Fritinancy

November Linkfest

From A-bomb to to zoom: the Weed Blog’s extensive—indeed, staggering—lexicon of slang terms for marijuana. (I discussed one of those terms, 420, in a post published earlier this week.)

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Speaking of specialized lexicons, check out The D.C. Manual of Style and Usage, Washington City Paper’s entertainingly written and copiously illustrated guide. One of my favorite entries: “Blelvis: A portmanteau of ‘black’ and ‘Elvis.’ Refers exclusively to D.C.’s mostly elusive, semifamous busker; he likely never uses the words ‘portmanteau’ and ‘busker,’ but he can sing every song in the Elvis Presley catalog.” Also: “Hipster. A term that is somehow both loaded and meaningless. If you feel compelled to use it, talk to an editor.”

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The new first-person-shooter game Destiny, released in September, features a huge arsenal of weapons, and I can only imagine the brainstorming sessions that produced names like Praedyth’s Revenge, Pocket Infinity, Strange Suspect, and the excellent Doctor Nope. The Australian game-review site Kotaku provides a ranking of all 74 names. (Via Our Bold Hero.) IGN lists the weapons by category (pulse rifles, fusion rifles, rocket launchers, etc.).

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An “ally” is what British soldiers in Afghanistan call “a battlefield fashionista--desirables include having a beard, using a different rifle, carrying vast amounts of ammunition, being dusty and having obscene amounts of tattoos and hair.” A “crow” is a new soldier recently out of training. From a guide to Afghanistan battlefield slang published by BBC News. (Via Language Hat.)

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You had me at “you had me at”: Ben Yagoda on the post-Jerry Maguire life of a meme.

 

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If you’re curious about the origins of Toyota model names, this CarScoops explainer is a reasonable starting point. The Camry got its name from Japanese kanmuri, meaning “crown”; the Supra is a direct borrowing from Latin (“above”). But this story about the Yaris made me wonder: “Yaris is an amalgamation of words from Greek mythology and German. In Greek mythology, ‘Charis’ was a symbol of beauty and elegance. Toyota swapped the ‘Ch’  with ‘Ya’ – German for ‘yes’ – to symbolise the perceived reaction of European markets to the car’s styling.”

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The predictably zany stories of how some British ad agencies—Doofer, tenthree, A Large Evil Corporation, and others got their names.

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Tom Magliozzi, co-host of NPR’s long-running “Car Talk,” died November 3 at 77. In his honor, here’s a link to one of my favorite features of the show: the punny staff credits, from sculling coach Rose Dior to assistant disciplinarian Joaquin D’Planque. (Via Henry Fuhrmann.)

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Cherpumple? So 2010. A Houston bakery’s pumpecapple piecake (pumpkin + pecan + apple) is this year’s turducken of desserts. (Via Barry Popik.)

Image via Houston Eater.

 

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Five contemporary authors tell how they titled their books. (My own semi-facetious take on book titling here.)

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And speaking of novels: “Can’t get a deal for that novel manuscript? Try ad agencies. Young & Rubicam commissioned Booker award-nominated novelist William Boyd to tell any story he wanted as long as it featured a Land Rover vehicle.” By Ad Broad, who calls herself “the oldest working writer in advertising.”

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From veteran name developer David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, some tips to help startups avoid making naming mistakes. First piece of advice: The name “doesn’t have to be clever. It just has to communicate.” And, adds Placek, stop it already with the -ly names. Yep. 

 

The Sanity Defense

Twenty-four-hour classical-music radio stations are a dwindling breed, hit hard by competition from online music-streaming services like Pandora and by the stark realities of a graying audience. All the more reason to cheer a healthy and good-humored survivor.

 

“Sanity Now!” KDFC outdoor ad, San Francisco. Love the script typeface.

 

Perhaps your first association, like mine, was the Seinfeldian rallying cry, “Serenity now!”

  

 

But KDFC has an independent claim on the slogan. The station, which was founded in 1946 and has stuck to classical programming ever since, has had five owners during the last 20 years. Before the station went nonprofit in 2011, it was owned by the Mormon-controlled Bonneville International Corporation, which promoted middle-of-the-road programming, refused to sell ads for a gay dating service, and pulled an ad for a book critical of the Christian Right. During the Bonneville era, KDFC produced a series of CDs called “Islands of Sanity,” with Classics Top 40 tracks like “Clair de Lune” and “Moonlight Sonata.”

Today, in addition to regular San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera broadcasts, the station broadcasts a daily “Island of Sanity” program hosted by Rik Malone. If you need a more immediate sanity fix, try the on-demand “instant island of sanity”: click the button, turn up your speakers, and bathe your ears in soothing strains.

 

A Nice Mention on "A Way With Words"

Many thanks to Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette, co-hosts of public radio’s “A Way With Words,” for mentioning my blog in their September 21 program! The segment is called “How Products Got Their Names,” and if you missed the broadcast you can listen online.

The rest of the episode—“Good Juju”—is entertaining and informative, too. It includes segments on M&Ms, Hallmark Cards, restaurant lingo, aspirin (the name), and, of course, juju. 

I wrote about how aspirin got its name about a year ago. You can read all of my “How They Got That Name” posts here.

Renaming Roundup

1. Dress Barn Group, the parent company of discount clothing chain Dress Barn, will seek shareholder approval for a name change to Ascena Retail Group, Inc., or Ascena Retail, Inc. The company was founded in 1962 in Stamford, Connecticut, and now has more than 800 stores through the United States; it also owns Maurices, which caters to style-conscious 20-somethings, and Justice, for girls 7 to 14. (Justice is a direct descendant of Limited Too.) The three retail brands would become subsidiaries of Ascena and would presumably retain their respective names. “The objective was to have a neutral kind of name, so you can have a family of brands underneath and not feel like they're reporting to Dress Barn,” Dress Barn’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, Armand Correia, told Bloomberg News. The retailer met with “outside experts” and chose Ascena “because it’s reminiscent of the word ‘ascend,’ Correia said.” The renamed company’s ticker symbol on Nasdaq would be ASNA, which unfortunately is the Spanish word for “female donkey.” It’s unclear how “Ascena” is meant to be pronounced: ah-SEE-na? ah-SAY-na? ass-SEEN-ah? Perhaps Dress Barn is attempting to cash in on the “ass” trend in women’s retail. (Hat tip: MJF.)

2. The Tea Party Bookshop in Salem, Oregon, is changing its name to Tigress Books. Owner JoAnne Kohler, who opened the shop in August 2008, chose the original name because she liked the association with the “independent, anti-corporate, more forward-thinking aspects of the Boston Tea Party,” reports Salem Live. The store stocked lots of spiritual and personal-growth titles, held monthly poetry readings, and sponsored a pagan meet-up. Then came the Tea Party political movement and considerable confusion for Kohler’s patrons. Long story short: the bookstore will be renamed Tigress Books (slogan: “Wildly Independent!”). Why Tigress? “A Buddhist monk told me in order to move forward you have to be a tiger,” Kohler told Salem Live. “When I was thinking about new names I thought ‘oh, that’s a good name. Be a tiger. Be a tiger!’” (Via The Naming Newsletter.)

3. Starting September 16, the weekly public-radio program “Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett” will be called “Krista Tippett on Being.” In the show’s blog, Tippett confesses that she wasn’t wild about “Being” at the outset. “But I have come to love the title. . . . ‘Being’ is an elemental, essential word. It was a catchword of the existentialism of the 20^th century, and existentialism is making room for spiritual life in the 21^st. It is more hospitable than the word ‘faith’ for our non-Christian and non-religious listeners. It is, at the same time, an evocation of the primary biblical name of God. ‘I am who I am’ can be better translated, I recall my teacher of Hebrew pointing out, as ‘I will be who I will be.’” More than 300 readers posted comments about the name change, and the next day the show’s managing producer, Kate Moos, added her own comments: “One, we’ve incorporated Krista’s name into the title prominently because we wanted it very clear that Krista remains central to the show as host and editorial leader. But I want to assure you that, in most applications, the new name will be heard as Being.” (Via Grant Barrett.)

4. The Nevada Test Site, established in 1951 for the testing of nuclear devices, will henceforth be known as the Nevada National Security Site, or N2S2. The new name reflects “the diversity of activities at the desert expanse north of Las Vegas,” the Associated Press reports. “Sounds like a video gaming console … only way more extreme,” comments On the Button, a naming blog.

Word of the Week: Shoupista

Shoupista: An admirer of the work of UCLA urban-planning professor Donald Shoup. Shoup’s book, The High Cost of Free Parking, argues that parking regulations are mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians, and that “free” parking is anything but.

San Jose resident Marc Morris spoke about Shoup and Shoupistas in a “Perspectives” editorial on KQED-FM (Bay Area public radio) earlier this month:

Shoup points out the hidden costs of parking. Land is tied up that could be better used for homes and shops, and the lost value is passed on in higher prices. When parking is free, people choose driving instead of walking or taking the bus. When spaces are full, people cruise the streets, creating congestion and pollution.

So we all suffer inconvenience and pay a price for “free” parking. But businesses and residents don't like parking meters either. What’s the solution? Here’s one: create a parking benefit district so that revenue from the meters goes directly back to improve the local community. It’s a smart, transformative idea. It worked in Pasadena, revitalizing a neglected downtown.

I want that in my neighborhood. Instead of protesting, I’ve become a Shoupista. If the price of parking is set correctly, convenient spaces will be available for the local businesses. The revenue from a parking benefit district can help pay to improve and maintain our local streets and sidewalks.

I first became acquainted with the Shoupista philosophy six or seven years ago, when Donald Shoup was a guest speaker at my monthly neighborhood-association meeting. Shoup presented a case study of Old Town Pasadena, which was transformed from dilapidated to thriving after it installed parking meters and dedicated the entire revenue stream to Old Town improvements. In his quiet way, Shoup is very convincing; I understand why one might become a Shoupista. Alas, no one in our neighborhood took up the parking-benefit-district banner. Our commercial strip did get new, nuisance-y parking meters (the kind that require you to find a central pay station, pay, get a receipt, return to your car, and place the receipt on your dashboard), but all of the money goes to the city of Oakland—which nevertheless recently laid off 10 percent of its police force because of budget woes—rather than to our shopping district.

Shoup’s book is 752 pages long and costs $53.42 on Amazon, but if that seems excessive you can read a 21-page PDF summary—yes, free.

Join the Shoupistas group on Facebook.

UPDATE: Check out "The Meter's Running," a post about parking meters at Peterman's Eye, the J. Peterman blog. Yes, that J. Peterman. The links are interesting, too.

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Image from The Expired Meter, a Chicago website that takes an anti-Shoupista somewhat different stance from Shoup's (see comment, below).

Word of the Week: Fracking

Fracking: Shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, a method of obtaining natural gas by injecting millions of gallons of water and chemicals deep underground, creating small cracks in hard rock that allow gas to escape. The practice is controversial because some private landowners claim it has ruined their water wells—and worse.

From a May 27, 2009, story on NPR’s “Morning Edition”: 

Steve Harris . . . lives on 14 acres south of Dallas. Shortly after a driller fracked a nearby well, he and his neighbors noticed a change in water pressure.

“When you’d flush the toilet — in the back where the bowl is — water would shoot out the top of the bowl,” says Harris.

When he took a shower, there was a foul odor, and the water left rashes on his grandson’s skin. His horses stopped drinking from their trough, and there was an oily film on top of the water.

Filmmaker Josh Fox traveled around the country to see how fracking has affected communities and homeowners. His documentary Gasland, which won a special jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, premieres on HBO tonight.

Terry Gross interviewed Fox on “Fresh Air” recently. From the interview:

[S]ome homeowners he spoke to noticed that their water had been discolored or was starting to bubble. And in some communities, people were able to light the water coming out of their faucets on fire — because chemicals from the natural gas drilling process had seeped into the water.

“I did it myself,” he says. “That’s one of the most dramatic and spectacular things in the film. It just turns your whole world upside down when you can turn the faucet on and stick a cigarette lighter under it and you get this explosion of flame.”

Listen to the “Fresh Air” interview with Josh Fox.

Watch a trailer for Gasland.

Frack has another meaning for fans of Battlestar Galactica: It’s an expletive used in place of “fuck.”

At IKEA stores, a Fräck is a shaving mirror (“fräck” means “bold” or “audacious” in Swedish; more about IKEA’s nomenclature here).

Unrelated but interesting: fracket (from “frat” + “jacket”), a jacket worn by a young woman to a frat party in the expectation of it being ruined.

Logo Trend: Tall and Skinny

North Americans may be getting wider, but our logos are headed in the opposite direction: narrow and vertical. The trend is especially evident among cultural institutions.

Here's a moderate example from L.A.'s Getty Museum:

Note the squished-up GETTY against the black background.

Here in my own area code, the Oakland Museum redesigned its logo in conjunction with a major overhaul of the galleries. (The museum has been closed since late August and will reopen May 1.)
See the former identity here. From even further back, I remember a pre-CA Oakland Museum; I still own an "OM" T-shirt from that era.

Museums aren't the only organizations opting for an anorexic image. Below right is the new logo of the public-radio show This American Life, juxtaposed with the old logo.

Those images come from Brand New, which asks: "For a show that focuses on the commonalities of American lives, why divide ‘American’ into two words?"

Here's a tall-and-skinny logo that appears to have undergone liposuction:

 

Does anyone else read "budget cuts" in the Indianapolis Museum of Art's new logo? (See before-and-after images at Brand New.) By the way, the Indianapolis Museum's URL is imamuseum.org, as in "I'm a museum—what are you?"

The Philadelphia History Museum also seems pressed for space. Compare with the previous logo here (Brand New again).

An extreme example of the compression trend, from Griffin Theater Company, Sydney.

Before-and-after images from Brand New, which points out that the new typeface is a monospace font: each character is given the same amount of space.

Tempting as it is to put a sociocultural gloss on this trend—recessionary squeeze? do more with less?— Tall and Skinny is probably just one of those fads that sweep the design community every decade or so. Back in the early 2000s, every third logo seemed to feature a tilted ellipse. (See, for example, the Gore-Lieberman campaign logo.) This time around, is it reaching too much to speculate that the King Tut exhibit, currently on tour, has inspired a revival of interest in Egyptian cartouches?

Cartouche image from here.

August Linkfest

A late-summer harvest of idioms, acronyms, neologisms, and hench-words:

"At the drop of a heartbeat." "A bull in a candy shop." "Green behind the ears." They're all odd amalgamations of familiar idioms collected at Conflation, whose editors write:

The purpose of this website is not to provide an inert list of expressions that can be chuckled at and then put aside. We have compiled this collection with the genuine hope that readers will deliberately use conflations in their day-to-day lives. These expressions should be studied and memorized to the point where the reader is comfortable using them in proper context without hesitation or awkwardness. It should be pointed out that conflations are not to be slipped into conversation with the intention of fooling the uninitiated. Conflation is not an inside joke. Any pleasure gained from successful conversational usage should be derived from the knowledge that you are activating the evolution of language toward a vernacular of resistance.

Could be a fun party game, too. (Via ThatWhichMatter, which does not appear to have a website but is well worth following on Twitter if you're interested in language. UPDATE: And which just launched a Tumblr log.)

A different species of neologism is the specialty of Mark Peters, curator of Wordlustitude. Guest-posting at the Oxford University Press blog, Peters writes about the "underrated prefix" hench-, which turns up most famously, but hardly exclusively, in henchman. (The title of the post is "Send in the Hench-poodles!") To wit:

I’ve found uses of henchblob, henchboob, hench-chicken, hench-Cylon, henchdemon, henchgoat, henchidiot, hench-lady-men-partners, hench-monster, henchscum, hench-wench, plus spokeshenchman, sub-sub-henchman, under-henchlings and many others.

Who doesn't love a "hench-wench"? By the way, hench comes from Old English hengest, meaning horse or stallion: a henchman was originally a groom.

Ben Schott, author of the Schott's Miscellanies and occasional contributor to the New York Times op-ed page, writes a Times blog, Schott's Vocab, where he documents new words and phrases. Once a week he hosts a contest in which readers submit their own inventions. Read the results of the most recent competition, to devise "weasel words, euphemisms, dysphemisms and circumlocutions for items in the news."

I recently discovered Beg to Differ, the bright blog produced by Brandvelope Consulting in Ottawa, and couldn't resist subscribing. Two posts sealed the deal: "The 25 Worst Acronyms in the World" (RUMPS? WinCE? MANPADS?) and "25 Meaningless Tag Lines" (Exxon: "We're Exxon.").

Another new discovery, this one via Editrix: Funny Typos, Misspellings, Bad Grammar & Engrish, which delivers the goods, or the bads. Examples: a DeLonghi coffeemaker with a "permanent god filter" and a hand-lettered sign for a "Hugh Sale." Hugh Sale, meet Hugh Reductions.

Speaking of errors, NPR's Page Not Found page transforms a wrong turn into a jolly adventure.  "It's a shame that your page is lost, but at least it's in good company," the page consoles. "Stick around to browse through NPR stories about lost people, places and things that still haven't turned up." Links go to stories about Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa, "Your Luggage," and other missing people and things.

The Estonian language uses lots of umlauts and is related to Finnish and not much else. That was all I knew about Estonian until I found this well-written (in English), gorgeously illustrated Brief Guide to Estonian, which made me want to learn more. Did you know that Estonian has 14 grammatical cases, no grammatical gender, and no articles (definite or indefinite)? Or that there's an Estonian Sign Language, used by about 2,000 people? Just knowing that sort of thing makes me happy.

Shacking Up

Engadget reports that RadioShack is about to launch a "pretty noticeable rebranding" that includes changing the name of the retail operation to The Shack. According to a RadioShack website, the change will kick off with "The Shack Summer Netogether," which will "connect San Francisco and New York  via larger-than-life laptops August 6th - 8th."

Engadget comments on the name change:

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense -- radios aren't exactly considered cutting edge these days, and from the sounds of things, the store is about to launch a full assault on the mobile space, bringing T-Mobile into the fold this month, and attempting to cover the gamut on cellphone reselling. Still, we're not sure "The Shack" is the right direction... unless they wanted us to immediately picture a remote location where very, very bad things happen.

RadioShack opened its first store (in Boston) in 1921; according to the corporate history, the name was borrowed from the term used for the small wooden structure that housed a ship's radio equipment.

RadioShack's name-ectomy follows a similar move by Pizza Hut, which in June announced its new sub-brand The Hut.

The Shack, The Hut ... shorter names for a downsized economy? Let's speculate on what the next tinyfication will be:

• Pottery Barn shrinks to The Barn.
• IHOP, formerly the International House of Pancakes, cuts back to The House.
• Coldwater Creek slims down to The Creek.
• Hidden Valley Ranch reduces to The Ranch.
• Holiday Inn downsizes to The Inn. (Who can afford a holiday these days?)
• Log Cabin ("authentic maple-tasting syrup"—don't think too hard about that) dwindles to The Cabin.

UPDATE: From Rob Frankel on Twitter: "Next Jack in the Box will be The Box. Oy."

UPDATE #2: And how could I have forgotten Banana Republic, due for an alteration to The Republic?

UPDATE #3: More on the "Shack" campaign, including photos from the Netogether, at the Brand New Blog. The campaign was created by Bay Area agency Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, which is perhaps best known for its work with MINI.

More suggestions? Leave a comment.

(Hat tip: The Name Inspector on Twitter. Image: Terminal screen at a Radio Shack retail store, via Engadget.)

Aporkalypse Now

The popular name, swine flu, offends Jews, Muslims, and hog farmers. The scientific name, 2009 H1-N1, lacks brand personality.* So National Public Radio is asking listeners to Name That Flu. Madsow? Wilburculosis? Hamagaddon? Commenters have been weighing in; a serious contender is "Factory Farm Flu," whose nominator says "brings attention to the most critical factor in the virus' genesis, not to mention a source of vast pollution and suffering." A couple of people have suggested SNAflu (Swine North American Flu). I like Fluzapalooza (because I love me some paloozas!), but I'm especially impressed by the verse contributed by Kristina Hetherington, who works for the University of Utah Division of Infectious Diseases. The poem reads, in part:

You may not get it from a dog,
but now you'll get it from a hog.
And from a kiss. Do not dismiss.
You may not get it on a boat--
you may not get it from a goat.
And from a pony? I'm no phony.
You get the flu from a duck,
folks get the flu from dumb luck.
Flu is passed in bird's turds..
the turds of birds?! I'm so disturbed!
You may get flu from in your house,
but you'll get Hanta from a mouse.

Better ideas? Spread 'em around. And then wash your hands.

Hat tip: Brand Mix, which features six flu-ish items in this week's link roundup.

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* I suggested on Twitter that we turn H1N1 into l33tspeak and call it the Heeny Flu. Good idea, wrong pronunciation, said a couple of followers: it should be "Heinie," especially if diarrhea is involved.