Barclays have asked their research analysts to quit using the acronym for the five European countries Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain in their notes. Hmm, seems they have an issue with using PIIGS when referring to the five fiscally f***ed nations.

Yesterday, a very smart and concerned patriot sent me a tweet, and asked me to write something about it. Her tweet was:

“The new republican talking point is “BIOB” – “blame it on Bush”. To which, all the dem’s can say is, “well, the truth hurts!” They need to own up to the legacy we inherited. This BIOB should be turned into something demeaning and funny against them… Don, come up with something!”

Well, I first, scratched my head, then I scratched my knee, then I scratched my keyboard. I thought, and thought, and thought, and over fed myself with coffee. I just knew there was a funny line, just about to emerge, then it never came, So I decided to take a break and let myself sleep on the thought for the night.

When I got up this morning, the thinking continued as well as the scratching,, Then it occurred to me, that the reason no humor was emerging, was there really was no humor involved in the effort of a rather small and loud minority’s attempt to dissuade 60% of our country from believing the truth. To snatch the truth from their collective thoughts, in order to promote a bankrupt philosophy, of mean, and greed and wrong. The truth for democrats is a very sad fact that does emerge from this effort. That truth is that the republican’s talking points network,, just flat out works better than ours. It has nothing to do with the right or wong of the message, just that the industrial complex of channels used by the conservatives is well oiled and churns on, regardless of the fact that only 32% of this country thinks that they have any answers to our problems. The really sad part of this is that if that network of theirs were not so effective, only 21% of our country would be listening to them, they have grown their approval from 21% to 32% just by churning out these tired and factually inaccurate messages for the past year,, in unison…. We democrats on the other hand, are all over the map with ours..never are we co-ordinated. Never.

We could have just as easily tossed that fire water back at them with a dueling acronym like “BIBM” (Barack Inherited Bush’s Mess”) or “BINOP” (But It’s Now Obama’s Problem) which would be an accurate and effective way to answer the innuendo of “BIOB”. There are major differences in the EFFORT involved in these two messages. When the conservative use their acronym “BIOB” their effort is to persuade people to ignore the facts that the mess we have in our country today was largely his administration’s fault, by concentrating on the resentments of the situation, rather than the cause of the situation. The acronyms of “BINOP” (But now it’s Obama’s Problem) or “BIBM” (Barack Inherited Bush’s Mess”) both accurately describes the truth of the situation.

Until we get our talking points network up and running, my only suggestion is to just throw back at them one of these two acronyms every time we hear their empty attempts to mislead the country by leading them by the nose.

“Call the MOH and the BM to make sure the BP is ready to go, please.”

“God, my FSIL can be so difficult!”

“Are all the OOTG settled?”

…Um, pardon?

Unless you’re a wedding planner (or, a wedding enthusiast), chances are some of these acronyms make little to no sense at all. So, Real Simple has compiled a list of commonly used wedding jargon to help you shorthand some of your emails and messages. Make sure your wedding party and your parents read this too, so that no one is lost when you ask the BM to keep an eye on your FH during the bachelor party.

Click here to read the article.

Which of the following trendy acronyms is the Odd One Out[1]?

1. WTF
2. OMG
3. GOK
4. CYSTFU?
5. CBF
6. C4N
7. FTW
8. ESMF
9. FOAD
10. WTFDYJS[2]

-I.S. Wal

[2] If you guessed C4N thinking it’s not an acronym, you’re wrong. It is. We said trendy.

I have always been intrigued by the term and acronym  ‘EMR’ (Electronic Medical Record).   That’s right, term and acronym. Some people use ‘EHR’(Electronic Health Record)  or even PHR (Personal Health Record).

There are a few published definitions of the acronym ‘EMR’ on the web, but some of the differences are not obvious. As I understand it, the gist is that an EMR is a subset of an EHR; that once diagnosis metadata is added to  an EMR, it becomes an EHR.  Compilations of EHRs make a PHR… or something like that.

It’s almost like calling a soft taco a burrito as soon as you add beans. Descriptive, but are they really that much different?  Is the hunger of someone looking for a soft taco likely to be sated by eating a burrito?

This brings me to the term EHR. Many companies literally call themselves “EMR vendors”. What does this mean? Are they selling records or selling applications/services that  involve electronic records?  The linguistic problems where the meaning of the term becomes more strongly associated with the acronym is very interesting.

Saying “I want to implement an EMR”  is almost like saying “Hold on, I need to go the ATM Machine.” At some point, we don’t care what the acronym stands for, it has become the noun in question. I don’t have any specific gripes with using acronyms as words, but I wonder if there is a more precise word or term we can use for… It takes a minute to even think of how to use the acronym correctly… an “EMR management product”.

Additionally, why is there such a focus on the words electronic and record? All three of the leading terms have the word ‘record’ in them,two of them have the word ‘electronic’.   Are these systems we are implementing really just about records? Or are they about improving connectivity and collaboration between doctors  to allowing better care and reporting?

Twitter’s arrival on the social networking scene has forced us to reconsider how we communicate, namely, how succinctly we can get our message across.  Sometimes, however, as much as we try to shrink a message down to under 140 characters, we still end up over the character limit.

The website, 140it, has come to the rescue.  You type your message in the text box, click on the “140 It!” button and, as much as possible, slimmer message of 140 characters or less emerges.  The application removes articles such as “a” and “the”, and swaps shortcuts such as “gr8″ for “great”, among other methods.  If you Tweet often and find yourself spending extra time shrinking down your message, bookmark 140it or add its Bookmarklet to your browser.

Francis M. Unson

FacebookTwitterWordPress

— @ WiseStamp Signature. Get it now

Have you ever heard of the saying to frog?  In the very likely chance that you haven’t, oh boy, get excited because this is, by far, one of my favorite sayings!

So what exactly is to frog?  What does frog stand for?

F ully   R ely  O n  G od

More than any other reason, I love this phrase because it reminds me to rely on God.  Not just in some areas of my life or at certain times, but this acronym reminds to rely on Him at ALL times, in ALL ways, and in ALL circumstances.

While being a camp counselor, I wrote a little story about it for my precious, 10 year-old campers.  To make sure that you come back tomorrow, I will wait until then to post it!  For now, though, here are some verses about relying on God from our greatest book ever, the Bible!

Isaiah 43:1

“Now says the Lord, ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name.”

2 Corinthians 1:8-9

“For we do not want you to be ignorant to of the affliction we experienced.

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.

But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

No matter what trouble/struggle you may be going through, always remember, also, how 1 John 5 tells of how God himself overcame the world.  Think of the story of David and Goliath.  There is nothing that you can’t do when you have God on your side!  Rely on Him.

F   R   O   G

I was recently frustrated by the limitations of the acronym and glossary packages: I wanted to have something that joined the functionality of both together. Luckily, I found that with the glossaries package, which actually states that it is the replacement for the now-obsolete glossary package.

In order to make this tutorial, I have used the following resources, which you may also find useful: the CTAN glossaries page; the glossaries INSTALL file; (one, two) links from the latex community pages; and a page from the Cambridge Uni Engineering Department. These instructions work for Ubuntu Karmic Koala: please modify where necessary for your system.

Installing glossaries

Note for Windows users: While the makeglossaries command is a perl script for Unix users, there is also a .bat version of the file for Windows users. However, I don’t know how to set up MIKTex or equivalent to use this package. Feel free to add a comment if you can add information about this step.

1. Get and unzip the glossaries package. I downloaded it from here. Though you can download the source and compile, I found it much easier to simply download the tex directory structure (tds) zip file.  Unfortunately, the texlive-latex-extra package available on ubuntu or kubuntu does not contain the glossaries package – it only contains glossary and acronym. I unzipped the contents of the zip file into a directory called “texmf” in my home directory. You’ll also want to run “texhash ~/texmf/” to update the latex database, according to the INSTALL instructions.
2. (Optionally) get the xfor package. If your system is like mine, after you’ve installed the glossaries package latex will complain that it doesn’t have the xfor package (which also is not available via apt-get in Ubuntu). Download this package from here.
3. Open the glossaries zip as root in a nautilus window, terminal window, or equivalent. You’ll be copying the contents to various locations in the root directory structure, and will need root access to do this.
4. Find the location of your root texmf directory. In Karmic, this is /usr/share/texmf/, though it may be in another location on your system.
5. Copy the contents of the tex and doc directories from the glossaries zip into the matching directory structure in your texmf directory. For me, this meant copying the “doc/latex/glossaries” subdirectory in the zip file to “/usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/”, and the same for the tex directory (copy “tex/latex/glossaries” subdirectory in the zip file to “/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/”). In theory, you can also copy the scripts/ directory in the same way, but I did step 6 instead, as this is what was suggested in the INSTALL document.
6. Update the master latex database. Simply run the command “sudo mktexlsr”
7. Add the location of your scripts/glossaries directory to your $PATH. This gives programs access to makeglossaries, the perl script you will be using (if you’re in linux/unix). If you followed my default instructions in step 1, this location will be “/home/yourname/texmf/scripts/glossaries”.
8. Test the installation. Change into the directory you created in step 1, into the “doc/latex/glossaries/samples/” subdirectory. There, run “latex minimalgls”. If you get an error about xfor, please see step 9. Otherwise, run “makeglossaries” and then “latex minimalgls” again. If everything works, the package is set up for command-line use. You may wish to modify your Kile setup to use glossaries – go to step 10 if this is the case.
9. Set up the xfor package. Run steps 3-6 again, but with the xfor.tds.zip file instead of the glossaries zip file. This package is simpler than glossaries, and does not contain a scripts/ subdirectory, so you will not need to do step 7. After installation, try running step 8 again: everything should work.
10. Setting up Kile. Though I’m using Ubuntu, I find the Kubuntu latex editor Kile to be my favourite (just “sudo apt-get install kile” on Ubuntu). To set up Kile for using glossaries, you need to add another build tool that runs makeglossaries.
    1. Go to Settings -> Configure Kile
    2. Select the “Build” choice, which is a submenu of “Tools” on the left-hand menu.
    3. This brings up a “Select a Tool” pane and a “Choose a configuration for the tool …” pane.
    4. Click on the “New” button at the bottom of the “Select a Tool” pane.
    5. Type in a descriptive name for the tool such as “MakeGlossaries”, and click “Next”.
    6. The next prompt will be to select the default behaviour (or class) of the tool. I based MakeGlossaries on MakeIndex, as they both run in similar ways. Click “Finish” to finish.
    7. For some reason for me, Kile wasn’t initially picking up my changes in my $PATH, so in the General tab of the “Choose a configuration for the tool MakeGlossaries” pane, I put the full path plus the name of the “makeglossaries” script in the “Command” field. You may only need to put in “makeglossaries”.
    8. In the “Options” field of the same tab and pane as step 7, just put in ‘%S’.
    9. Change the selected tab from “General” to “Menu”. In the “Add tool to Build menu:” field, select “Compile” from the pull-down menu. This allows it to appear in the quick compile menu in the main editor window.
    10. I didn’t change any other options. Press “OK” in the main Settings window.
    11. You should now be able to access MakeGlossaries within Kile. Remember, you have to run latex (e.g. PDFLatex) as normal first, to generate the initial file; then run MakeGlossaries; then run PDFLatex or similar again.

Good luck, and I hope this helps people!

Tips on using glossaries

I usually keep all of my acronyms/glossary entries read by the glossaries file in a glossaries-file.tex or similar, and use “\include” to pass it to my main tex file. The links I posted at the top of this tutorial contain a number of useful examples, and included below are my favorites from those locations as well as a few of my own.

Note on usage within your document: Please note that to reference these entries, use \gls{entrylabel} for both referencing an acronym or a glossary entry. Further, to access the plural version of either, use \glspl{entrylabel}. By default, you do NOT need to put in a plural form of an acronym: latex will add an “s” to the expanded form and to the short form when you reference the acronym with \glspl{TLA} rather than \gls{TLA}.

A plain glossary entry that is not also an acronym. The first “sample” is the label used to reference this entry. The second “name={sample}” is the name of the glossary entry, as viewed once the glossary is compiled. The description is the actual definition for the glossary entry:

\newglossaryentry{sample}{name={sample},description={a sample entry}}

A plain acronym entry that is not also a glossary entry. The TLA acronym below illustrates the very basic acronym form. The “aca” example after it illustrates how to add non-normal plurals to the short and long form of the acronym. Then, again, the first instance of “aca” is the label with which to reference the acronym, and the second instance is the name as viewed in the compiled document. The final {} section is the expanded form of the acronym:

\newacronym[]{TLA}{TLA}{Three-letter acronym}
\newacronym[\glsshortpluralkey=cas,\glslongpluralkey=contrivedacronyms]{aca}{aca}{a contrived acronym}

Using an acronym within the glossary definition of a glossary entry. If you wish to make use of an acronym within the glossary definition, and have that acronym indexed properly within the glossary as well as the main text, here is what you do. First, make the acronym. Note that there is nothing special about this acronym:

\newacronym[]{DL}{DL}{Description Logics}

Second, make a normal glossary entry, and reference the acronym as normal. No special work necessary! Please also note that you can put in \cite references within a glossary entry with no problem at all:

\newglossaryentry{TBox}{name={TBox},description={This component of a \gls{DL}-based ontology describes
"intensional knowledge", or knowledge about the problem domain in general. The "T" in TBox could,
therefore, mean "Terminology" or "Taxonomy". It is considered to be unchanging
knowledge~\cite[pg. 12]{2003Description}. Deductions, or \textit{logical implications},
for TBoxes can be done by verifying that a generic relationship follows logically
from TBox declarations~\cite[pg. 14]{2003Description}.}}

Using an acronym as the name of a glossary entry. You sometimes want to use a defined acronym as the name for a glossary entry – this allows you to create a definition for an acronym. In this case, build your acronym as follows. Note that you need to add a “description” field to the square brackets:

\newacronym[description={\glslink{pos}{Part of Speech}}]{POS}{POS}{Part Of Speech}

Then, reference the acronym in the glossary entry as follows (notice the different label for this entry):

\newglossaryentry{pos}{name=\glslink{POS}{Part Of Speech},text=Part of Speech,
description={``Part of Speech''Description}}

Good luck, and have fun.

Store: Darkside Initiative.

Location: 1827 Powell St. San Francisco, CA 94133

Hours: Tuesday-Friday 12pm-7pm

Saturday 11am-7pm

Sunday-Monday 12pm-6pm

Brands: Acronym, Converse, Hectic, Hide & Seek, Hysteric Glamour, Masterpiece, Neighborhood, Nike, Undefeated, and WTaps.

Highlights: Simple displays inside.

-Extensive sneaker collection.

-Different styles of T shirts and button  ups.

-Friendly staff.

Random Fact:  Co-creater of Lousy Right (who has been featured on A Says.), Eric Butler, once waited an entire week in advance to get one out of sixteen pairs of Nike Yeezys.

Victory after 7 days of waiting.

]]> http://tishtoshtesh.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/acronymicon-mgorpg/ Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:05:46 +0000 Tesh http://tishtoshtesh.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/acronymicon-mgorpg/

It’s that time again.

What with the whole “SWTOR companions are solo friendly, and LOTRO Skirmishes are solo friendly and FUN“, the “MMOs are for grouping only” zealots are tunneling out of the woodwork again.  More often than not, the acronym “MMO” is cited as self-evident conclusive evidence that grouping is the Only One True Way to Play.  (Green Armadillo has a good starting point if you want to start prowling the conversations, and he has a great point to boot.  And to answer his question, yes, NPCs can teach you how to group with players.  This is precisely how it works in Puzzle Pirates, where NPC pirates train you as a noob, and even let you sail ships solo later on by manning stations.  It works, and works extremely well.)

I suppose there’s some sense to it, after all, “multiplayer” does by definition mean more than one player.  Of course, given the “virtual world” roots of MMO design, it should be (and has been) noted that “multiplayer” in no way exclusively implies “players playing in a group”.  That’s the difference between connotation and denotation.  “Multiplayer” denotes “more than one player”, in this case, playing the same game.  Some players take it and run with it, believing that it connotes “more than one player playing together“, when the word itself only has that as a possible subdefinition, not an exclusive overarching one.  If anything, such is a much more limited and specific small subset of the word “multiplayer”.

I know, English is hard, especially if you’ve gone through American schools, and logic is even harder.  Perhaps it’s not the gameplay that needs dumbing down in these games, it’s the terminology and public relations.  After all, it’s harder to educate people than it is to make the system stupider.  *coughNCLBcough*

Perhaps we need a new acronym.  (Muckbeast wrote a great article on this a while back, but I can’t find the link…)

I suggest MGORPG.  The G there is for “Grouping”, so that there is absolutely no question what the second letter in the acronym refers to.  It also sounds better, since MuhGORPGuh sounds worlds better than MuhMORPGuh.  The former just rolls off the gutteral better, while the latter sounds like a stammering hikikomori surrounded by pretty women who want his phone number.  Plus, gorp is healthy!

I suppose you could go with GOG (Grouping Online Game), but that’s already taken by Good Old Games, and Gog and Magog are sort of apocalyptic, which may not be a good allusion.  And that brings us back around to connotation and denotation.

MGORPG could clarify the debate considerably.  Of course, it’s only a mirror suggestion to make the acronym family complete, since others have suggested MSORPG (rather condescendingly and inaccurately… it should be MSPORPG since “single player” is actually two words) for single players.

I’d actually like to see that sort of differentiation in the market.  Make a nice Punnet Square of games; MSPORPGs that are just leveling content, MSPORPGs that are just raiding, MGORPGs that are just leveling content, and MGORPGs that are just raiding.  Throw a bunch of players at them (F2P to get more players involved, of course), and see what sticks.  That’s what happens in a nice, mature, differentiated market.  The successful design floats to the top, and the next wave of designs takes those successes and runs with them.  Darwinian game design, as it were.

Of course, it might be noted that such is actually the genesis of the increased soloability of MMOs of late.  See, people, weird whackjobs that they are (remember, I’m a soloist, too, pleased to be a nutter), actually do like playing solo in MMOs.  Games are evolving to cater to such players, and GASP, are proving to be profitable by doing so.  Ditto for the differentiation in the business models.  Anyone who has spent much time reading about MMOs has certainly seen the fallout from that particular holy war.

The staunch Old Guard still wants subscription based forced grouping death march grindy games, and by gum, those whippersnappers should want them too.  It’s self evident that such is the One True Way when it comes to MMORPGs, since that’s how it’s always been.  I mean, it’s right there in the acronym, right?  Get off my lawn and go play your offline single player games, NOOBz!

Oh, by the way, there’s a black guy as president in the U.S. now.  Stupid hippies.  Can’t they see that the American Empire only works when there are old rich white guys in charge?  We’re doomed! Who let those freaks vote?  Let’s go back to landowners (subbers) being the only ones that can vote!  Those other people are doing it wrong!!!

Further recommended reading:

Playing Alone, Together (Muckbeast)

That’s Right, I Solo in Your MMOs! (Saylah)

Get Your Party Off Of My MMO (Ravious)

Gaming Dictatorships (Melf_Himself)

AI Allies (Andrew)

Suddenly Bioware is Incompetent (evizaer)

The Social Soloer (Sente)

Three Truths (Cyndre)

Stupid Single Player Games Ruining it for MMOs (Dusty)

Defining “Casual” and “Hardcore” (Gordon)

Grouping Isn’t Always Healthy (Callan)

Disclosure:  I’m not an Obama fan, but it’s because I don’t like what he does.  Imagine that, judging someone by what they do and by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin, or their playstyle, or how they pay for their games…

Because everyone stands for something.

Starting in February a feature of NCFT will be Acronym.

Functioning as a blog within NCFT, Acronym will publish both Fiction and Non Fiction.

Please see the submission guidelines for more information on submitting material for Acronym.

My new favourite word of 2009 is not unfriend, although that is a killer word. Rather, my new favourite word is bacronym.

From Wikipedia:

A backronym or bacronym is a phrase constructed after the fact to make an existing word or words into an acronym. Bacronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology.
The word is understood as a portmanteau combining back and acronym.

I’ve decided that as I prefer the spelling “bacronym” that will be the British English spelling and “backronym” will be the American English spelling.

Somewhat embarrassingly I think I found the word bacronym while Wikipedia-ing Doctor Who, and specifically, the TARDIS which is apparently a bacronym of “Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space.”

Doctor Who Equals Excellent Buddy! (DWEEB)

BACRONYM!

Love it.

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER PRODUCES FIRST PROTON COLLISIONS IN BIG BANG MISSION

I can’t explain why, but this news makes me extraordinarily excited, proud, humble, thrilled, wonderstruck, optimistic…  [insert further relevant emotions here].

Our Universe is a miraculous event.
Won’t it be fun to try and find out just what makes it so?

{ image from Boston Big Picture [I strongly recommend you click-thru  for yet another must-see LHC collection]. This particular portrait features a “Compact Muon Solenoid”, a particle detector much like ALICE and ATLAS. I love lyrical jargon and acronyms the meanings of which fly stratospherically — nay, sub-orbitally — far above my head. }

DEFINITELY RELATED:

The language of deep space

LHC too cool/broken for its own good; helium-based hilarity ensues

Star-maker Machinery

Earth still here?… Yup!

To Hell in  Hadron Collider?

Passwords have you frustrated?

Ahhh passwords.  What a great idea.  Protect our sensitive data, emails and other personal information with a special password that only we know.  Of course, it seems as if we need passwords for nearly everything we do on our computers.

Many of us have fallen into the trap of using easily guessed passwords, and/or using the same password for multiple accounts.  There are dangers in both of those scenarios.

1. Using a password that contains a word can be quickly and easily hacked with simple software programs that are easy to find on the internet.  Even if you throw the required number or symbol on the front or back of the password does not make it that much harder for these programs to crack your password.
2. Using the same password for multiple accounts increases the risk of having one of your accounts compromised, and once they have that password, they may be able to access other accounts with it.  This is especially true for email accounts.

It is likely that if a hacker was able to get into your email account, they could find other passwords and account information by searching your saved emails.  How many times have you sent yourself an email with your account login name and password?

A good way to create a password that is easy to remember for you, but hard to crack is to use an acronym.  Come up with a sentence that you would remember, like My kids love to play soccer.  Now, turn that sentence into an acronym like this;  Mykdsl2plyS0cr or Mikl0v2Ps0cer.

There are also several software programs that allow you to store passwords in a highly secure database, allowing you to only have to remember one password to access that program.  A software program we recommend is Password Dragon (Free Download).   This is an easy to use intuitive program for windows users.  For Mac users, try PasswordVault Lite (Free Download).

Passwords can be a pain, and many of us may hate using them, but they are necessary to keep your ever increasing amount of personal information in cyberspace safe and secure.

                                                                     The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author

                                                                                                        Chapter 7

 As the story line developed, and Walt was to head up a new division of senior citizens in the police department, the idea of a catchy acronym began to develop. Acronyms need to spell something, right? So I started to play around with various word combinations that would convey the nature of the new patrol and grab one’s attention.

Then, there it was, The City Retiree Action Patrol also known as C.R.A.P.!

It was one of those “Eureka! I’ve found it!” experiences, like Euripides in the bathtub.

I rushed into the kitchen to share my moment of inspiration with my wife. I handed the page to her and watched expectantly as she read the title. A big grin spread across her face. “I love it!” she said, and Lady Justice Takes a C.R.A.P. was born.

After the initial euphoria wore off, we began to examine the pros and cons of such an unusual title.

The main attraction was that you couldn’t miss it.

Every year thousands of new books are published. You walk into a bookstore and hundreds of titles are staring you in the face. We wanted something that would reach out from the shelf and grab you by the collar. Our title certainly did that.

The negative, of course, was the possibility that the title would be offensive to some. We did not want to convey the wrong impression. While my novel contains a few expletives and some adult humor, there is no blood and gore or gratuitous sex scenes. If it were a movie, it probably would be rated PG13.

We live in rural Missouri in what is known as the “Bible belt” and we are certainly sensitive to the mindset of our neighbors.

How offensive could it be?

On TV, one of the longest running family comedy shows is “Everybody Loves Raymond”. In almost every episode, the father, Frank, finds a reason to shout “HOLY CRAP!” In fact, on another TV show, this line was rated among the 25 funniest lines of all time.

We began counting the number of times we heard “Crap” on primetime TV were surprised at its frequent use.

So after much thought, we decided to go with it.

After the books were published, the results were amazing.

People either love the title or they hate it, but they can’t ignore it.

The vast majority smile, giggle or snicker just looking at the cover. That’s what we wanted.

Unfortunately, there are also those who roll their eyes and look away. That’s OK too. It’s a free country. You can’t please everyone.

Our title certainly gets attention. Later on we found maybe more than we wanted.

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to quickly write this post to document for humanity the birth of the acronym that will soon rock the internet, popular culture and facebook statuses. This acronym was created solely by me (Josh) and I just wanted to make a clear record of the date and time I invented this acronym so that I can say, “hey, you that one acronym? I invented it, and here’s proof, BITCH.” I really hope it takes off and becomes as widely used as LOL, OMG, and OMFG, but you know, that’s is all wishful thinking because it’d be hard to become as prolific as those idol acronyms.

The acronym is: HFS

Short for: “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”

Pronunciation in conversation: Simply “H. F. S.” or the cuter “Hiffs!”

Example usage:

1. To preface a statement, indicating it’s emphatic nature. “HFS, why’d you eat all the chips Nomi!”
2. To punctuate an already emphatic statement, escalating emphasis. “Britney Spears touched my hand!!! HFS!!!” (Note: in these cases, “HFS” is almost always pronounced “H. F. S.” with emphasis placed on each individual letter for dramatic effect.)

I’d also like to use this opportunity to preview another acronym for you guys– let me know what you think!

The acronym is: GTS

Short for: “Giggles to self”

Pronunciation in conversation: Almost always pronounced as a single word, “gits”.

Example usage:

1. A diminutive form of “LOL”, used when something was pretty funny, but not really funny enough to make you laugh out loud. This is more honest and frank than “LOL” most of the time, while at the same time is still complimentary and not too mean. Example: “haha gts.” (Note: due to it’s unemphatic nature, “GTS” is rarely followed by exclamation points.)