ROTFL. I recently saw this in a PowerPoint presentation on effective business writing. At the time, the speaker was addressing how abbreviated language in emails can be turbid and indecipherable. I stared at ROTFL and tried to figure it out. My first guess was Ridiculously Obnoxious Tetchy Fat Lad. My second guess was Rustic Old Trash from Louisiana. My last guess was Really Old Tramp Feels Lovable. I was wrong about all of them. The speaker told her audience that it meant Rolling on the Floor Laughing. I then reacted by saying, “WTF?”

I am sorry, but I studied English in college and I appreciate the correct use of our language. I’m not perfect. I do make mistakes and you might even find me doing so in my writing, but at least I try to adhere to style guidelines. However, it is becoming more and more common to see abbreviated, text-like language in everyday writing and I think this is slowly killing me. I never thought that I would be killed by one of my pet peeves, but if I receive another email or text message with LOL in it, I might have an aneurysm.

I recently fell into a conversation with a friend about children’s stories. I can’t recall how the conversation came about, but for some reason I referenced "The Three Little Pigs." I couldn’t remember how the story went, so I asked her to tell it to me. In her version, each little pig built houses, but only one of the houses was made out of bricks. The other two were made out of straw and sticks. The Big Bad Wolf went to the first pig’s straw house and blew it down, so the pig ran over to his brother’s house made of sticks. The wolf then went to that house, huffed and puffed and blew it down, so the two brothers escaped to the third brother’s brick house. Once they got there, the wolf tried to blow it down, but failed. That was the end of her story.

Needless to say, her story bored the crap out of me. I couldn’t believe that the once PG-13 story had now turned into a G-rated, soft-core fairy tale. It was as though someone had remade Psycho into a film about a boy who takes care of his kind old mother at a motel that had turn down service and continental breakfast for all its guests.

This last week, I went to make some coffee for my coworkers, when I saw this AP article posted above the coffee maker:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- It wasn't just the caffeine that gave an Iowa woman an extra jolt after she had her morning coffee. It was also the bat she found in the filter. The Iowa Department of Public Health says the woman reported a bat in her house but wasn't too worried about it. She turned on her automatic coffee maker before bedtime and drank her coffee the next morning. She discovered the bat in the filter when she went to clean it that night. The woman has undergone treatment for possible rabies. Health officials say that the bat was sent to a lab but that its brain was too cooked by the hot water to determine whether it had rabies.

As I stood there, placing the coffee filter into the basket, followed by scoops of coffee grounds, I said to myself, “There has to be more to this story.” I know that my coworkers just wanted to freak me out a bit, but all they did was incite me to uncover the truth.

I’m not sure when U of I’s drop date for classes is, but if you are a student and you’re thinking about dropping classes, or dropping out completely, heed this caveat: don’t drop after the drop date.

After I left U of I, I decided to go back to school to pursue a nursing degree. I made the huge mistake of going to a private school, which costs exorbitantly more than a two-year or a one-year, accelerated program. I made it through two semesters and then I entered the clinical phase.

I was able to catch some of WPGU’s five o’ clock newscast on Thursday afternoon. I really liked the investigative report that was done on who has the legal right of way between bicyclists and pedestrians on the Quad. One of WPGU’s reporters interviewed this poor little girl who had been mowed down by a guy on a bicycle. She said that as she was pretty cut up from the incident and that the guy yelled at her, then took off down the street, pissed that she got in his way.

I was running down the street earlier this week, just taking in my surroundings, when I noticed a young girl walking in my direction, about five blocks away. As I got closer to her, I saw her walk up the steps of a house. Then I saw her walk inside the house, without knocking or ringing a doorbell. At first it didn’t seem like a big deal, but the more I thought about it, the more I grew concerned. I guess that when you hear accounts of kidnapping, rape, robbery and assault in this area, it’s hard to believe that someone would feel safe enough to leave their house unlocked.