Bullshit bingo of the day: Eljibiti

30/01/10

onion_news873

The other night, I was dining with someone who didn’t know their acronym from their elbow. I had to explain MSM (mice that have sex with mice; no, wait…) and had a special rant about LGBT. For the unitiated that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. It just trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? And it is just about as elegant conceptually as it is linguistically. Those groups don’t actually want to hang out together very often (except, perhaps, where they’re bidding for HIV funding). It’s a bit like forming a trade association for Doctors, Actors, Farmers and Tailors — DAFT.

Inspired by Indonesian petrol stations, which sell “Elpiji” (LPG, liquified petroleum gas), I’ve started writing this most annoying acronym as “Eljibiti”. But The Onion has done it better, in this hilarious spoof report on Gay Pride. LAGALABATATA — the Los Angeles Gay And Lesbian And Bisexual And Transvestite And Transgender Alliance. Like so much else in The Onion, it is so funny because it is so close to the truth.

Thanks to Roger for the smile.

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This post was published on 30/01/10 in Men, women and others.

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3 comments

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Tags: bullshit bingo, Laughs, LGBT, MSM.

Comment by Elizabeth, 01/02/10, 02:42:

Two nice comments via Facebook. From Catherine Lugrin:
Geneva has recently changed its internal rules and regulations regarding the registration of Swiss citizens and foreigners inside the canton and has issued a manual for its civil servants called CALVIN. When I asked the girl behind the counter what Calvin has to do with the administration of our secular state, she answered that part of my taxes … See Morehas been used to pay a guy to find an acronym for the new manual and he ended up with CALVIN: Concept Automatisé pour la Localisation et la Visualisation INdividuelle. I wish they had chosen GAGALABATATA

and from Anne Turner:
we were SO close to having a Comite de Unidade Nasional Timorense….
Pingback by peripheries » Blog Archive » Eljibiti Mon Amour, 01/02/10, 08:38:

[...] that was not one. It was the birth of the LGB (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual or Eljibiti, copyright Wisdom of Whores). But soon it was clear that this new acronym failed to capture transgender (TG) people and the [...]
Comment by Idan, 15/04/10, 01:51:

A few years ago, there was a brouhaha here in Israel about a planned pride parade taking place in Jerusalem.

In the wake of that pride parade, I designed the following “comic”, which made fun of the growing plurality of initials required to represent all of the groups in a pride parade.

http://gazit.me.s3.amazonaws.com/petitiontomarch.png

The Wisdom of Whores

Of sex and science. Elizabeth Pisani’s blog about HIV and other sundry things.

30/01/10