NTMP 116: Battlefronties

With bonus suburban turkey content

New-To-Me Phrases, July 14, 2024

Full fronties * Malaphor * Quasi-useful environmental disaster-causing cloud efficiency boondoggle * Ticker tape synesthesia * Battle of the Big Butts * Sklug * Turkey jump scare * Drunken nuggets

Photo by Justin Lauria on Unsplash

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The Phrases, With Context

It’s so hot and muggy here I cannot. I. can. not. The only upside is summer produce. Give me all of it, all sweaty day, every sweaty day, where I will be indoors feeling grateful to whoever invented air conditioning.

This week we have nudity, nerdery, neurospiciness, and more. Let’s get to it!

But first, poll results!

The June poll results are in and it wasn’t even close - treason weasel walked—or should that be weaseled—away as the big winner. Thanks for playing!

1. Full fronties

I coined this phrase and I like it quite a bit. I giggle every time I use it. It’s inspired by a recent House of the Dragon episode featuring a full-frontal nude shot of a male character, prompting me to say, “Whoa, they went full fronties with Aemond!”

Think of it like chicken nuggies but for n00ds.

I love how this show is so clearly more female-centric than its predecessor. It’s just so much more thoughtfully done. Imagine if this team had done the original series. Sigh.

2. Malaphor

I’d never heard this word before Friend of NTMP Rebecca sent it my way, via a screenshot of an old Tumblr convo that’s making the rounds on Instagram:

Fun fact: the blending of idioms or cliches is called a malaphor. My personal favorite is “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

More examples from that post include:

• It’s not rocket surgery (I’ve heard this often used intentionally as a joke)

• Not the sharpest egg in the attic (what?)

• Until the cows freeze over (LOL)

• You’ve opened this can of worms, now lie in it (haha no)

When I googled this word plus “meaning” and “definition,” no dictionary sites came up, which caused me to suspect it’s likely more of a pop culture word-nerd neologism than a term in common usage.

Turns out I was right: Malaphors.com (yes, really) is a repository for reader-submitted malaphors. Their about page cites this Michigan Quarterly Review article about them if you want a deep dive into malaphors. That article credits Lawrence Harrison for coining the term in a 1976 op-ed for the Washington Post. Harrison wasn’t the first to notice malaphors; he just gave them an apt name.

3. Quasi-useful environmental disaster-causing cloud efficiency boondoggle

Nobody writes a good tech bro takedown like Ed Zitron. This phrase is from one of his recent posts where he theorizes that the AI bubble is about to pop:

Generative AI is unprofitable, unsustainable, and fundamentally limited in what it can do thanks to the fact that it's probabilistically generating an answer. It's been eighteen months since this bubble inflated, and since then very little has actually happened involving technology doing new stuff, just an iterative exploration of the very clear limits of what an AI model that generates answers can produce, with the answer being "something that is, at times, sort of good."

He closes with this:

I don't know why more people aren't saying this as loudly as they can. I understand that big tech desperately needs this to be the next hypergrowth market as they haven't got any others, but pursuing this quasi-useful environmental disaster-causing cloud efficiency boondoggle will send shockwaves through the industry.

I am not seeing leaders who don’t work in tech OR creative fields catching on to this yet, which is unfortunate. As someone who writes for a living and has watched countless creative jobs threatened by the so-far empty promises of AI to scuttle entire creative careers for the sake of “efficiency,” its collapse can’t come fast enough.

4. Ticker tape synesthesia

Storyteller and author Matthew Dicks shared in a recent blog post that he can see the words that he and other people say when they talk, rather like subtitles. He worried for years that he was the only person who could do this, but later learned that this ability has a name: ticker tape synesthesia. This is so wild! According to Dicks, scientists speculate that this rare ability is a possibly hereditary atypical neurological function akin to dyslexia.

5. Battle of the Big Butts

Where do I sign up, amirite?

Saw this phrase on one of the dozen-plus TV screens at Planet Fitness—the feature I hate most about working out there. I guess in this case it paid off, but otherwise, it sucks having a wall of bad news facing you while you work out.

Unfortunately, the most fun part of this phrase only exists in the name. West Aurora High School hosts the Battle of the Big Butts to showcase the skills of local high school football linemen. Props to them for great branding but I believe we were all hoping to see some big butts fighting.

6. Sklug

I came across a subreddit devoted to needlepoint and someone shared their project with the subject line, Finally finished my sklug:

via Redditor iz_an_opossum

A+ crafting. No notes except check out the dinosaur on a skateboard that they hadn’t started yet.

7. Turkey jump scare

This phrase was coined by my middle kid (who does not read this newsletter). Here’s the backstory: We have several wild turkeys who live in our neighborhood, roosting in the very tall trees here at night. There’s a wooded area a couple of blocks from our house where they like to hang out during the day, when they’re not on the streets perching on or chasing vehicles.

Here’s one sitting on our Jeep in front of the house:

They’re surprisingly agile and can hop onto and walk along our eight-foot fences with ease. Observe:

The other day, my youngest daughter was practicing driving (my second-least favorite parenting responsibility right after cleaning up barf). I told her to drive up our curved driveway because I had just seen the turkey in back of our house. I wanted to avoid having the turkey chase my car with a new driver behind the wheel and potentially injure the bird. As she drove around the curve toward the front of our house, a turkey poked their head out from behind a tree trunk and we all did the horror movie gasp reaction.

“Abort mission! Reverse!” I yelled. “Back up! Back up!”

My kid slowly (too slowly! New driver!) backed down the way we’d come and the turkey eventually lost interest in us. Unlike the time one of them spotted me in my front yard and gave chase. By the way, I have video evidence of that turkey chase and will send it to any paid subscriber who asks to see it.

Here’s the spot where they were lurking—I mean, sitting, which is also right outside our dining room window:

7. Drunken nuggets

We opened with a phrase I coined and we’re gonna close with more of the same. After all, creating funny word combos is one of my many un-monetizable gifts, like compiling lists of things I find amusing, burping loudly, and attracting weirdos at libraries.

Drunken nuggets is my affectionate nickname for periodical cicadas that were prolific here for a few weeks earlier this summer. They’re good-sized insects with red eyes, which might give one pause (or incite terror in one), but they’re just so dopey and awkward that I found them rather adorable. See you in 20 years, you giant dorks!

That’s it for this week! Remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious. And hey, I know the news is bad everywhere right now. Try to remember our common humanity and stay connected with people you care about. It helps.