Fritinancy

See How They Glo

From snack food to pet food, from table décor to table games, there are no balls like Glo Balls:

 

No pic.twitter.com/zCs3uFHAk0

— Kevin Hearne (@KevinHearne) October 13, 2015

For Halloween, Hostess Sno Balls turn into Glo Balls (a registered trademark since 2005). “Very funny if you’re a 12-year-old boy,” snarks snack critic Paddy O’Poppycock, who gave Glo Balls a 2.4 rating (out of 10).

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Glo Ball Basic Table Lamp (in background), by Jasper Morrison.

 

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GloBall, a football board game.

 

 

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Glo-Balls (UK) “Hi-Viz Dog Accessories.” Motto: “Day or night, our balls shine bright!”

 

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Glo-Balls glow-in-the-dark pinball-machine balls.

 

Wishing you and yours a luminous Halloween!

Hella to Pay

In the Bay Area—and maybe where you live, too—“hella” is hella ubiquitous. I’ve spotted it three times recently in some unexpected contexts.

Word of the Week: Trick or Treat

Trick or treat: A Halloween slogan used as an interjection (by children begging for treats and threatening tricks if no treats are forthcoming) or, hyphenated, as a modifier (“trick-or-treat etiquette”; “best trick-or-treat neighborhoods”). Increasingly used as a noun substitute for trick-or-treating (“Trick-or-treat held the Sunday before Halloween in Wauwatosa, and some were caught off guard”).

 

Trick or Treat, the movie (1986).

 

Name in the News: Karma Automotive

On September 30, the Fisker Automotive and Technology Group of Costa Mesa, California, announced a new corporate name and logo: Karma Automotive. The name reincarnates – sorry, couldn’t help myself – the name of Fisker’s only product, a plug-in hybrid that sold for more than $100,000 … when it sold at all. The model lasted only two years; just over 2,000 units were sold before production was suspended in November 2012. The company filed for bankruptcy and was eventually sold to a huge Chinese automotive-parts company, Wanxiang Group.

 

New logo. Application for trademark registration filed September 30, 2015.

  

Fisker Automotive had been named for its founder, the Danish car designer Henrik Fisker, who had previously worked for BMW and Ford and who resigned from Fisker Automotive in March 2013 because of “disagreements with management.” At the time of his resignation, the New York Times noted that the Fisker Karma had received “mixed critical reviews” as well as “business setbacks and technical problems, including two recalls. In addition, the Karma’s federal fuel-economy ratings were disappointing and its all-electric range proved limited.”

That was then. This is … Karma.

On the Visual Thesaurus: Fall-ify Your Vocabtoberfest!

My October column for the Visual Thesaurus (cross-posted on Vocabulary.com) admires the colorful coinages of autumn, with a close look at fall-ify, a newish verb meaning “to add autumnal touches to something”(décor, clothing, makeup); and the bountiful word-blends created from “October.” Along the way, I navigate the trans-Atlantic autumn/fall divide, the verb-making power of -ify, and the history of Oktoberfest and its many X-toberfest offspring

No subscription needed for this one! Here’s an excerpt:

In the San Francisco Bay Area we have Sharktober (the season of peak shark migration and human-shark encounters); Australia celebrates Frocktober to raise money for ovarian cancer research (the Frocktober Challenge: wear a dress every day in October). Other specialized -tobers include InkTober, which invites artists to create one ink drawing a day for a month; Poptober, a Boy Scouts of America popcorn sale; Socktober, which donates socks to homeless people; Pinktober, a breast-cancer fundraising campaign (and a registered trademark of the Hard Rock entertainment company); Monstober, a Disney Channel games promotion; Overstockober, a month of discounts on the Overstock.com website; and Sicktober, often accompanied by a hashtag symbol and a sad-face emoji.

Sicktober in the wild:

I've almost used an entire roll of Costco toilet paper from blowing my nose. Yes, I lead a glamorous life. #Sicktober

— Dacey Fisher (@DaceofBase) October 25, 2014

Read the rest of “Fall-ify Your Vocabtoberfest!”

Seasonal blog bonus: My 2009 post about Hauntrepreneurs International (which is still in business!).

Word of the Week: Climate Changey

Climate changey: An adjective that describes “that feeling when you’re not sure if it’s just hot or if it’s humans destroying the earth.” Proposed by Alexis Madrigal, editor-in-chief of Fusion.

October Linkfest

In the spirit of Halloween, here’s Arika Okrent on how morticians reinvented their job title.

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Yelp was almost named Yocal; Zappos was originally ShoeSite.com. GeekWire’s Adam Lang tells the stories of what 15 tech brands might have been called. (Hat tip: The Name Inspector.)

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Word of the Week: Gameful

Gameful: Possessing the satisfying properties of well-designed games – “things like agency, emotion, and immediate feedback” (source: SuperBetter blog, June 13, 2012).

The concept of “a gameful life” is central to the work of Jane McGonigal, an American game designer and writer with a PhD in the psychology of games.

In 2011 McGonigal raised almost $65,000 on Kickstarter to launch Gameful.org, “a secret HQ for world-changing game developers.”

Ads in the Wild: Reuters, T-Mobile, Go90

Three outdoor ads, all for mobile services, all spotted in San Francisco over the last week – and each one employing a trendy linguistic device.

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Word of the Week: Plogging

Plogging: Blogging on a platform such as Facebook, Slack, or Medium, rather than on a dedicated blogging site such as the one you’re visiting (hosted by TypePad). A portmanteau of platform and blogging.