Bethany L. King/flickr
It is, I think you will agree, the rather rare headline that contains a total of eleven exclamation marks. Nonetheless, there it was, on the editorial page of the April 5 New York Times: “OMG!!! OED!!! LOL!!!!!“—a lighthearted, unsigned opinion celebrating the addition of a pair of Internet- and text-message-boosted Three-Letter Initialisms1 into the greatest TLI of them all: the Oxford English Dictionary.
There were a lot of similar headlines that week, conveying much the same news: that the OED had announced, as they do from time to time, a set of new and revised definitions—part of their lexicographers’ never-ending task of making sure the flagship dictionary of the English language remains up to date. Hence, this month, the new inclusion of fnarr-fnarr, singledom, banh mi, smack-talking, stonewash, tinfoil hat, behavioral economics, wassup, biker, runathon, happy camper, Second Coming, rumble-de-thumps (along with dozens of other R-words), and as a headliner, OMG: “colloq. (freq. in the language of electronic communications) . . . Expressing astonishment, excitement, embarrassment, etc.: ‘oh my God!’”
Prime Directives
Rubicon Group Holding
Amid the tumult of the ongoing, not-particularly-seasonal upheavals of the Arab Spring, a little press release last month caused quite a stir among certain quarters of the Western media and the meme-amplifying online world: a planned $1.5 billion development, backed by the king of Jordan, to build a Star Trek theme park at Aqaba on the Red Sea coast.
It’s the sort of story we love to pass along. Eccentric ruler of small nation tied to zany development ploy. Even better, Abdullah II is a noted Trekkie (perhaps even to the extent of insisting that the proper name is Trekker) who once, during his princely days, finagled a non-speaking appearance on an episode of the TV series Star Trek: Voyager. You can watch it on YouTube, his royal highness’s four seconds of futuristic fame, as he stands aglow in the jumpsuit-unitard-uniform of a Starfleet ensign.