Month: July 2005

Out of Context

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The Blurbs shows how the advertising copy for a movie can be completely misleading. Well, I think most of us figured that out. Still, seeing the extremes they take it to is a bit more than expected.

They did a bunch on Fantastic Four. Here’s one of the shorter ones:

Charlotte Weekly: “Fun!”
Actual line: “Fantastic? Not exactly, but Tim Story’s take on Marvel Comic’s first family of superheroes can be fun if your expectations are low enough.”

Here’s another on The Beat That My Heart Skipped:

Graham Fuller, New York Daily News: “A feverishly intense drama!”
Actual line: “Jacques Audiard’s film is a remake of James Toback’s 1978 ‘Fingers,’ a feverishly intense drama …”

Fun!

In case of emergency : ICE

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Paramedics will turn to a victim’s cell phone for clues to that person’s identity. You can make their job much easier with a simple idea that they are trying to get everyone to adopt: ICE.

ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. If you add an entry in the contacts list in your cell phone under ICE, with the name and phone no. of the person that the emergency services should call on your behalf, you can save them a lot of time and have your loved ones contacted quickly. It only takes a few moments of your time to do.

No, I didn’t do it yet, but verified it’s not a hoax.

Backronym

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I’ve always liked wordplay, and liked the sound of backronym. The rest of this is stolen from Wiwipedia.

Backronym

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A backronym or bacronym is a reverse acronym, that is, the words of the expanded term were chosen to fit the letters of the acronym. The word “backronym” is a portmanteau of back and acronym and was coined in 1983. There are both official (and generally serious), as well as unofficial (and often humorous) backronyms.

Some backronyms are back-formed from an existing acronym by creating a new expanded term for the initials when the original term becomes inaccurate. “DVD“, for example, was originally an acronym for “digital video disc”; when it was realised that a DVD could be used for non-video applications, the term “digital versatile disc” was invented (although it did not become official).

Other backronyms are back-formed from an existing word that was not previously an acronym. Generally these backronyms are apronyms, as the word used as the backronym is relevant to the expanded term it stands for. The relevance may be either serious or ironic. Most apronyms are examples of backronyms. Many jocular (and often also derogatory) apronyms are created as a form of wordplay.

Some backronyms are recursive acronyms.

See also