DanMargarita.com

I'm not deeply religious, but even I was taken aback by this seemingly blasphemous acronym.

Acronym is defined in my dictionary as "a word formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term."

OK, I looked up "compound term" as well, hoping that it would be in there as a phrase instead of me having to look up "compound" and "term" separately. That used to always be what you had to do when I was a kid. Now that we seem to have gotten too lazy to want to look up more than one word at a time, they have decided to save us time by giving us two-word phrases such as "carbonic acid," as in "Please pass the carbonic acid."

Acronyms have become an important way for organizations and companies to get their name recognized by the public. They make sure to title themselves so that the initials spell out some cutesy name that somehow relates to them or their product.

A good example would be the police unit known as the "Special Weapons and Tactics" team, better known as the S.W.A.T. team. They could just as easily been called the "Special Tactics and Weapons" team, but what band of bank robbers would fear being surrounded by a "S.T.A.W" team?

You'll often see a bumper sticker for the Drug Awareness Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E. program. The slogan they use is "D.A.R.E. to keep your kids off drugs."

I fear that somewhere, some well meaning parent will take it too literally and wind up challenging their kid.

"All right Bobby. I dare you not to do this crack."

Speaking of crack, a true recent news story involved a private organization that is paying drug addicted mother $200 to be sterilized. They call themselves "Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity." Yes, also known as C.R.A.C.K. So what if you have to mangle the English language by spelling "community" with a "K"?

I have my own idea for an anti-drug program that I would call "Help Everyone Resist Offensive Insidious Narcotics Everywhere" or H.E.R.O.I.N.E.

I'd better copyright that before N.B.A. coaches John Calipari and Pat Riley think of it. Coach Cal got a copyright for the phrase "refuse to not win." (I can't afford to pay him royalties. I'll let you figure it out.)

Coach Riley got a copyright for the phrase---well, not "onepeat" or "twopeat" but the next "peat" after his L.A. Lakers team won three championships in a row. Thus, I have decided to copyright the word "the." Anybody who uses it in the future will have to pay me royalties.

We've always had acronyms that you may not have been aware of. The word "scuba" as in scuba gear, which was the invention by Jacques Cousteau, stands for "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus." He could have also called it "God Aid Suffocating People"or GASP.

As far as I'm concerned, the word "acronym" might as well be an acronym itself for "A Crummy Rotten Ostensibly Needless Yucky Message."