Pasadena CA - "This is a rhapsodic moment for me!" Craig Schneider, 37, exclaimed to 64 million viewers Tuesday night at the 2008 Wordies. "I've ideated this moment since Language Camp back in nineteen hundred and seventy five."

Established in 1983, the Wordies recognize American achievement in corporate wordiness and semantic excess. Schneider - though nominated in 2004 for a completely unnecessary use of the transitive verb: obviate - had not previously won a Wordy.

As music began playing on stage, cueing Schneider to wrap up his acceptance speech, the beloved Telecom luminary continued: "I'd like to thank my parents, Morton and Judith Schneider of Detroit Michigan, for encouraging me to learn to talk so many decades ago. To my wife, Jacqueline: Vous êtes mon phare dans une mer venteuse. To my professors at Columbia, which is an Ivy League University: your teachings have englutted me with knowledge. And lastly, if I may, a note to the people of the world: Never Stop Using Words."

Schneider, a father of three and resident of Alameda, CA, is Chief Services Officer (CSO) for global system integrator Quagga. Despite his overwrought use of language, he has managed to build a vast and loyal team of professional service specialists, or "maestros" as he insists they be called.

Though many prognosticators of the Wordies had predicted a victory for Schneider in the "Reply to All" email category, it ended up being the night's most prestigious award "Baffling Verb Usage on a Conference Call" that landed him the coveted statuette.

"I was on that conference call!" rejoiced Quagga Senior Project Manager Pam Hampton. "Craig was talking about breaking a large project into two separate phases. He used the word 'bifurcate,' which really just blew our minds."

Tuesday night's worldwide telecast was not without controversy. As software mogul Larry Ellison thanked the Academy for his Lifetime Achievement Award, a recently fired Oracle engineer breached security and was able to execute a naked cartwheel before being subdued by show host, Ryan Seacrest. Amazingly, Ellison never acknowledged the surrounding melee and continued to speak until the network was forced to make an emergency cut to commercial.

Ken Apperson reporting