I am forever referring to the Mormon Church as “LSD”. I mean, it’s the right letters, right? (I am very pointedly not thinking of Stephanie Meyers on acid. Nope, never crossed my mind).
Also, IUD’s and IED’s. And IEP’s- synesthetically they’re all more or less the same color.
SDMB is the Straight Dope Message Board. SMBD is Sadism, Masochism, Bondage, and Discipline. I used to do a double take everytime someone used the acronym for the Dope. Although, knowing some of the people who post here…
I remember once we were on the OP and my RTO told me the XO wanted a SITREP and the 20 of our FLOT. We were then to recon with the BC at the TOC. Most Rikki-Tik, or ASAP to you civilians.
Heh. They’re not my thing, either. Unfortunately, hubby works for the federal gov’t’. I’m pretty sure they had a DOTUA (Department of Thinking Up Acronyms).
No, when they’re fucking with you they’ll ask you for the repeat fire LAW or the left-handed grenades (very important, as left and right have the safety switch on different sides).
Or maybe insist the RTO yell “HOT MIKE HOT MIKE” when somebody has their shared channel radio turned on with their handset locked to “Transmit”. (Hint: If somebody does this, nobody else can transmit, so yelling will do nothing. But it’s fun to watch a private try to fix a problem he can’t. Especially if that private is a ‘discipline problem’ and trying to gain points. More points subtracted when the NCO knows this, and is just fucking with said private.)
But I digress. My NCO’s, who usually thought I was pretty okay (for an officer), used to teach the soldiers new ways to fuck with me all the time. I bought it about 50% of the time. Sometimes because I wanted to see where the joke was going, but more because I just didn’t see it coming.
Beware of being sent to look for the bacon stretcher. Because nobody messes with the cooks.
So it goes both ways. And if you have a sense of humor, it can be a great team building experinece.
There is an ongoing google first-search-results battle with the Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists.
p.s. MCTSI=module controller and time slot interchanger
Acronyms are the ones that can be read as a word, like RADAR and SCUBA. When they have to be spelled out, like BBC and FBI and SDMB, they’re initialisms.
I just had to look up the difference between initialisms and acronyms, and I must say that’s the biggest display of pedantry I’ve ever seen in awhile. Several sources (not just wikipedia) say the terms are interchangeable.
Malleus did you ever seen Star Trek IV? There’s a scene where Kirk and Spock are in 1980’s San Fransisco, and Kirk tells the oceanologist that Spock did a little too much LDS. As I was living in Utah the first time I saw that, I guffawed.
Yep - as a former Management Consultant, we had to process and deal with business jargon constantly in a way that didn’t make potential clients take it seriously and not burst out laughing (“you need to calc the NPV to understand the BEP on that BPR initiative” Net Present Value, Break-Even Point, Business Process Reengineering…:rolleyes:).
I would typically make references to TLA’s to my clients so they would get a chance to vent about the jargon and let us know what TLA’s they thought made sense to adopt and which they thought were stoopid…
I saw Star Trek IV the night it opened – at Trolley Corners in Salt Lake City. It was a huge and enthusiastic audience (the line to get in wenbt around the block). When Shatner said the line about Spock : “I think he did a little too much LDS” – the theater erupted in laughter. You couldn’t hear any dialogue over the noise for the next couple of minutes.