Fritinancy

Word of the Week: Prepper

Prepper: A person who is actively preparing for large-scale emergencies such as natural disasters and the breakdown of the social and political order. A more moderate and positive-sounding synonym for “survivalist.”

Preppers have been featured in at least two national newspapers in the last week. “For Preppers, Every Day Could Be Doomsday,” was published November 17 in USA Today:

The number of preppers is unknown, but a poll done for National Geographic Channel in September indicated that 28% of Americans knew one. Preppers meet-up networks are proliferating on social networks. Doomsday Preppers is the network's most-watched series[.]

An article in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, “How to Survive Societal Collapse in Suburbia,” focused on the mainstreaming of the survivalist movement. The article includes a photograph of Ron Douglas, his wife, and their six children, surrounded by a year’s worth of disaster-preparedness supplies. The reporter, Keith O’Brien, accompanied Ron Douglas to a Starbucks near Denver:

Many so-called survivalists would take pride in keeping far away from places that sell espresso drinks. But Douglas, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and founder of one of the largest preparedness expos in the country, isn’t your typical prepper.

The modern-day prepper movement has its origins in the Cold War, when American families were encouraged to stock personal fallout shelters for an expected nuclear attack. The movement, which has waxed and waned over the years, got a big boost in the late 1990s amid (groundless) fears about a Y2K computer bug. The preparedness industry is thriving again, reports Keith O’Brien, spurred by the 9/11 attacks, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and even the Mayan calendar. A subspecies of preppers believes that the presidency of Barack Obama (almost always referred to as Barack Hussein Obama or BHO) is a sign of the apocalypse.

The prepper movement has its own jargon, which is heavy on acronyms. One of the most popular terms is TEOTWAWKI, which stands for “the end of the world as we know it” and is pronounced tee-ought-wah-kee. (A Y2K glossary, still online, defines it as “shorthand for a predicted calamity involving the breakdown of society, whether due to Y2K or any other perceived threat.” The term was borrowed from the title of the 1987 song by R.E.M.)

The very extensive glossary on SurvivalBlog (“The daily web blog for prepared individuals living in uncertain times”) includes this basic prepper vocabulary:

BOB: Bug-Out Bag (a survival kit for leaving in a hurry)

G.O.O.D. kit: Get Out of Dodge Kit, synonymous with BOB.

Group therapy: Full automatic fire.

MASCAL: Mass casualty.

PPPPPPP: Prior Poor Planning Produces Pitifully Poor Performance.

SMUG: Seriousness, Manageability, Urgency, and Growth (scales for evaluating disasters)

SS&S: Shoot, Shovel, and Shut up – a philosophy about feral dogs.

Also in circulation: WTSHTF (“when the shit hits the fan”).

Watch clips from Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic Channel’s website. Or be a doomsday denier like The Onion:

October Linkfest

Forget everything you know about Banana Republic as it is today, and try to imagine the company in its crazily unconventional youth, when the stores had animal-call soundtracks and Jeeps in their windows and the mail-order catalogs—this was pre-Web, kiddies—featured sly, literate copy, interviews with famous-ish and once-famous people (James Fallows; the American-born former crown princess of Sikkim), and illustrations instead of photographs. I don’t have to imagine any of this, because I worked for Banana Republic back then*, after it was sold to the Gap but before Gap-ization eliminated every last whiff of creativity from the endeavor. Now, though, we can all return to that khaki-hued era, because BR’s founders, Mel and Patricia Ziegler (who, by the way, hired me), have written a history of their time with the company. In alternating first-person voices, Wild Company: The Untold Story of Banana Republic tells how an unemployed newspaper reporter (Mel) and artist (Patricia) used their powers of storytelling to spin heaps of military surplus from the far corners of the earth (but mostly the British Commonwealth) into gold. For a preview, listen to an interview with the Zieglers on the public-radio show Marketplace. (“I wish they’d changed the name,” Mel says of BR’s current incarnation.) And to get a sense of the hold the original Banana Republic still has on loyalists—including a few who are too young to have shopped in the 1980s—see Scott C. Adams’s blog, Abandoned Republic, which lovingly reproduces and annotates every one of the old catalogs.

And before we move on, please allow me to correct a common misconception: Banana Republic, founded in 1978, came first; J. Peterman, which appropriated the copy and illustration style and was parodied during several seasons of “Seinfeld,” was founded in 1987.

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If the comic site xkcd baffles you, help is on the way: Explain xkcd is the “For Dummies” of xkcd-dom, providing an earnest exegesis of every panel of almost every strip.  

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Speaking of humor and not getting it, let’s see how stories from The Onion (satirical!) would look on Facebook (credulous!). Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Literally Unbelievable. (Via Karen.)

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The book-recommendation site Goodreads polled its users about their presidential-candidate preferences and then analyzed reading habits across party lines. The result is the fascinating infographic “You Are What You Read.” There’s some crossover between the two camps, but I bet it doesn’t surprise you that Romney supporters think much more highly of Atlas Shrugged than Obama supporters do.

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Did you miss the recent kerfuffle over Britishisms (a k a Briticisms) in American speech? Catch up right here! The first salvo was fired by the fabulously named Cordelia Hebblethwaite of BBC News (“Bit by bit British English is invading America”), which prompted two responses from Geoff Nunberg on the linguistics blog Language Log and one from Mark Liberman. Then came “Americans Are Barmy Over Britishisms” in the New York Times (the print edition had a better hed: “And Bob’s Your Uncle”), and a Times blog post that rounded up tweets with Americans’ favorite Britishisms. The Atlantic Wire and The Economist’s Johnson blog eagerly piled on, while Lynne Murphy at Separated by a Common Language attempted to bring some academic rigor to the discussion.

Meanwhile, Ben Yagoda continues to add entries to his Not One-Off Britishisms blog. Lately, “toff,” “twee,” and “snarky” have been hotly debated in the comments section.

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Calling all peevologists: Ragan.com has published a list of “9 completely pointless corporate words” that will rally your blood pressure. (Decisioning! Solutionize! Planful! And, as suggested by multiple commenters, the ever-unpopular reach out!) For lots more—in dictionary form, no less—see Learnings.org, “where corporate speak goes to die.” (Via Deborah Schneider.)

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Mazel tov to Lena (“Girls”) Dunham on selling her essay collection for $3.5 million. For that kind of dough, Ms. Dunham can afford a less generic title than Not That Kind of Girl, which is not that distinctive. (Via Jessica Testa.)

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Why are men’s nicknames on the decline? Possibly because there’s more diversity in first names nowadays—and thus less need to distinguish one Jim or Joe from another.

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Today is National Dictionary Day in the US. Let’s celebrate with a “30 Rock” dictionary that goes from Avian Bone Syndrome to zing. And who could forget EGOT, fun cooker, and KDate?

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The titanic taxonomy of wrestler names. Suitable for framing! (Via @Catchword.)

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Got 15 minutes? Check out Milking “Got Milk?”: “A photo essay of the ad campaign that won’t go away.”

 

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“I hate beverages with names that tell me how to drink them.” – Impulsive Buy.

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Finally: Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies.

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* In fact, I interviewed Mr. Fallows—I woke him up in his Kuala Lumpur home, to my chagrin—and Ms. Hope Cooke, the former crown princess who had divorced the prince and was leading walking tours of Manhattan.

Electable Collectibles

The first presidential debate will be held tonight, in Denver; the general election is less than five weeks away. So it’s time to ask a serious question: How are the campaigns shaping up tchotchke-wise?

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At 7-Eleven stores in 34 states, you can let the caffeine do the talking – and the predicting. And you get to keep your cup as a souvenir. Last Friday, you didn’t even have to pay for the coffee.

 

 

According to 7-Eleven’s 7-Election website, President Obama cups have a substantial lead over Mitt Romney cups everywhere except Idaho and West Virginia.

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Berkeley’s family-owned Virginia Bakery is holding its own consumption contest. To cast your vote, buy a photo-decorated sugar cookie.

Guess who’s winning?

According to a report on the Berkeleyside news site, the bakery has sold presidential cookies in previous elections, but this is the first time it’s tracking the results. As one commenter observed, “Finally … a chance to eat the rich.”

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From tasty to tasteless:

 

 

This “Obama reusable cloth pantyliner pad,” sold by Mimi’s Dreams on Etsy, is “the perfect size for teenagers and petite women.” Ladies, don’t you want a muumuu made of that fabric? (Via Buzzfeed.)

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Speaking of the curse, here’s SNL’s ad for g.o.b. tampons—made for women by the men of the GOP. (“Now with wings!”)

The brand name is a parody of o.b. tampons, which were developed in the early 1960s by a German gynecologist, Judith Esser. “o.b.” name is an abbreviation of “ohne binde,” German for “without napkins.”

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And staying in the nether regions, Say It With a Condom is back with the 2012 edition of candidate condoms.

 

Obama condoms: “Intended to get the general public laid, not laid off.”

Romney condoms: “For the elitist penis.” Four years ago, according to my notes, it was the Obama condoms that made that “elitist” claim.

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A concept only, but what a great concept: Barack Obama, the Blue Note years, from the British pop-culture blog Voices of East Anglia.

Lots more album covers at the link. (Via Girls of a Certain Age.)

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The Sassy Gator, another Etsy seller, is offering this embroidered T-shirt in babies’ and children’s sizes for $20.

 

“Mitt Romney Is My Homeboy”

“Homeboy”? Really? A tip for Sassy Gator: Mitt Romney ain’t your homeboy unless your home has a car elevator.

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This Obama Birther Certificate Tray from Fishs Eddy* proved so popular that it’s now backordered until December. 

Perfect for serving pupu to your Democratic friends … or crow to the Republicans.

Fishs Eddy is also selling this 10-ounce Barack Obama mug  and a companion Michelle Obama mug. Nothing for the competition except a Republican elephant puzzle.

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Wish it would all just stop already? I feel your pain. And I have just the remedy: this political ice pack, available at Uncommon Goods.

Freeze, use,  repeat until Election Day.

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* The story behind the Fishs Eddy name: “It was 1986 and we were driving around the back roads upstate New York (code for lost). We stumbled upon a small hamlet called Fishs Eddy. It was a perfectly odd name so we borrowed it for our just-opened shop near Gramercy Park.”

One Name, Three Ways

San Francisco’s Would You Believe? bar, at Geary Boulevard and 11th Avenue, has a name wrapped in a question wrapped in three typefaces, none of which I could identify.

The 11th Avenue side of the bar. I’ve decided to call this typeface “Adventureland Bold.”

 

The awning on Geary gets a second question mark. This looks like Aladdin or a similar Middle-East-y font.

 

Fancy script—let’s call it “Sugar Plum Princess Birthday”—paired with an austere, vaguely Deco sans-serif face. I’m picturing a tipsy tootsie on the arm of a pinstriped stockbroker. The sign is mounted above the awning on Geary.

I searched in vain for clues about the origin of this Richmond District bar’s rhetorically questioning name. Something to do with Get Smart, the TV spy spoof of the 1960s, maybe? “Would you believe…” was Maxwell Smart’s catchphrase on the show, and it’s also the name of a Get Smart fan site.

Here’s what learned about the bar from Yelp:

• The clientele is predominantly male and Asian.
• The bar serves $1 shots on Thursdays.
• It has “outlandish names for equally outlandish drinks.”

Clearly, follow-up research is required.

I appreciated Chris J.’s four-star Yelp review:

I love this bar if for no other reason than when we drive by it on our way to places far more interesting, I get to spin my wrists like propellers and declare in a loud, fey voice, “Would you believe?!!” Sometimes, I just holler that out there – “Would you believe?!!” I guess I have to make my own fun.

July Linkfest

If you’ve been following the big science news of the month/year/century/millennium, you know that the “Higgs” in “Higgs boson” is British physicist Peter Higgs. But you may not be aware that“boson” was named for an Indian scientist, Satyendranath Bose. (Note: The Higgs boson is not to be confused with the Higgs bos’n or the Herrgs berson.)

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Ten weird rules that control how planets are named.

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Five words with surprising etymologies. I knew the “California” story, but was indeed surprised by “partridge.”

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Guest-blogging at Midlife Mixtape, Alexandra Rosas of Good Day, Regular People teaches us some useful Colombian idioms. I’m partial to ¿Y quién pidió el pollo? which translates literally to “And who ordered the chicken?” but is infinitely more versatile.

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Moving north of the border now: Studio360Redesigns assigned Toronto-based Bruce Mau Design the job of rebranding the Canadian national identity. The Brand New blog reports on Mau’s “Know Canada” redesign.

I think “Know Canada” is a brilliant slogan. Inexplicably, though, Studio360Redesigns conducted a separate contest, open to nonprofessionals, and chose a different slogan. I can’t say I share the judges’ enthusiasm for “Canada: We’re Not Just Colder, We’re Cooler.” Meh.

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“I call them the Liquid Names: they flow smoothly, like water down a glass streambed with no rocks or branches to impede its path.” Baby Name Wizard reports on “a new class of girls’ names” that has “taken hold in the past generation.”

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What if language magazines were sold at supermarket checkouts? Two hypotheticals, one from Mignon (Grammar Girl) Fogarty (pictured below), the other from an opinion piece by John McWhorter in theNew York Times.

I especially like “What to do when he ‘begs the question’.”

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“On Newsroom, every word is expertly crafted by an genuine genius of dialogue. In a newsroom, people alternate between exhaustion and caffeinated hysteria.” And other differences between the HBO seriesThe Newsroom and an actual newsroom.

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Need a rhyme or a near-rhyme? RhymeBrain is one of the better online dictionaries I’ve seen. (Hat tip: John McChesney-Young.)

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Destination weddings, destination birthdays, destination funerals: How did “destination” become a modifier, anyway?

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The Project Twins’ illustrated dictionary of “unusual words,"     from acersecomic to zugzwang. (Via Culture Desk.)

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This is swellacious: The Oxford English Fictionary, “Defining words that aren’t real. Yet.” (Via this tweet from Our Bold Hero.)

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Spin magazine’s list of the 40 greatest band names of all time. (Via@VerbID.)

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How well do you know carny lingo? Trucker lingo? Show-biz lingo?

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Q: What’s the correct pronunciation of “Moleskine”? A: Whatever you like.

 

Word of the Week: Prochronism

Prochronism: A chronological error in which an event or usage is dated earlier than its actual occurrence.

A prochronism is a specific type of anachronism; “anachronism” (from Greek roots meaning “refer to wrong time”) can apply to any misplacement in time, while a prochronism

occurs when an item appears in a temporal context in which it could not yet be present (the object had not yet been developed, the verbal expression had not been coined, the philosophy had not been formulated, the breed of animal had not been developed, the technology had not been created). (Source: Wikipedia).

I discovered “prochronism” via Prochronisms: or Downton Crabbey, a blog dedicated to “using TV anachronisms to learn about changes in language, and trying to avoid complete curmudgeonhood in the process.” The blog’s author is Ben Schmidt, a graduate student in intellectual history at Princeton whose earlier work I mentioned in a February post. Schmidt started Prochronisms when PBS’s “Downton Abbey” was on the air; he charted every two-word phrase in the series to unearth prochronistic usages such as “just might” (much less common in 1920 than “might just”) and “black market” (unknown in Britain until World War II).

Post-Downton, Schmidt trained his focus on “Mad Men,” which was set in 1966 this season. He nailed the obvious problems with “callback” and “pay phone” in the mid-1960s. And he discovered the prochronism in an innocent-sounding phrase like “I need you to make dinner reservations”: people in the U.S. rarely said “I need you to” until about 1980. (“‘Need’ and ‘just' are words that are surprisingly modern in their usage,” notes Schmidt.)

“Mad Men”’s final episode of Season 5 aired last night. Schmidt hasn’t yet revealed where Prochronisms will travel next. I’ll make a suggestion: Season 3 of “Boardwalk Empire,” coming this fall.

More Campaign Lingo 2012

Part 2 of my lexicon of presidential-campaign buzzwords—guillotine to super PAC—was published today on the Visual Thesaurus. You’ll have to subscribe to read it (and Part 1), and of course I hope you will. Meanwhile, here’s an outtake from the column, cut to keep the list to an even dozen:

Meh. The monosyllabic expression of disappointment has been used for the Republican contest in general and especially for candidate Romney, who has failed to generate much enthusiasm among voters. Punning on the candidate’s name, reporters and humorists started referring to “Meh Romney.” (There’s even a Tumblr blog where you can download a Meh Romney poster.) Meh was popularized by a 1995 episode of “The Simpsons” (“Lisa’s Wedding”), but Visual Thesaurus executive producer Ben Zimmer has traced it further back to a Yiddish source.

Read the rest of Campaign Lingo 2012: Part 2!

Names in the Wild: Balboa Island

While I was in Southern California last week I made a day trip to Balboa Island, a little piece of paradise by the Pacific. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid, and a lot had changed.

 

 

Sinfulicious sets the bar for “sinful” pretty low: “Over 200 yummy scents to choose from!” On the plus side of the ledger: another -licious name! And they claim to have a mixologist on the premises. (For lotions and potions, not for cocktails.)

The island is full of boutiques that sell resort-y clothing and tchotchkes, like this one.

 

 

So nice they named it twice—or more. Is it Etc. Etc., Etc. Etc. Etc., Etcetera Etc., or Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. (as depicted)? All I can say for sure is that it reminded me of Yul Brynner in The King and I.

 

A couple of stores are, literally, frozen in time. The Original Frozen Banana, which has been on the island since 1945, may have been the inspiration for Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana on “Arrested Development.”

As we know, there’s always money in the banana stand.

Close-up of the running-bananas awning:

 

A competitor, Dad’s Original Frozen Banana, coexists just down the street. So much originality!

I liked the window sign.

I recommend the Balboa Bar dipped in chopped almonds.

May Linkfest

The new-to-me verb “to knoll” comes from Knoll, the furniture brand named for founders Florence and Hans Knoll. Mike Pope writes in his Evolving English II blog that knolling refers to “aligning or squaring things (as on a desk), or more broadly, in what might be thought of as arranging things in an uber-anal-retentive way.” Mike’s post includes an “Always Be Knolling” video clip. I am a non-knoller—an anti-knoller, even—but I do like knowing the word and its origin.

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Pinterest is a dream medium for visual thinkers, but lately I’ve been seeing it used in some distinctly verbal ways. See, for example, Dipika Kohli’s board about naming that includes links to posts about taglines, the naming process, and common naming mistakes. I was especially pleased to discover “How to Name Things,” a thoughtful post on the ribbonfarm blog about naming and numbering. And I love the story about how ribbonfarm got its name.

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Worry more about creating a strong brand than about concocting a “pure” URL, advises Jay Jurisich of naming agency Zinzin. (Hear, hear!)

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Monday was “Name Day” in the U.S.: the day the Social Security Administration released its 2011 baby-name data. Read Nancy’s Baby Names and Baby Name Wizard for comprehensive coverage. (Each link goes to the first of several posts about the name data.) Some high/low points: Sophia is the number-one girl’s name for the first time; Tyler, Jayden, Isabella, and Miley are finally falling out of favor; and the girl’s name Harper rose in rank from 118th in 2010 to 54th in 2011. Also from Baby Name Wizard, the best sibling name set ever.

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The misuse of “whom” only seems like a recent problem. Language Log reminds us that the humorist James Thurber, tongue planted firmly in cheek, addressed the problem in 1929: “Take the common expression, ‘Whom are you, anyways?’ That is of course, strictly speaking, correct – and yet how formal, how stilted!”

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The University of Minnesota’s James M. Pilcher, who has been studying the origin of the taco for 20 years, tells the Smithsonian magazine that the name for the food item may have originated in the 18th century, in the silver mines of Mexico, where “taco” referred to little charges used to excavate the ore. “Taco” first appeared in print in the U.S. in 1905. Lots more fascinating history in that article, including the story of Taco Bell, named for its founder, Glen Bell. For more taco history, read the recent New York Times article about Gustavo Arellano, author of a new book, Taco USA.

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The Millions on books with one-word titles: “At their best, one-word titles distill content to its purest essence, which is what all titles strive to do, and then they stick in the mind. Sometimes, of course, they fall flat, and much of the time they’re just lukewarm and vague or, worse, falsely grand.”  (Hat tip: Diana Landau.)

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On the other hand: One hundred books whose titles start with “The Man Who…”

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Need to name a beverage? Just add zero.

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“A company needs a new name and it decides to engage its employees to come up with a new name,” writes guest blogger Mark Prus at DuetsBlog. “What could go wrong?” Plenty.

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Quick: How many fictitious brands from “The Simpsons” can you name?

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Bill Gardner of Logo Lounge identifies the most significant logo trends of 2012, and the names he gives the trends are as interesting as the designs. A sampling: Potato Chip, Anaglyphs, Sphere Carving, Peel.

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Why does the sentence adverb “hopefully” carry a stigma in some quarters while “obviously,” “seriously,” and “honestly” don’t? Linguist Geoff Pullum casts a gimlet eye on “five decades of foolishness,” hopefully put to rest now that the AP Stylebook permits “the modern usage of hopefully”—i.e., “it is hoped that.”

Word of the Week: Intercalary

Intercalary (adj.): Inserted into the calendar to make the calendar year correspond to the solar year. Said of a day or month—for example, February 29 is an intercalary Leap Day. Pronounced with the accent on the second syllable (in-TURK-uh-larry).

A couple of days ago I caught up with the most recent episode of “30 Rock” and was surprised to see intercalary in, of all places, the Xfinity Comcast On Demand* episode description. The text on the screen read:

Jack learns that Leap Day is more than just an extra day to do business while Liz spends her first intercalary holiday helping Jenna seduce an Internet billionaire.

That isn’t quite accurate: Liz has been around for several leap years (she’s 41); she just hasn’t yet celebrated Leap Day at work. During the episode (directed by Steve Buscemi!) she’s introduced to an alternate universe of Leap Day traditions: the mandatory wearing of yellow and blue; the legend of Leap Day William, who lives in the Mariana Trench and emerges every four years to trade children’s tears for candy; and the holiday classic Leap Dave Williams, in which the title character is played by Jim Carrey. With gills. (Catchphrase: “Real life is for March!”)

Watch the full episode (until March 30, 2012). 

There has never (yet) been a Leap Dave Williams movie, but there was a movie called Leap Year starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. It was a modest box-office success despite a barrage of negative reviews. In a mysterious bit of poor timing, the movie was released not in a leap year but in 2010.

Elsewhere in Leap Year festivities:

• Honda is promoting its “all-new” CR-V with the Leap List, which invites website visitors to share what they’d like to do before getting married, changing jobs, turning 50, or some other goal. The lists can be submitted for a chance to win a CR-V.
• Zappos has a 365-day return policy, but there’s a Leap Day loophole in the fine print: “If you purchase on 2/29 of a Leap Year, then you have until 2/29 the following Leap Year to return those orders. That's four whole years! Woot!” (Hat tip: Dustbury.)
• Number one on San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik’s list of Leap Day suggestions: “Twitter taboo, Facebook forbidden on Feb. 29. Just hush.” Number two on the list: “The above does not apply to columnists.” Or bloggers?

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*In January 2011 Comcast completed its takeover of NBC Universal, the parent company of the network on which “30 Rock” appears. Comcast, or something that resembles it, is frequently spoofed on the show as KableTown (“with a K … because CableTown with a C was already the name of a store that sold cable-knit sweaters and legal said we had to spell it with a K”).