-term readers will know Johnny Depp has been the source of several good-natured jokes on this blog – but Johnny’s never done me wrong. So, here’s an open letter to Johnny Depp:
Dear Mr. Depp:
I really enjoyed your work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Dead Man. I also recently read the relatively unflattering recent story in Rolling Stone (Link). If you want to invite me to drink outrageously expensive wine and hang out with you, I assure you that I will post on this blog a true and fair accounting of the kick-butt time I’m sure we’d have. Do you have any tobacco?
Sincerely,
John Wilder – Noted Internet Humorist
So, see, I’m trying to make amends.
It’s bad enough that I now have fernweh. That’s German for “distance-pain” – sort of the opposite of homesickness. I can only imagine the awesome wine that Depp has – so I get fernweh waiting for his private jet to come pick me up. I imagine this would be more fun than that weekend I spent with Mickey Rourke, who mainly spent it eating cabbage, not showering, and watching old VHS recordings of The Price Is Right.
