Alphababble

So, I was trying to hold my tongue in just the right way to tweak the ol' rabbit ears around to the optimal orientation to snare CSI-NY outta the snowy ether last night, when the picture suddenly faded in, and I was hit with this glorious sampling of perverse obtusity: "Coming, tomorrow, in primetime on CTV, The O.C., followed by CSI and ER".

It was a revelation. I mean, this is Ottawa, and dog only knows the number of crackberry whores circling the parliamentary precincts, whose status, nay, very existence, hinges on their ability to quickly discriminate between largely meaningless-sounding acronyms like DFAIT, DIAND, JTF2 and, for all I know, EMU (but some of us coyotes fantasize a lot about eating large, flightless, free-range drumsticks, so that may just be me). They also need to be able sort out which ones are now current and which have been discarded in the neverending series of (also largely meaningless) governmental department shuffles.

Nevertheless -- and I say this as a canine fan of such dogs as NCIS, V.I.P., ET, 24, and even the NHL during playoffs -- we may have gone a little too far with the alphabet souping of civilization, when an entire on-air promo is devoted to an announcer spitting out a string of letters and trying to make them sound like must-see TV. Don'cha think it lacks elegance? LOL. Oops. That last thing just slipped in there... But then, as a member of a group of erstwhile metabloggers who style themselves in private conversation as ESIs, I probably shouldn't be too critical.