NTMP 129: Knobless
Plus a brief look back at NTMP in 2024
New-To-Me Phrases, December 29, 2024
Junkless * Recombobulation area * Cheesus * Mouse cinema * Grammagram * The Droste effect * Digital tinnitus
The Phrases, With Context
Are you enjoying this time of year? After the annual holiday “buy! buy! buy!” insanity, my inbox is quieter than it’s been in years. Let the marketers rest! I tend to enjoy the lull after Christmas; it’s a good time to review the year before and contemplate what’s to come. After a really rough go of it in 2023, 2024 was much better in general, especially creatively.
I learned how to make zines and even sent one out in lieu of a family letter, am working on one about my African grey parrot, and sent some funny ones to some pals. I have ideas for others, like community activism, ADHD, menopause, and ‘the autism cliff.’ I also learned screenwriting and am really enjoying letting that creative side of my brain bloom after many years of drought, aside from this newsletter.
Speaking of NTMP, here’s a very brief year-in-review.
NTMP 2024 by the numbers
Here’s a look back at NTMP and its writer:
Editions of NTMP sent: 36
New-To-Me Phrases shared (est.): 245 (!!)
Knees replaced: 2
Pairs of the silkiest, softest, comfiest PJs I’ve ever owned, via Duluth Trading holiday sales: 3
JD Vance couch memes laughed at: Too numerous to count
I’m not doing NTMP monthly polls anymore because my schedule has been so spotty lately. If you really miss them, let me know and I can start them again in January:
I will share that the “Which word is funnier, ‘queef’ or ‘vart’?” poll I started in November is still going, with queef taking a strong lead. I’m an outlier in that I find ‘vart’ much sillier.
Enough looking back—it’s time for phrases. Let’s get to it!
1. Junkless
This is a snack brand I saw at the grocery store. 👀
Did nobody in marketing or product development tell these folks what “junk” means?
2. Recombobulation area
My Hag pal Kathleen clued me in on this one.
About 15 years ago. former Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport manager Barry Bateman talked the TSA into installing RECOMBOBULATION AREA signs above the benches placed outside security checkpoints where you put your belt and shoes back on and jam your ID into that super-tight plastic window in your wallet.
Even better, via an On Milwaukee piece on the signs:
In 2009, the American Dialect Society named "recombobulation" the most creative word of the year. Eventually, the word made it into dictionaries meaning the opposite of discombobulating or "putting back in order."
This is my second favorite Milwaukee airport story, right after the WELCOME TO CLEVELAND sign that I’ve written about previously.
3. Cheesus
My pal Mike shared this one with me and I guess I need to take a field trip to Chicago.
In August 2024, someone stuck what appears to be a Kraft American cheese single to an empty shop window in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, and it’s still there. Someone thoughtfully added a note beside the slice, nicknamed “Cheesus,” describing it as an art exhibit on par with the Chicago Rat Hole.
Can you feel the health influencers’ souls leaving their bodies as they rush to comment on how nobody should consume a product that would last that long through Chicago weather?
4. Mouse cinema
Because I don’t know Hungarian, I have no idea if this tweet is accurate, but it’s a cool idea.
Thanks to my friend Mike (a different Mike than the one who shared Cheesus), who writes a great indie/alt-rock newsletter with playlists at Downbeat.fm, for sharing this one.
5. Grammagram
This word is an example of something you probably already knew existed on license plates and in text messages, but didn’t know it had a name.
According to this post, grammagram was coined by Richard Lederer to describe combinations of letters and numbers that sound like an existing word, like INXS for “in excess” or B4 for “before.”
Here’s a huge list of grammagrams.
6. The Droste effect
Deb Perelman at
shared this one and it’s so cool! I’ll let Wikipedia describe it because it kind of breaks my brain (in the best way):The Droste effect . . . is the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This produces a loop which in theory could go on forever, but in practice only continues as far as the image's resolution allows.
It’s named for Droste cocoa, which featured a nun holding a tin of the cocoa with an image of the tin on it that could conceivably repeat infinitely. M.C. Escher created a work featuring the Droste effect, a lithograph called Print Gallery. Extremely cool!
7. Digital tinnitus
This phrase comes from a very long post by Ed Zitron that I encourage you to take the time to read, even if you have to do it more than one sitting as I often do with his work.
In this post, he aptly uses digital tinnitus to describe the experience of everything digital being enshittified these days, from apps to websites to social media, all because of what he calls “the rot economy” that is focused only on growth at all costs. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I don’t know the answer to this issue but I think calling it out and examining its roots is a good start.
Random cool things I learned in 2024
If you put -ai after a Google search, it eliminates the often-inaccurate AI summary currently force-fed to users.
In Apple Notes, you can do simple math equations that automatically calculate after you type the equal sign. TBH I should make a zine about all of the cool shit you can do and make with Apple Notes. It’s my favorite app.
Did you learn anything simple and useful like this in 2024?
That’s a wrap for 2024, and that’s it for this edition! Thanks for reading NTMP, and remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious.
Thanks. I find NTMP a refreshing break from the work I do (political theory), and I just started reading that Zitron piece. Already, I'm nodding: yes, yes, yes.