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Got Bacn? More E-mail Buzzwords We'd Like To See

"Bacn" is a new buzzword for e-mail you want, but don't want to see right away. Examples: newsletters, Google Alerts, and notifications from social networking services. Bacn is a great buzzword, but it's only the beginning. We applied our sophisticated analytical tools and came up with additional needed jargon:

Prk (pronounced "pork") is forwarded e-mail from friends and relatives, which can include jokes, e-cards, conspiracy theories about how JFK and Elvis caused 9/11, rumors about Bill Gates offering $5 to everyone who forwards e-mail, and urban legends about stalkers at highway rest stops who give blotter acid to children and steal their kidneys.

Toob Steak Irrelevant bulk e-mail sent from employees at corporate headquarters to all people on the team, including remote workers. The pizza delivery guy has arrived? Bon appetit, but my home office is 3,000 miles away. Don't save me a slice.

Rump Roast: E-mail cc'd to the boss to cover the sender's ass.

Artist Susan Reynolds posted a whole series of bacn spinoffs on her Twitter account. My favorite: "Non personal email about Jersey: Hobokn."

The bacn Web site describes bacn as "a new problem." But in fact it's a very old problem, pre-dating the Web by a good stretch. Newsletters and mailing lists have been around a long, long time; SF-Lovers, one of the first e-mail mailing lists, has been around since 1979.

I suspect that's longer than the guys who coined the word "bacn" have been alive; from the looks of this video, I'd say they're in their mid-20s.

And that's probably why they think bacn is a new problem; it's new to them.

Bacn is a pretty simple problem to solve: Set up rules in your e-mail program to filter the bacn to its own folder. Look at the folder when you have time. Problem solved.

The guy on the left in that video has a more difficult problem: His hair. The fauxhawk is the mullet of the 21st Century. You heard it here first.

Come up with some e-mail buzzwords and let us know about them below.

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