CMPAL!

Okay, first of all, it's Valentine's Day. For one more hour, anyway. Yesterday I drew and printed out cards with little bears on them for Brianna to give to the kids in her class, to break up the monotony of all the Disney Princess/SpongeBob Squarepants/Ninja Turtle store-bought cards all the rest of the kids brought in.

Drawing the bear was the easy part. The hard part was thinking of something to write on them. I thought of just going with a generic "Happy Valentine's Day!" But according to the school calender, February 14 is "Red and Pink Day". I didn't know if this was some asinine PC re-imaging of Valentine's Day, which would be completely stupid, or simply an extension of "School Spirit Week," (Monday was "Crazy Hat Day", etc.), which is slightly less stupid. Anyway, just to safeguard myself from some parent complaining that by getting a card with the words "Valentine's Day" on it, their kid was coerced into participating in a vaguely Christian pseudo-holiday fueled by greeting card companies, and said participation somehow force-fed religious dogma that shouldn't be allowed in schools into their kid, which in turn would leave me no choice but to beat the parent senseless with their own shoes, I decided to pass on using the V word all together.

But the cards had to say something, so I thought up some groan-inducing puns on the word "bear," settling on "You're my BEARst friend!" Yeah, not my best effort, but you've got to play to your audience, and I didn't think eight-year-olds would appreciate my other choice, "Cards with cutesy puns are unBEARable!" I figured for today's post I could put up a picture of the card, with no text, and encourage you, the four people who still read this thing, to come up with some equally bad bear-themed puns. or whatever else you think should have gone on the card. But alas, it was not to be. Last month I switched from Blogger Beta to, um, whatever you call the non-Beta version, and some weird stuff has been happening ever since (if you're viewing this with Mozilla Firefox, maybe you know what I'm talking about). One of the fun side effects is not being able to access my blog on my laptop, because my username and password changed somehow.

Fortunately (I suppose) I can still log in at home, but the image of the card is at work. And since most people won't even see this until Thursday, I guess I'm just going to have to write about something else. Which, logically, brings me to today's (and more than likely tomorrow's) topic: A Moratorium on LOL

As I've stated before, the only time I've ever written "LOL" was to illustrate my disdain for it. Not just because it's unnecessary and...ugh...ubiquitous, but most of the time, it's a flat-out lie. Seriously, if you've ever typed LOL, can you honestly say that at that moment you were actually laughing out loud? Really?

Even more to the point, has anyone in recorded history ever literally rolled on the floor laughing out loud (ROTFLOL), or the dreaded ROTFLMAO? My guess is no, unless they suddenly found themselves on fire and got down to stop, drop and roll, and while they were rolling they started to think about something they saw on The Office the night before. Oh, Dwight, will you ever win? I mean, Ow! There are burns on over 70% of my body!

By the way, before I discovered they were acronyms, whenever I read ROTFLOL and ROTFLMAO I pronounced them phonetically, assuming they were onomatopoeias for the sounds people make when they burst out laughing. Actually, that's still how I read them. ROTFLMAO sounds to me like someone trying to hold in laughter until they just can't hold it anymore. ROTFLMAO! It kind of sounds like puking, too. Laughing so hard you actually puked is a pretty bold statement.

Anyway, barring the catching on fire scenario, I'd say that most of these tired memes are, among other things, grossly exaggerated. For example, I happen to be easily amused, and while I find a lot of different things funny, most of the time I just sort of laugh quietly to myself, without it ever reaching as far as vocalization. It doesn't mean it's any less funny; I'm just laughing in my head. If I laughed out loud at every little thing, people would thing I'm nuts. You know, moreso.

I think from now on, if you read something online that's funny enough to warrant an internal "Heh," or even a quick exhale through the nostrils and a knowing nod of the head, but not enough to strain your vocal chords, you should type LOTI (laughing on the inside) or LIMH (laughing in my head.) Sometimes when I laugh to myself, I visualize a little me in my head laughing, so I guess that would be LMLIMH (little me laughing in my head). Maybe that one's s a bit much. But the other two, I say you're looking at the future of internet shorthand. Sure they're not as accessible as LOL, they're admittedly kind of clunky, but give them time; they'll catch on. Show your approval of something humorous without resorting to hyperbole! OMG, LOTI!

Here's some more helpful, real-world acronyms for use on the internets:

EQTN (exhaled quickly through nose)
LSHIS (laughed so hard I snorted)
CMPAL(crapped my pants a little)
LOOP (laughed out of pity)
GID (groaned in disgust)
LFIH (lost faith in humanity)

There's the list. Learn it. Know it. Live it.