kidattypewriter

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Crapronyms

I don't know what SBS were thinking when they named their new television show what they did, but I think they were thinking the wrong thing. The show is 'RAN: Remote Area Nurse', and it's named after an acronym. As if we didn't have enough acronyms already, with idiots LOLing and LMFAOing left, right, and centre.

I work in the transcription department of an Australian media monitoring company, and we have to deal with hundreds of the fuckers. FTA, STD, NAFTA, DFAT, DHA and DHS all get a look in fairly regularly, and there are many, many others.
By far the worst are the acronyms that have other acronyms in them. Here's one for your perusal and abuse:

AUSFTA

What is this horrid, unpronounceable thing? What can I do with an AUSFTA, I hear you cry? What kind of food does it eat?
In fact, an AUSFTA is an Australian/ US Free Trade Agreement, the US standing for United States of America.

The dreadful possibility arises that soon, we will be dealing with acronyms that have other acronyms in them that have other acronyms in them, and so on, and so on, and so on. Soon, we will have an acronym that is infinitely deep, and then where will we be?
But perhaps this is where the person who invented the acronym wanted us to be. Perhaps he or she foresaw a time, not far in the future, where every word that people said, wrote or typed were just references to other words that people said, wrote, or typed, and words had lost all actual meaning.

Acronyms can be fun. Once I wrote an editorial for a magazine in which I embedded several swear words in the text by using acronyms. Jim Treacher once had a poem to a left-wing poetry site with several, er, colourful acronyms in it. But there are too many of the bastards! We have to stop expressing ourselves through acronyms. People, do this for the sake of the english language: ring up your mother, and swear at her. Your mother may not like it, but at least she'll fucking understand it.

Over-and-fucking-out.

2 comments:

TimT said...

That's good. That's very good!

Anonymous said...

AHH the TLA....

I work for a telecommunications company as a systems administrator and they are full of them...in fact most if the Computer systems and Projects are Acronyms

List of my favourites...
PEBCAK
Problem exists between chair and keyboard

RTFM
Read the fucking manual

WTF
What the Fuck

List of my hated's

FYI
FYA
ASAP

and the rest

Email: timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au

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