Jargology

Heart Crisis

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:36:16 -0400

Probable Genre: New jack swing

One report said he was in intensive care after suffering a “heart crisis” during questioning. Another said he was fit enough to be questioned in hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Status: Available!

Further reading: Reuters

Reuben Spider-Man

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:19:15 -0400

Probable Genre: Geek Rock

The boy, 4, hustled east on Court Avenue at the bridge. Butler asked the lad where he was going.

“That way,” the boy said, pointing toward the Capitol building for emphasis.

Butler asked where his parents were.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. Butler radioed dispatchers to ask if there had been any missing child reports. There hadn’t. Butler asked the boy his name.

“Reuben,” he said.

Butler asked, “What’s your last name?”

The boy replied, “Spider-Man.”

Butler said: “Right. Reuben Spider-Man.”

For any aspiring solo artist with an appreciation of geek culture, this one looks like an available stage name.

Baraka Hussein Abu Oumama

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:25:12 -0400

Probable Genre: Krautrock

Addressing Obama as, “Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu oumama,” and saying he backed the president’s just-announced re-election campaign, Gaddafi called NATO’s campaign “unjust” and requested a ceasefire.

Status: This name is…available!

Further Reading: Cheat Sheet

Megathrust

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:16:43 -0500

Probable Genre: Thrash Metal

The magnitude-8.9 “megathrust” quake is similar to what happened during the 2004 Sumatra quake that spawned a killer tsunami and the earthquake last year in Chile. In all these cases, one tectonic plate is shoved beneath another.

Further reading: AP

theweekmagazine: Keep your eyes on the sky. Next week, the moon...

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:52:12 -0500

theweekmagazine:

Keep your eyes on the sky.

Next week, the moon will make its closest approach to Earth in almost 20 years. Astrologers say the phenomenon, known as “Super Moon,” historically coincides with enormous natural disasters. Both the New England hurricane of 1938 and the Australian Hunter Valley floods of 1955 happened during Super Moons, they say. The last Super Moon came in 2005, at around the same time as Hurricane Katrina and the Indonesian tsunami.

Super Moon!

Probable Genre: Progressive rock

Hard Freeze

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 16:41:59 -0500

Probable Genre: Death metal

… WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM CST THIS EVENING… … HARD FREEZE WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 10 AM CST WEDNESDAY…

Further Reading: Weather.com

Glimmers of Recognition

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:11:56 -0500

Probable Genre: Glam rock

The chief of neurosurgery at Tucson’s University Medical Center said that Giffords’ eye movements suggest the congresswoman is experiencing “glimmers of recognition.”

Further reading: CNN

Mystery Missile

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:03:00 -0500

A plane, or perhaps actually a rogue missile, was caught on camera by a helicopter crew this week and everybody’s a bit wee wee’d up. Forget all that. This is a real exciting band name for anyone willing to go metallic with their costume elements!

Probable genre: Dance-punk

You know what’s a creepy phrase? “Mystery Missile.” It’s trending on Google today, due to some video captured by a KCBS helicopter, around Catalina Island, roughly 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles.

Further reading: GearLog

Fantastic Dolls

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:23:47 -0500

Somehow, at least according to a brief search on MySpace, the band name ‘Fantastic Dolls’ is still available for the taking. Grab it now and you’ll be opening for your idols the New York Dolls in less than a week.

Probable Genre: Glam metal

His nanny was an openly gay man who, in keeping with Indonesia’s relaxed attitudes toward homosexuality, carried on an affair with a local butcher, longtime residents said. The nanny later joined a group of transvestites called Fantastic Dolls, who, like the many transvestites who remain fixtures of Jakarta’s streetscape, entertained people by dancing and playing volleyball.

Further reading: New York Times

Ruby the Heartbreaker

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:42:00 -0500

The perfect name for any glamorous, up-and-coming youthful singer/songwriter with a Moroccan sensibility. Must be willing to travel. And sleep with elderly politicians. That too.

Probable Genre: Moroccan Belly Jazz

This time he is alleged to have invited a prostitute, Karima el-Mahroug—better known as Ruby the Heartbreaker, and who was 17 at the time—to at least two parties at his villa near Milan this year, and to have showered her with cash and expensive jewelry.

Further reading: Newsweek

Bunga Bunga

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:03:33 -0500

If you someday find yourself in an enthusiastic group of four bisexual electro-dance queens from the Bronx, going over your debut set list three days before your first show and you’ve yet to name yourselves, may I recommend “Bunga Bunga.”

Probable Genre: Glitter Rock

If Silvio Berlusconi were anyone else, he’d surely be in rehab by now. But the viral leader of Italy somehow uses what appears to be blatant sexual addiction to his advantage. And as long as Italians are wondering who the prime minister is bedding down at his “bunga-bunga” parties, they aren’t paying attention to serious issues like the trash trouble in Naples or the country’s economy—both issues that should be more important.

Further reading: The Daily Beast

The Hundred Year Starship

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:16:00 -0400

The ideal band would be of no less than five members, all all of which struggle with alcohol dependency and an inability to maintain meaningful relationships with anyone who doesn’t “get it.”

Probable Genre: Electro-Space Rock

Here’s the news:

Pete Worden, the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, recently hinted that billionaires are being recruited to kick in contributions for a deep-space mission known as “the Hundred Year Starship.” The idea builds on the long-discussed concept of sending people on one-way missions to space destinations, in hopes of jump-starting colonization of the final frontier.

Further Reading: MSNB C

Bar Curious

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:22:00 -0400

Refers to girls who get drunk and make out with other girls, at the bar.

Genuine experimentation is another motivation for same-sex connecting between females who don’t see themselves as lesbians. “Bi-curious” girls — or, as they’re increasingly called when drinking is involved, “bar curious” — are hardly unique in wondering what it would be like to have a same-sex experience. But when the culture becomes more accepting, experimentation is likelier to follow.

Further Reading: TIME

Probable Genre: Frat rock

Going Ghost

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:02:00 -0400

The cartoonist who came up with last year’s “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day” has moved, gone into hiding, and changed her name, at the insistence of the FBI.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.

This is, of course, because of the fatwa issued against her by Islamic extremists.

Further Reading: Seattle Weekly

Probably Genre: Post-grunge

Blackberry Thumb

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:45:00 -0400

A woman is undergoing surgery for what’s come to be known as Blackberry Thumb.

The hospital says her condition is best known as “Blackberry thumb.” However since she was using an iPhone, “iPhone thumb” is obviously more appropriate in her case.

Symptoms of Blackberry thumb include pain, inflammation, numbness and tingling.

Further Reading: Business Insider

Probable Genre: Chiptune

Squat Evangelists

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:26:00 -0400

Humans who believe that it’s natural to squat while one poops are Squat Evangelists.

According to Bockus’s Gastroenterology, a standard medical text from 1964, “the ideal posture for defecation is the squatting position, with the thighs fixed upon the abdomen.”

Modern-day squat evangelists make money off the claim that a “more natural” posture wards off all sorts of health problems, from Crohn’s disease to colon cancer.

Further reading: Slate, Gawker

Probable Genre: Hillbilly Rock

Operation Buckshot Yankee

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:06:00 -0400

Operation Buckshot Yankee was the name of a 2008 counter-military operation to a cyber attack installed via flash drive on US military Central Command computers.

The Pentagon operation to counter the attack, known as Operation Buckshot Yankee, marked a turning point in U.S. cyberdefense strategy, Lynn said. In November 2008, the Defense Department banned the use of flash drives, a ban it has since modified.

Further reading: Washington Post

Probable Genre: College Rock

Gateway Sex, as introduced by Secret Life of an American...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:09:00 -0400

Gateway Sex, as introduced by Secret Life of an American Teenager, is the kind that “doesn’t require birth control.”

Terror Babies

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:57:00 -0400

Terror Babies refer to children born to Muslim women in the US, flown overseas to train in terror, who then return to the US thirty years later as terrorists. It’s a now-debunked conspiracy first introduced by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

The Republican member of the Texas State Legislature said her office is getting information on the so-called terror babies from former FBI officials. We called the FBI today to see what they thought of these claims.

Further reading: AC360

Aqua Buddha

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:05:20 -0400

Aqua Buddha is hopefully a make-believe deity whom a woman claims Rand Paul, candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, forced her to worship.

“They told me their god was ‘Aqua Buddha’ and that I needed to bow down and worship him,” the woman recalls. “They blindfolded me and made me bow down to ‘Aqua Buddha’ in the creek. I had to say, ‘I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.’

Further reading: GQ