Explaining for explainings sake

c: | m: | f: /

Dear reader,

Please find enclosed definitions for all the things about which you've heard but were too afraid to ask. Upon ingesting the list below you may bask in joyous one-uppityness with yonder neighbour.

Welcome to the learning zone; stef-stylie.

ABBR
An abbreviation. Should not be abbreviated further for the sake of brevity.
ADHD
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Also known as Spoilt brat who spends too much time on a PlayStation, has no manners, and one or two parents that won't engage it in conversation but wish to label said child with something to make themselves feel better disorder.
BBC
Britain Being Controlled: A rather apt acronym for the broadcasting corporation who spread fearmongering lies (in the form of "news") and badly thought out entertainment (in the form of everything else) into people's homes daily.
BBW
Big Beautiful Women: A semi-cutesy term for minging fat ladies who pose naked or perform sex acts like uncovering the remote control from an undulating river of thigh flab to the delight of deviant businessmen with catwalk model girlfriends.
BLOG
Boring Load of Geeks: people who believe their lives, thoughts and actions are so important to the rest of the world that they publish them on their website in the vain hope that other people find them interesting and assign purpose to an otherwise perfunctory waste of effort. What started as a weekly or daily event has now been bite-sized into microblogging for the illiterate txt generation courtesy of Twitter. Example:
  • 8:29 : todays gonna b gr8 i like cornflakes
  • 8:33 : semiskimmed is da bomb
  • 8:42 : half asleep i brushed my teeth wiv hydrakloric acid lol
  • 8:45 : cant feel my mouth no more
  • 8:46 : were r my lips?
  • 8:47 : so thats wot burning flesh smells like
  • 8:48 : god my eyes
  • 8:49 : i have no face
  • 8:50 : it hurts to much 2 blog ne more, bye crule world
  • 8:51 : BANG!
EULA
End User Licence Agreement: an un-pithy attempt by corporations to obviate lawsuits by denying any involvement with an action you may take as a result of doing anything related to the thing you're about to do. Examples include:
1) opening a CD case containing software;
2) clicking a link to someone else's site from your own;
3) going near Cheryl Cole;
4) swallowing.
IE
Internet Explorer: Often followed by a version number/name such as IE6/Win, IE5.5/Mac, this is Microsoft's woefully inadequate excuse for an Internet browser. Outdated, insecure, unintuitive, annoying, slow, non-standards-compliant, bollocks. But enough of its good points...
Facebork
A Facebook faux pas, such as you (or a friend) posting a drunken picture of your wobbly bits. This term also applies if you update your status to "shagged a 14 year old in Malaga last night" when your mum is in your friends list.
Facebag
Someone whose Facebook icon in a friends list makes them look hot, but when you click to view the profile the full size image reveals they resemble a sack of rusty spanners.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions: Or, more accurately a series of inane scenarios thought up by the makers of a product or service that bear little or no relevance to actual questions a user may have. For example, on the Cheryl Cole website, an FAQ entry might be "At what age did you start singing?" when an actual question might be "Why are you still doing it?"
FCUK
French Connection UK: Hilarious marketing tool of said company, designed to make you laugh uncontrollably when encountering merchandise upon which their brand name has been skillfully replaced for the word fuck. For example: "I FCUK Cheryl Cole". See what they've done there? Ingenious. Let me just pop my rib back in place. They must have spent minutes thinking that up.
GIMP
Gleefully Inadequate Male Personage: While its origins are unknown, this word has become synonymous with two professions: a) computing (implying a socially maladjusted individual who can only befriend skunks) and b) the sex industry (a mask worn to disguise the fact one is a sadomasochist and/or has a penis the size of a toast crumb). Judging by the number of websites that employ porn banners, it is arguable the two uses are identical.
Gribble
Not actually a fish but the international measure of usefulness. One gribble is approximately equal to 26 mibbles, which in turn is 103 times as much satisfaction as a pet receives from nibbling kibbles. The gribble scale can take negative values, for example when referring to Cheryl Cole.
Mistake
An error of judgement, for example putting an entry in the wrong place in a list.
IBM
International Bogus Machines: Once giant mainframe and PC manufacturer, now reduced to focusing their business efforts on, umm... errr, what the hell do they do now?
IMDB
Internet Movie Database: The resource for pretty much every movie or TV show ever made, or yet to be made, or written and never made, or maybe even just thought about. As a result, the IMDB forums were home to a bunch of twelve year old twats who appeared to bunk off lessons to post exceptionally uninformed opinions about films they hadn't seen, shouldn't have seen, or missed because they were chucking popcorn, texting, talking, or shagging their siblings in the back row. Thank goodness they farmed out the forum political bun fights to social media.
The cinema industry's slogan is "cinema: it's the experience that counts". That's clearly wrong. It should be "cinema: it's for underage cunts"
ITV
Independent Television: A UK TV network paid for by a declining advert revenue stream that they'll do nothing about, cheap daytime programmes that appeal to the unemployed, and one prime time soap opera about a bunch of whining Northerners that the network have been milking for the last 50 years.
JBOD
Just Boring Old Disks (or Just a Bunch Of Drives). A humorous acronym invented by RAID-nazis to belittle people who don't mirror and stripe. With claims of improved data access speeds (partly true) and better data integrity (false) these people wield their somewhat derogatory acronym at others who prefer to employ disk parallelism over putting all their data eggs in one giant, fur-lined digital basket.
While striping splits a file across multiple physical disks for increased read/write speed, when one of the drives in question fails you're left with the remaining file fragments that cannot be pieced together. To counter this, true RAIDers require you to automatically mirror (copy) all your data onto a second striped set of disks. The trouble being that if one of the drives temporarily head-crashes, the fucked up data may be dutifully copied to the mirror. Hmmm, many compartments on two sides of a ship: we all know how that worked out for the Titanic.
Compare that to making a simple copy, manually, from one drive to a separate (possibly external) drive. Slightly slower, more robust, and hundreds of times cheaper than RAID. I know which one I prefer.
KFC
Kevlar Fried Carcass: Fast food franchise that prides itself in its subterfuge techniques. Patrons are informed by The Colonel (who resembles Rolf Harris) that the food will taste of anything but a gallon of salt. The limp collection of breaded chicken wings, beak, foot and mechanically recovered anus convinces otherwise. When ordering the bargain bucket, a Sara Lee ice cream cake will be lovingly placed in the top by society's finest, thus enabling the dessert to be enjoyed as a coating to your fries.
MILF
An Americanism that stands for Mom I'd Like to Fuck; more accurately a wannabe trailer trash munter who will jump anything for that last shot at fame before appearing on granny porn sites. Usually, the resulting atrocity is a skanky 46-year-old troll with trowelled-on make-up and collapsed collagen due to over-exposure to the sun. In an effort to appear seductive, she'll often wear a leather mini skirt, high heels and a crop top that reveals scabby stretch marks. A pierced labia, flaps halfway down her thighs and a tattoo on her privates are common bonus material, as are pigtails and acne-ridden mons.
Money
An illusory system of control administered by a few key people who own a printing press. Backed by nothing, the pieces of paper and metal in our pockets are worth precisely that: nothing. Only copious quantities of legislation, media skullduggery, and propaganda lead us to believe otherwise. The system only benefits businesses; most of whom are ultimately owned/controlled by the people who operate the printing press. Incestuous huh?
PC
There are two common terms for this:
1) Personal Computer: A device that is anything but. Hardware is licensed by numerous vendors from one or two big players and is obsolete the moment you buy it; software is licensed from one or two big players and you are permitted to use it, carefully, for as long as they can be bothered to support it. Which is about 3 weeks after purchase (Linux notwithstanding).
2) Political Correctness: A form of self-censorship promoted and controlled by governments, rooted in the belief that you cannot say anything for fear that someone might be offended. Free speech implies I can say with impunity: "Sponging immigrants are driving the wages down and are encouraged to do so by governments; they should all fuck off back to their own countries." Political Correctness, however, converts that to "All our overseas friends are welcome to stay as they play a vital role in our economy. The freebies are that way."
Phishing
The act of sending a bogus email to people requesting their bank login details, password, cashcard PIN or other personally identifiable data after an alleged "server upgrade" or "computer crash" or some other lame excuse. The email directs you to a site that looks exactly like the real corporate site, often with a similar or hidden address. Akin to viruses, trojan horses, Nigerian scams, and clicking links to be removed from mailing lists, this scheme preys on the stupid. Anyone who falls for it deserves their money stolen and to then be anally raped by a jellyfish. Or forced to spend a night with Cheryl Cole.
PIN
Personal Identification Number: A random collection of digits that enable you to interact with something masquerading as a secure system. As much use at fraud prevention as Cheryl Cole is at being sincere. Shopkeepers don't have to be vigilant any more because they can be safe in the knowledge that if the PIN checks out, you must be the owner of the card. Also has the benefit that you'll either a) forget your number a week after you change it, or b) you'll change all your cards to the same number, thus making it easier for anyone to pretend to be you. IMPORTANT: It's a "PIN" and not a "PIN number"; a Personal Identification Number Number sounds rubbish doesn't it.
RSVP
Reply, s'il vous plait: Wrapping this acronym up with French is a lacklustre effort at disguising its idiocy. Not to be confused with any other kind of reply to a wedding or party invitation. For example, "Please don't reply. I've never liked you because you smell of pork products and I'm only inviting you because I feel obliged, Miss Cole."
Spam
Popularised by the Monty Python sketch, stolen by the computer industry to mean unsolicited electronic junk mail. Like its counterpart -- a virus -- entire businesses have sprouted and thrive on providing filters and snake oil software to combat spam. The irony of course being that companies are the only people who benefit from sending it out. Contrary to popular opinion, there is actually no need for a spam filter, and in fact their enforced use should be heavily lobbied. Providing you're not a) stupid enough to give your only email address to a company, b) the owner of only one email account, the solution to spam is simple: register a free account and use that when you sign up for stuff. Use your real account solely for your friends and never publish it anywhere on the web. And don't give it to any stupid friends who might get a virus; get a special email account for them too. mystupidfriend@hotmail.com ought to do it.
TLA
Three Letter Abbreviation: Primarily used in the corporate/IT world as an attempted humorous self-reference to the fact that pretty much every piece of equipment or business process is shortened to a catchy three-letter acronym. Stupidist one I ever heard was referring to some poor bloke as a Business Unit Manager.
UR
Shortened form of either your or you're, employed by people primarily through the medium of text message or blog comment to cover up the fact they cannot grasp English grammar rules or apostrophe usage. e.g. "ur gr8" (you're great) or "ur mum is hot" (I would like to show your mother the business end of my pork sword).
Virus
Something that spreads quickly and efficiently. Not to be confused with Cheryl Cole. Primarily now used in software circles to indicate a malicious program downloaded and executed by someone who is too dim to own a computer. Viruses are written by two entities: 1) clever, intelligent hackers who are bored with PCs and society being dull 2) Symantec Corporation to keep people living in fear of what might infect their precious files, thus ensuring a steady revenue stream from people suckered into employing ineffective bloatware that cripples their machine. Best advice: don't ever install a virus scanner of any description. Ever.
WAG
A generic, unimaginative term used by the press when making reference to the Wives And Girlfriends of anyone with "Celebrity" status. A Celebrity in this instance is anybody who is related to anyone who has appeared on television for any amount of time in any capacity. Being in an advert or the first contestant voted off Big Brother is enough. Note that Where's Ashley Gone is the correct definition when referring to Cheryl Cole.
WWF
Wildlife Wrestling Federation: the governing body of a cruel and unsportsmanlike form of entertainment.

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