Eureka!
I figured out how to blogroll! I know it isn't exactly rocket science... However after many futile attempts (and screw ups), I managed it! It is simple after all.. Merely involves elementary knowledge of html and cut & paste skills. Still, on the first few attempts i managed to screw up my blog page royally.. (classic TARFU situation) but i prevented my webpage from being FUBAR! For those of you who aren't familiar with FUBAR.. It stands for F&*$ed Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair. (So you can now work out TARFU!) It's actually standard linux terminology now. If you've ever worked on linux, you must be familiar with the foo and the bar which are like standard filename substitutes for the unknown.. It's supposed to signify programmes that have become so messy and complicated that they are fubar. Fubar is technically a quasi-military acronym which is believed to have been originated from British WW2 army slang.. Variations of the same include SNAFU (Situation Normal! All F@^%ed up) and FUNDY (F@%$!ed Up Not Dead Yet!) How the unix programming jargon came to incorporate british army slang is still a mystery.. People suggest that these two evolved independently in two separate continents (kinda like human beings). I don't think so.. The resemblence is uncanny!I first heard of it in a 1989 action move 'Tango & Cash' (which is so bad btw that it's worth a watch just to have a coupla hours of laughter!) Ofcourse i did'nt think so back in the early/mid nineties when i saw the movie. Back in 9th class, It was a super 'cool' movie.. Great slang! Brilliant Action! Good guys whipping the bad guys! What more could you want!
P.S : In case you haven't figured out TARFU ... Things are Really/Royally F@$!ed up!
posted by akshay @ 2:51 PM
2 Comments:
This is what the Jargon File 4.4.7 says abt foobar When ‘foo’ is used in connection with ‘bar’ it has generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (‘Fucked Up Beyond All Repair’ or ‘Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition’), later modified to foobar. Early versions of the Jargon File interpreted this change as a post-war bowdlerization, but it it now seems more likely that FUBAR was itself a derivative of ‘foo’ perhaps influenced by German furchtbar (terrible) — ‘foobar’ may actually have been the original form.
For, it seems, the word ‘foo’ itself had an immediate prewar history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses were in the Smokey Stover comic strip published from about 1930 to about 1952. Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as “Notary Sojac” and “1506 nix nix”. The word “foo” frequently appeared on license plates of cars, in nonsense sayings in the background of some frames (such as “He who foos last foos best” or “Many smoke but foo men chew”), and Holman had Smokey say “Where there's foo, there's fire”.
According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to have found the word “foo” on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this one was almost certainly the Mandarin Chinese word fu (sometimes transliterated foo), which can mean “happiness” or “prosperity” when spoken with the rising tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called “fu dogs”). English speakers' reception of Holman's ‘foo’ nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish ‘feh’ and English ‘fooey’ and ‘fool’.
There are more fundaes in the JF entry abt foo
Glad to know u figured out blogrolling. Looks like your conversation with a certain Fred Foobar helped ;) and kindly add his name to ur blogroll
@akshay:
A good copy from wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU
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