Welcome to a world of CRAP

We miss the snappy happy American acronyms over here.

The comfy safety blanket TARP, more Peanuts style than anyone ever imagined with former Treasury head Hank Paulson in the role of Charlie Brown. Just look at the size of their heads.

Or the PATRIOT Act and all the others.

And when acronyms fail us, we enshrine the names of the valiant lawmakers in the name of the bill.

Of course, since Mark Twain or even earlier, no one who speaks German has expected the Germans to devise a snappy happy title for any law. At best, their abbreviations are a random collection of consonants.

Even the British have failed us in this regard.

Most of their museums are still free, though.

Driven by the fear of early onset depression under so much rain that the Evergreen State (Washington state) would be classified as a desert, the K-landnews team ran an acronym competition.

The winner is CRAP.

CRAP is everywhere around us. Do a 180 degree scan of your room. What do you see?

Crap is also inside us.

Crap stands for something, it has meaning.

It is the acronym of Consumer Recovery Assistance Program.  Crap has been embraced by people from all walks of life, by the rich and the poor alike.

Former president Bush's cheerful message to us then Americans to go out and spend was a heartfelt expression of CRAP.

Our single unemployed mother's less cheerful question to her son unpacking his latest shopping trophy shows awareness of the program: "What's that CRAP now?"

The soaring event ticket prices in Spain, a country bled as dry as the arid La Mancha region,  are CRAP.  Rumors have it that the  mayor of the small town in Valencia Province famous for its annual ripe tomato fight wanted to call the fee introduced this year a "German fee" but then accepted the umbrella CRAP.

Some forward thinking Europeans have introduced another CRAP idea: consumers should be paid some money for their personal data. After all, if online outfits collect your data, why not make them pay you for the privilege?

That would never fly in the U.S.

Personal data exchanges would pop up instantly. They would offer swap services, for example, hey, I live in Seattle and want a new address so I can charge Google for my new data. Anybody in the Pheonix, AZ, area interested in an exchange?

The latest claim of German social media expert Sasha, the rooster, Lobo that Google's aim is world domination? CRAP.

As we said, CRAP is all around us, and it is here to stay.

This post? Sure.