Opening this week with a visit to the little brother of ‘Fake News’ after PS News’s team of never sleeping investigative journalists discovered and uncovered the dark phenomenon of ‘Fake Acronyms’!
Triumphantly announcing that 17 remote communities in outback Australia were to receive the wonders of solar power through the good graces of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) – whose acronym itself borders on fakedom – the Agency said the noted initiative would be realised through a program known as the Solar Energy Transformation Program.
While congratulations are obviously in order for such a far-sighted community program, the same can’t be said of the acronym which the SETP letters of Solar Energy Transformation Program have corralled as their own: i.e. SETuP!
Set Up? It’s a set-up alright.
The closest the letters in the program’s name come to a ‘u’ (whether upper or lower case), is a nearby ‘T’, which by no stretch of literature can be reasonably mistaken for a ‘u’’!
As TV’s not-so-smart Maxwell Smart would have said: “Close …. but not close enough!”
Headline ache
Staying in the realm of the strained, stretched and struggling now for a quick visit to PS-sssst!’s “Ugh!” file where we find the latest offering from the uber-creative headline honchoes who are the media masterminds at the Federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.
With a well-earned reputation for creative class and pun-tilious pre-eminence preceding its latest offering, the Department’s media magicians have stretched cleverness almost to breaking point with their play-on-word headline for an official announcement alerting the world to the news that a family of rare wild ‘caracal’ cats from Africa could now be seen in Australia due to the fine work of the Department’s biosecurity inspectors.
“Biosecurity officers (played) a key role in ensuring the cats arrived safely and did not pose a risk to our environment, plant, animal and human health,” the announcement announced.
And if we can believe the Department’s headline, even the cats felt good about the transfer.
“Rare wild cats have arrived, feline well” was how the Department sold its story, burdening ‘feline’ with the heaviest of wordy weights but proving as it did that some words in the English language really do have nine lives!
Synonymously speaking
And while we’re having fun with Her Majesty’s language, does anyone know if there’s a word meaning the same as ‘synonym’?
Fabulous book prizes for the best or most entertaining suggestions. Send ideas to [email protected].
Something out of the Bronx
To Rama Gaind’s weekly giveaway now in which two Blu-Ray copies of the acclaimed movie A Bronx Tale, directed by Robert de Niro, are up for grabs.
To join the winners, all two lucky readers had to do was name the girlfriend of character Calogero in the film (played by Lillo Brancato), then manage to be one of the first two entrants to escape from the PS News Barrel of Booty.
The answer was that Calogero’s African American schoolmate Jane (played by Taral Hicks) was his girlfriend and the successful entrants to greet the judges were Andrée H from South Australia’s Ambulance Services and Joanne M from the Australian Taxation Office.
Congratulations to Andrée and Joanne on their win and thanks to everyone who joined in the fun. The Blu-Rays will be raying their way to their new owners soon.
For another chance to enjoy the thrill of the win, simply visit Rama’s giveaway for this week at this PS News link and give it your best shot.
Good luck!
Milestone missed
And finally, it’s not like PS-sssst! or PS News for that matter, to miss reporting a major milestone but last week we did.
And to make matters more embarrassing – it was one of ours!
The edition of PS News that hit the newsstands last week was our 600th!, a significant achievement in anyone’s view.
So it’s Happy 600th to us!
And for anyone doubting the provenance of PS News (or simply struggling to count back 600 weeks), the very first edition of PS News was published on 22 November 2005.
No wonder I feel so old!
Till next week…..
