April 3, 2009

Recession Lingo

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When the going gets tough, the tough make up euphemisms to soften the blow.  Here are a few recession-inspired words to add to your Urban Dictionary.

In-sourcing: when workers float through different departments in lieu of temps.

BBR: buy, burn, and return. Buying DVDs or software from a store, burning them, and then returning them for a refund.

Intaxication: euphoria when receiving a tax refund.

Wii bum: a person who has no Wii of their own, so goes over to others’ houses largely to play their Wii for free.
 
Sellsumer: a consumer/entrepreneur who hawks insights and ideas to corporations to help sales.
 
TALF’d: Tricked into believing something big is going to happen when it doesn’t.

Ponzimonium: describes the recent spike in mini-Madoffs.
 
Furcation: an unpaid, forced holiday.
 
Shovel-ready: local infrastructure “ready to go” projects waiting for stimulus money.
 
Duppie: a downwordly-mobile urban professional.
 
Renoviction: when a landlord moves a tenant out during renovations and then jacks up the rent.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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