BF = bullfighting
DH = Don Henley (everyone is married to Don Henley)
BFP = big fucking prince (if a big fucking prince appears in your house)
MIL = mops in living room
DD = Dudley Do-Right
DF = death fog
MOH = Master of Hessians
DPO = don’t party outdoors
EC = emergency cheese
FTM = fuck the man
HKOP = High King of Prydain
EBF = emergency breakfast fries
EFM = evil fairy murder
SAHM = Satan and Hecate mating
TCOYF = Take care of your face
AWL = A witch lingers
CIRC = Circe, queen of witches
MIL = moms in love
LAM = Lamia! Achren! Morgana le Fay!
BD = baptismal destruction
IBLCE = I bless lesbians constantly, everywhere
VBAC = viscounts, barons are coming
STTN = stop! titties, titties, no!
CIO = capitalism is over
ERF = every raven, fornicating
Tags: acronyms, advice, parenting forums
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Oh GOD. As someone who occasionally works for clients who need to make things for parenting blogs (god help me)…this explains everything.
As someone who assiduously avoids parenting blogs, I enjoy this because I honestly have no idea what most of these acronyms really mean. HKOP is my fave – Lloyd Alexander 4eva.
I have very fond memories of those books. Have not read them since childhood. Do they still hold up? (Lie to me if the answer is no.)
Yes, yes they do. Eilonwy kicks some serious ass and Gurgi remains wicked awesome.
I’ve been slowly re-purchasing them as I find editions that match the ones I had as a kid (book geek alert!). Hoping they old up as well, looking forward to reading them to/with my kids in a couple years if so.
I did the exact same thing! It took me a good year or so to seek out the right editions at the used book stores around my town. I do this with all the books I read as a kid. Newer cover art is almost always terrible, especially if the book features a female protagonist. (I’m looking at you, re-releases of Song of the Lioness.)
I’m not familiar with that one, I’ll check it out…do the new editions, by any chance, have photo-realistic covers (or whatever they are called)? I urk those so much. 98% of the time. Once in a while they work.
I found my matching L’Engle editions 🙂 I think I’m only halfway on the Alexander ones.
GAH the new art is … bleh it is just so weird.
yes, yes they do, especially the latter three (Taran in the first couple is a bit too STUPID BOY, but his behavior is called out, deservedly.)
It seems like condescension is a prerequisite for a lot of the popular writing. I had to do a lot of market research through these kinds of blogs, and yeah. I am not someone who has thought about reproducing other than “Wait till later/or never”, but it really makes it hard to want to.
It scares the hell out of me that there are people that one day just decide that they are “Mommy Dearest” and their partner just becomes “DH” (more of a dismissive status than an endearment) and we are suddenly transported back to the fifties where “husbands just don’t know” and “mommy has to do everything” and “Mom” suddenly becomes the primary descriptor of someone who presumably once considered themselves a complex human being. Why would you work so hard just to relegate yourself to sitcom roles that put the brunt of work and blame on you?
This rant has been brought to you by Extensive Market Research and Being The Woman In The Company That Somehow Has to Explain Mommy Blogs While Being the Least Equipped to Do It.
Seriously. One of my friend-ishs has a 4-month-old and I swear if she doesn’t stop calling it “babysitting” instead of “parenting” when her husband watches the kid, there will be Dire Consequences. Like, I get that you’re completely owning the stay-at-home thing, kind of (she really isn’t) but that is no reason to also self-abnegate and beg for pity, pity, pity and also complain that your husband doesn’t BABYSIT BY WHICH YOU MEAN ACTUALLY PARENT HIS OWN CHILD. Feck off.
/vent
That’s absolutely terrible and I hope that child learns to walk and then learns to violently pukesnot all over her useless DH (SEE I AM LEARNING)
It makes me wonder why they all reproduced with sitcom dads in the first place.
THAT IS EXCELLENT LEARNING.
Sent from my iPad
reading parenting blogs (which I have to do for my work as well) is so terrible that it almost makes me fear becoming a parent, because they make it seem like becoming a parent involves becoming a terrible person.
(if you have a parenting blog that you really like, I probably have not read it, because I only read REALLY AWFUL ones.)
THIS. Exactly this. Maybe it’s a case of “the horrible people are always the loudest” or something. In the same way that I don’t turn on the television and go, “Ah, advertising, hypercapitalism and repressive cultural norms, wash over me!”…I guess I shouldn’t expect myself to feel the same way about Popular Blogs or Popular Anything or whatever.
Yeah, I think I am swimming in the Sturgeon’s Law of 90% of everything is crap. While in my darker moments I assume there’s got to be some sort of correlation between starting a parenting blog and coming across as a terribly self-involved person, but that might also be the 90% crap.
Yeah, my experience is that parenting blogs fall into three main categories: twee, sarcastic, and I DO ALL THE THINGS AND POST MANY PHOTOS OF THEM.
There are a few exceptions, like Science of Mom or Offbeat Parenting (alas, now archives only, but which includes an awesome rant against mommy forum abbreviations), but you do have to hunt for them.
EC = emergency cheese
emergency cheese is super legit. I am only a cat mom, but without emergency sheep cheese, my weeks would end poorly.
Emergency cheese is not just for moms anymore.
Srsly. Emergency Cheese is a Real Thing.
I would also suggest:
BPK – Back pocket kleenex. Every mom or mom-to-be seems to have kleenex at the ready in their back pocket. if you’re sniffly, look for a mom.
It’s because children are made up of 90% snot.
This is a scientific FACT
True. I have become my own mother, whipping out shrivelly horrible tissues from random pockets to deal with my baby’s snot. Fear me. (Or pity me. Both work.)
super true, my siblings and i have all moved out of the house and my mom still always has lots of tissues in her purse/pocket/both
Am going to append “CIO” to all of my emails from now on.
this list is so much more horrfying http://mymomrecycles.com/ds-dh-and-other-blog-acr…
Dear god, they are! :-O
Also, I thought those things were meant to make communicating with each other easier, not make you feel as if people are talking a language you didn’t even know existed!
I want Viscounts, barons are coming and esp. Every raven, fornicating on a T-shirt. STAT!
DP? Really? Because that acronym already has a very different meaning.
AUNTIE FLOW
I imagine BFP often leads to FTM.
well, that is how most of these people got themselves caught in this web of acronyms in the first place
These new parents would have a hell of an easier time if they realized they were invoking Satan, Hecate, Lamia, and Circe so often…
“why did a ten foot tall woman with three dog heads coming out of her torso just appear in my living room? PLEASE HELP, KIDS HAVE DAYCARE
i’m using TTC all the time now.
“what’s up?”
“TTC”
weekly status report: TTC
to clarify, ttc is from si_rosenbaum’s linked list
XBF: Xavier’s Best Friend
I honestly thought this stood for Ex-Best Friend, like two moms had quarreled over vaccinations or breast feeding or Dr. Sears and were now no longer speaking to each other. It’s always more dramatic in my head.
Every day needs Sir Patrick and Sir Ian holding hands in it.
BROS.
Seriously, though, I love how a newspaper article incorrectly stated that Sir Patrick was gay, and his twitter response was “I want you to know that at least 60% of my friends are heterosexual, and we do very heterosexual things together, like watching sports. Thank you.”
bonus, if you live in Toronto, saying that TTC is going to take all day/weekend would not be inaccurate.
(Toronto Transit Commission…the slower way.)
A college acquaintance of mine kept a parenting blog for a while, and instead of referring to her son as DS (because dear/darling isn’t…manly enough? idk), he was Strong Son, which led to sentences of unintentional hilarity/horror like ‘The SS and I were at the park today…’
As far as I know, nobody ever pointed it out.
DOA: Doting On Angel
SLA: Sweet Little Angel
NAZI: Napping at Zoo Intermittently
GMO: God’s My Obstetrician
A+ work
I LOVE this. I love it. “The SS had a grilled cheese for lunch today.” “The SS played on the swings for HOURS!” “The SS wanted to invade Poland but didn’t have enough time before naptime!”
gasping strangled noises omg
aravisthequeen, is there no comment thread you can improve upon with your wit and presence?
You are so charming!
But thank you, seriously, I am exhausted and work-frustrated and on Day 4 of parent-houseguests and wishing I had some dark hole to crawl into and stay there for a while. This was a really lovely thing to see.
Day 4 of parent-houseguests
Just imagining my parents spending 4 days with us is enough to make ME want to crawl into a dark hole. Even having my mom spend one night makes me break out in stress-hives. I love her, we have a great relationship, but I just want her to go away so that I can walk around naked and discuss inside jokes with my husband and not wash the dinner dishes without feeling like I’m being silently judged the entire time.
Oh hello, I see you’ve been at my house this week. I do love my parents, and they are great, but holy shit, I need to just be alone and alone-with-my-husband (who doesn’t expect me to chat every minute of the day and doesn’t give a shit if I walk around the house with my hair drying in a towel, which apparently gravely offends my mother for some reason. That is the only reasonable explanation to why I walked downstairs on Sunday morning with my hair twisted up in a cloth to dry and she went “WHAT do you HAVE on your HEAD?” like it was a rattlesnake).
Walking around with damp hair is a surefire way to get anything from a cold to an ear infection to meningitis. (If you go OUTSIDE with damp hair, you will die.) My father, a graduate of the Eastern European Institute of Dad Medicine, will happily provide you with all the information you could possibly need on this topic.
The last time she was here, my mother washed the dishes and then asked me what else she could do to help me. I took it as a passive-aggressive dig at my admittedly lax housekeeping. Husband gave her the benefit of the doubt and said, “She’s probably just really bored.” IF YOU’RE THAT BORED, THEN LEAVE.
MY PARENTS TOO. If I leave the house with wet hair it is a one-way ticket to an agonizing death. But apparently a towel is aesthetically displeasing, so I guess I should just confine myself to the bathroom until my hair is fully dried and styled. My dad could tell you a thing or two about the EEIDM himself.
Although my parents did leave me a bushel of American treats and snacks, so I suppose I can manage one more night.
My husband is also a graduate of the sister institution, the Former Soviet Institute of Dad Medicine, and it makes him anxious if I do that, though he won’t say anything anymore about it because I was like, “Dude. I have long, thick hair. If I dry it with the hair dryer every time I wash it, it’s going to get dry and crunchy very soon. I AM TOO VAIN FOR THAT.” He subsided, but he still won’t take Little Siniichulok outside if Little Siniichulok bathed that day. My MIL (see what I did there??) thinks I’ve infected him with North American Weirdness because he now drinks cold water and leaves windows open sometimes.
I am CRYING.
The SS got a gold star at school! …too much? but I feel sorry for the poor little guy, if that’s her reasoning.
AWL = A witch lingers
AHA! I knew it all along…
BFP, DPO bc CIRC cast DF & VBAC. TCOYF, ok?
Perfect illustration is perfect.
Yeah well, perfect illustration is horrifying after this:
http://the-toast.net/2014/09/18/love-forever/
ETA: (you probably saw this, but in case anyone didn’t I figured I’d post it to your comment)
Oh yes, I’m well aware. 🙂
With so many sites clambering all over each other to drop lazy Wales/Lloyd Alexander references these days, it’s great to finally see somebody do it right.
SIL: Satan in living room
DIL: dildo internally lingering
YTCOYF (you take care of your face).
I love you guys.
The head coach of the big college football team around here is often referred to in tweets by his initials, DH (Dana Holgorsen). I read every single one of those tweets as being about that football-fan-dude-bro’s Dear Husband, and it is SO MUCH BETTER that way.
Man, I thought librarians were some of the world’s heaviest users of acronyms. I WAS WRONG.
I thought it was electrical engineers! I’m wrong too. (Although seriously we’ve got some good ones, like JTAG for “Joint Test Action Group.”)
My favorite librarian: “DH isn’t Digital Humanities?”
HIGH KING OF PRYDAIN
Seriously, there’s an Achren joke in there too. This is totally my day.
cry-laughing
A Prydain reference? I feel so… known.
xo
“HKOP = High King of Prydain”
This is why, when I finally finish the novel I’m slaving over, I will be informing potential agents and editors that my target audience is Toasties.
Baha. Hessians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjI5XDZzeXU
WOHM = weasels over here, mostly
NIP = nails in pants
BLW = Bacchus loves wine
True. I have become my own mother, whipping out shrivelly horrible tissues from random pockets to deal with my baby's snot. Fear me. (Or pity me. Both work.)
super true, my siblings and i have all moved out of the house and my mom still always has lots of tissues in her purse/pocket/both
As an aside, I hate the book “I love you forever” *almost* as much as I hate “The Giving Tree”.
Also, I am a Mom. I have had a blog since 2005. Never once have I used wierd cutesy acronyms. I did once call my child a hellspawn who pupated from the bus, however.
Also, I feel like sharing that Homeland Security was reading my blog today. I shit you not. I joked about my kid having ebola in 2006.
We can all be relieved that they have decided to check it out TODAY to make sure I wasn’t harboring any potential terrorist stashes in my house.
I was gonna say…clearly, this is an acronym that has never been used.
I'm not familiar with that one, I'll check it out…do the new editions, by any chance, have photo-realistic covers (or whatever they are called)? I urk those so much. 98% of the time. Once in a while they work.
I found my matching L'Engle editions 🙂 I think I'm only halfway on the Alexander ones.
EC = emergency cheese
Emergency Cheese is honestly how I made it through my sophomore year of college. It is 100% real. Large blocks of cheddar kept in my dorm mini fridge to soothe late night meltdowns.
EC = emergency cheese
Emergency Cheese is honestly how I made it through my sophomore year of college. It is 100% real. Large blocks of cheddar kept in my dorm mini fridge to soothe late night meltdowns.