On May 7, 2014, at 11:09 PM, Rob O'Connor <xxxxxx@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> "It's not a meson gun - it actually causes random neutrons in the target to become antineutrons and annihilate. The management at General Products didn't like the names the lab group were proposing. What the hell is an AWABAC device[1], anyway?"

Dr. Meson sighed, and said to The Manager “That was a miscommunication, it was supposed to have a final ‘A’ on the end for 'Augmented Weak interaction Accelerated Baryonic Annihilation Cascade Apparatus’ or ‘AWABACA’”

Dr. Meson gulped like he’d swallowed a bug.

Then the marketing team came up with this appalling jingle for the adverts.”

He pulled out his comm, fiddled for a moment, “Ah here it is…” He showed The Manager a vid of the recent meeting of the developers with their assigned marketing team.

He pressed a button and out came the reedy voice of the AWABAC marketing team.

“I’m not going to be the singer, but we really think that this will synergize the mindshare virally refactoring the target demographic. Ahem…”

While The Manager was distracted by the vid. Dr. Meson surreptitiously stuffed some plugs into his ears.

"AWABACA,AWABACA,
	AWABACA,AWABACA,
	AWABACA,AWABACA,
		AWABACA,

In the battle, the big space battle, their ship blows up right noooow.”

More members of the marketing team chimed in to harmonize with their equally off-key voices.

"AWABACA,AWABACA"

The Manager gulped, ashen faced, and screamed “TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!!”

Dr. Meson thumbed his comm, ending the torment, and pulled out the ear plugs.

“I lost everyone in that room for three days, blackout drunk, five if you count the crippling hangovers we were suffering. Sanchez still wakes up screaming sometimes.”

“So we drew straws to rename the device, and I got the short one. We think it should be called ‘A Meson Gun’."

The manager, still shaking, looked at him “Huh?"

“Anyone who heard that, that *song* still suffers. We’ve had to revise all our documentation to remove any traces of that acronym...just reading it causes some of us to vomit.

It could have been worse, Dr. Putz could have drawn the short one…”

The Manager nodded weakly “Fine, fine, we’ll call it the "Meson Gun". Just make sure that no copy of that video ever surfaces!”

A week later the local newsfeed carried a small article about the tragic accident killing several members of the General Products marketing division. Apparently the recording studio they were in mysteriously exploded. A puzzled investigator said “It’s like a huge explosion came from nowhere.We found no traces of any sort of explosive material."

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs