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Jan. 25th, 2018 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerI had an interesting run in with recursive acronyms recently. I had a reason to use the recursive acronym "MUNG," which is painful to expand, because it means "MUNG until no good", so it becomes MUNG until no good until no good for the first iteration, then MUNG until no good until no good for the second, etc..
It refers to how, if one fiddles and futzes with something long enough, they can really break break it. (See https://www.xkcd.com/349/ for a fine riff on the same idea.)
Then today, I was trying to explain something bad wasn't cause for alarm or distress, so I said that "No, it's just SNAFU, only the F stands for FUBAR". If you've never seen these acronyms before, the polite-dictionary definitions are "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up" and "Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition."
And then I realized, who said that the F in FUBAR doesn't reference FUBAR?
In other news, if you feel a bit like Wonko the sane (who built a house inside out to "lock up" an insane world for it's own protection), you have good reason. I sometimes feel like the Trump administration and the GOP congress is performance art - proving that there's nothing too ridiculous for them to do, and that the news media will continue to treat it as normal.
In some ways, I can't quite blame the news media. If The President says something, it's news. In others, well, if a liar tells a lie, repeating it as if it is as reasonable as the utterance of someone who is fair to middlin' honest isn't good reporting.
Ah well. What can you do, except, as the Dr. Who's Winston Churchill said, "KBO" - keep buggerin' on.
It refers to how, if one fiddles and futzes with something long enough, they can really break break it. (See https://www.xkcd.com/349/ for a fine riff on the same idea.)
Then today, I was trying to explain something bad wasn't cause for alarm or distress, so I said that "No, it's just SNAFU, only the F stands for FUBAR". If you've never seen these acronyms before, the polite-dictionary definitions are "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up" and "Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition."
And then I realized, who said that the F in FUBAR doesn't reference FUBAR?
In other news, if you feel a bit like Wonko the sane (who built a house inside out to "lock up" an insane world for it's own protection), you have good reason. I sometimes feel like the Trump administration and the GOP congress is performance art - proving that there's nothing too ridiculous for them to do, and that the news media will continue to treat it as normal.
In some ways, I can't quite blame the news media. If The President says something, it's news. In others, well, if a liar tells a lie, repeating it as if it is as reasonable as the utterance of someone who is fair to middlin' honest isn't good reporting.
Ah well. What can you do, except, as the Dr. Who's Winston Churchill said, "KBO" - keep buggerin' on.
