Catharsis - Wife Swap

Since last night I've had something stuck at the front of my brain, and I can't shift it. This wouldn't be a problem if it was some revolutionary new idea or patentable concept, such as a new pizza topping combination that could change the political face of the planet, or a cure for the common person, but sadly, it's much more mundane...

It's actually something that someone called Shaz said on the social-studies-as-light-entertainment-TV train-wreck that is Channel 4's Wife Swap. There are a lot of reasons why me watching this show is a bad idea, not least because annoying people annoy me at a basic level, and the sort of annoying people who sign up to be the subject of "reality" tv shows annoy me at a slightly more complicated level, but I always end up drifting around the doorway of the living room when my partner watches it, and often also find myself shouting at the television.

Now, Shaz was a perfect example of everything I hate about these people, being one of the "loud, ignorant and at the same time pretentious" breed (how come those three things often go together?) but the thing that stuck in my head wasn't her hypocrisy, her intolerance of others, or the fact that she has, like all good parents, managed to transfer ALL of her failings and inadequacies onto her offspring. No, it was her use of an acronym that JUST MADE NO SENSE that has perplexed and infuriated me.

I'm barely restraining myself from ranting about my hatred of acronym-fever... suffice to say that I find this bastard-twin-sister to the evil bitch of manager-speak (wet nurses to the runt baby of text/net-speak that they are) a little offensive, especially used as it so often is as a shortcut to "depth" of character. Bearing that in mind, imagine how I feel when someone uses one that, well, for god's sake, DOESN'T EVEN MAKE ANY SENSE!

So when this intellectual midget is berating her swap-partners, and starts on the acronyms, picture my horror. And when she is told to "get a life", and she shouts "I've got a life... My life is full and exciting! That's what the word means: Life Is Full and Exciting. L-I-F-E!" think about the turmoil my head was suddenly in, and still is now.

Life Is Full and Exciting? That's where the word "Life" comes from? Quite aside from the fact that I didn't think proper words like "life" and apparently "dull" found their origins in acronyms (I'd always vaguely assumed most of them either came out of either ancient Greece, antique France, and Latinia, where Latin comes from) and would be using them a lot less if I had done...

"Life" means "Life Is Full and Exciting"? How does that work? If that's what it means, what does the word "Life" in the expanded acronym signify? I can only assume it means "Life Is Full and Exciting", in which case that means that the word "Life" actually means "Life is full and exciting is full and exciting". But then, of course, it doesn't. It actually means "Life is full and exciting is full and exciting is full and exciting" and so on, and so forth, like mad cats stretching off into infinity.

It does my head in that someone would say something so stupid, and think they were so clever for saying it.

Having said that, I shouldn't be so surprised. This is the same woman who said:

"I learned how to live with false people in MFI buildings. They are narrow-minded, self-centred, self-obsessed living in a plastic world."

She seems to be operating under the impression that the house she lived in for two weeks was:
a) made entirely of plastic and b) bought at MFI.

And she says "they don't know anything about the real world"! Cripes. I want to visit her real world. The MFI store there sounds GREAT!

I shouldn't mock. The woman does "...work 55 hours a week and ... make a difference." and I could never comfortably say that about myself. Maybe I should allow her acronyms.