Campfyre Stories

I don’t generally do memes, although I am fascinated by them.  I don’t participate in themed days for blog topics, but since it is Thursday, and I have a big ol’ FOAD, I’ll do this one today.

FOAD to all the people who overuse the acronym concept.  I’m not talking about the convenience of IM acronyms (WTF, LOL, RTFM, TTYL), but people who create acronyms for stupid things because they’re too damned lazy to type out the words.  Song titles are not going to make workable acronyms and, frankly, if you don’t hear people referring to, say, Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey as EGStHEfMaMM, then you can DAMN WELL spell out a song title that has five words to it.
 
It’s bad enough that we’ve picked up on acronyms that used to be industry-specific.  The few people who don’t know what PEBKAC means will find out soon enough if an IT person uses it in front of them, but FUBAR has become pretty standard in American English, as has AWOL (and often out of context) and plenty of other formerly-military terms.  Everything is shortened these days, United Parcel Service and Federal Express have officially changed their names to UPS and FedEx.

But my FOAD doesn’t end here, my friends, not by a long shot because we’ve become lazy with the spoken word as well.  When I talk about parcel delivery, I talk about U P S (you pee ess), but I have heard people pronounce it as a word, UPS (as in plural of up).  It seems that, if it contains a vowel, it has become a word.  (I blame NASA.)  I can understand not wanting to write (or type) out Supreme Court of the United States (although who actually types all of that out?), so instead you write SCOTUS, but IT IS NOT A WORD.  If you say SCOTUS as a word, I know I’m not the only one who’s not going to have the first clue what you’re talking about.  Worse than that, even, is POTUS.  How long does it take to type out "Bush"?  Or Pres. Bush, for those who may (for whatever reason) not understand who Bush is without the qualifier.  And I have heard people say POTUS as a word!!!  What is wrong with you people?

Those of you who think you’re clever because you have decided you know how to pronounce acronyms that never had any business even attempting to be words, those of you who think you’re clever because you can take the first letter of each word in a movie or song title and turn it into nonsensical caps lock garbage, well I have four words for you on this Thursday…

FUCK OFF AND DIE.

Thank you.  That is all.  We now return you to our regularly scheduled "I’m too damn busy to blog right now."