I Put the "Ugh" in "Doughnut"

I don't get it.

Maybe it's because I come from a long line of writers, teachers, and grammar-nerds. Maybe I'm, like, becoming this crotchety old stick-in-the-mud. Maybe this is just the first step toward the inevitable transformation into an ancient, grumpy relic with a dusty-smelling apartment full of cats and doilies.

But I don't get the appeal of textspeak. And seeing it used really, really, reeeeeeally gets on my (old, crotchety) nerves. I don't mind Internet acronyms like "WTF" (which is, in fact, one of my favorites) because they were created to be abbreviations. But when someone abbreviates a word unnecessarily, well ... I feel all stabby, like someone pissed in my Cheerios.

Seriously (srsly?), I think textspeak (txtspk?) just makes people look dumb. Barely literate. When kids use it, on Facebook statuses and such, I wonder if they're trying to be cool or if they really (rlly?) don't know that there are vowels in words. I mean, how much harder can it be to spend two extra seconds typing "that" instead of "tht" or "and" instead of "n" - especially when it makes you look ever so much more intelligent?

It's just ridiculous. And what's worse, these same kids - the ones who write "dnt" instead of "don't" because it's just sooooo much shorter and more convenient - think nothing of adding unnecessary double letters,  random Xs and weird HTML symbols to their sentences. Like when they post aforementioned Facebook statuses like this:

xx chillin at the mall with the ♥ BesstFriennd ♥ xx  

Really? You can clutter up a perfectly good sentence with all that gobbledygook, but can't be bothered with vowels?

While we're on the subject of grammatical laziness, let's talk about what goes in the middle of doughnuts. I'm not talking about cream filling; I'm talking about the letters U-G-H. A while ago I was typing away when my word processing program told me that "doughnut" was misspelled. I double-checked, thinking I'd missed the g or the h or something - but no. The word was all there, D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T, in its entirety. When I clicked on the spelling suggestions, it wanted me to break up the word: dough nut. Irritated, I typed "donut" - and what do you know? That poor excuse for a word was correct. DONUT. WITH NO u-g-h.

O rlly? What next? Is it going to tell me that "drive-thru" is right, and "drive-through" isn't? I mean, come on. Are we really so pathetically lazy that we think dropping a letter or two makes a profound difference?

Okay, I'm stepping off my spbx. Dismounting from my hgh hrse. And freely admitting that if my deep-rooted scorn for this crap makes me uncool, well then, so be it. At least people (ppl?) know I can spell.

It's D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T. Get it right, ya lazy bastards.