On my way into work yesterday morning, as I headed up the stairs I saw a sign on the only working elevator in the building that read "OOC." When I came back from the gym later in the morning, it was still there and more than one person seemed to be a tad exorcised about all this ooc business.
I must have been raised by hermit crabs or something since most of the stuff everyone else seems to know automatically I not only never knew but upon learning react very badly in responding to. This elevator thing was both the former and the latter. I learned OOC, notice the caps, is "short for 'out of commission.'" Really? Actually, as I pointed out, broken is short for out of commission; I'm not sure what OOC actually is except stupid because of the second O.
What, I was asked, is my problem with the second O? Since when does 'of'' get its own letter, I wondered. After all we are Living in the USA, not the USOA, which is what we should be if the elevator is OOC. Perhaps it's a 'good for the goose, good for the gander' rule as SL could mean almost anything but we all know about SOL. And why isn't it SOOL since the o's are for 'out of'?
Do you remember FYI, for your information? Now it's been moved upscale and uptown to FYSA, for your situational awareness. Huge improvement, don't you think? I am not making that up-I got a note just a while back that began with a paragraph explaining FYSA with this doozie: BLUF, Bottom Line Up Front.
If the purpose of the acronym is to speed communications, but in so using, you must halt the conversational flow to explain your intellectual shorthand, what have you saved and for whom? And is that always, or even more than sporadically, a good idea? It's not like we can buy anything with all this additional time and I don't know where you can trade it in for vowels and consonants to make even more words to explain that cunning stunt (say that three times fast) you invented. But, I'm willing to give it a go if you are, OIBiY. Oh I Believe in Yesterday. Saved you a whole 2:01 right there. You're welcome.
-bill kenny
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