Thu, January 13, 2005

I'm a big fan of doing things ironically. It's a great way to provide cover for enjoying things you know you should be above enjoying. Like, "I'm too cool to watch Antiques Roadshow. I'll watch Antiques Roadshow ironically." (What's funny about this is that I'm not cool enough to be too cool for anything, which means if you think about it, I do things ironically... ironically.)

So, the over-glitzy tongue-in-cheek style of Las Vegas allows me to watch it ironically, and the soundtrack to A Mighty Wind allows me to listen to folk music ironically. Stuff like that.

Another thing that's fun to do ironically is instant-messenger acronyms. If you've spent any time on IM, or watched any show on the WB, you've seen IM acronyms. LOL is "laughing out loud", IMHO is "in my humble opinion," and so on. They're unbelievably stupid.

But my friends and co-workers (and ex-co-workers) and I are on IM constantly. So, we've come up with a few abbreviations that we can use ironically: they're dopey enough that the point of using them is to call attention to how dumb it is to use IM acronyms. It started with YATP which stands for "You're A True Pal," and was very quickly augmented to the superlative YARTP ("Really True Pal"). Along the way, we've added other phrases, like NIGI for "Now I Get It." Years ago, Andy and I had a whole conversation using nothing but acronyms. Like:

Me: DYWTGTLT?

Him: WAYTOGTL?

Me: IDK. W? BK?

Him: IGWWBOK.

Which is: "Do you want to go to lunch today?" "Where are you thinking of going to lunch?" "I don't know. Wendy's? Burger King?" "I guess Wendy's would be OK." (It's not that hard to do when you know the context; we had virtually this exact conversation every day around 11:40, so it makes it a lot easier to guess what letters stood for.)

Anyway, recently I came up with one that I'm relatively proud of, and I'm doing what I can to make it catch on. When Rush (you know him as "Anonymous Coward") heard about it, he encouraged me to "make sure to blog this; that way you can take appropriate credit." Which is not only a good idea, but since I refer to this site as a blog only ironically, it seemed like a perfect fit.

Here it is: help me circulate it. FSOS - it stands for "for sake of same" which you might use thusly: "I can't believe they're making me redesign this website just for the sake of redesigning it." Instead you could say: "They're making me redesign this site FSOS." Isn't that awesome? (Aw, c'mon. Work with me here. Even if you have to do it ironically.)