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I've been downloading and cycloptically watching the new series Californication because a) I quite like David Duchovny b) he plays a hard-drinking writer c) the pilot episode was so chickablock with prettily wobbling breastflesh that, well, how could I say no?

Since then, sadly, the per-episode count of nipples'n'bottoms has dropped precipitously, perhaps because Australian grannies spit the proverbial dummy, and they want to play nice. Or it was just a cynical attention-grab ploy. So it goes. The series hasn't lived up to the promise of the pilot, but it's something to play up in the corner of my monitor while I'm metafiltering or fiddling with design stuff. Lets me vicariously be that guy that I'd already tired of actually being by the time I was 30, but who I still miss, sometimes, a bit.

Anyway, all that's preliminary to a plot thread from a couple of episodes ago that left me scratching my head a little, wondering if either I was out of touch with what's actually happening to the language in America, or if the writers are.

See, Duchovny, playing boozehound and improbably-lucky-with-the-ladies author Hank Moody, is impelled into spasms of disgust and despair at the decline of Culture (the backstory being that he is blocked, thus drunk, and whoring himself out to a corporate blog for cash) when one of his recent conquests actually says 'LOL' out loud. In, if I recall correctly, barefaced unironic response to some bon mot he comes out with in the sack.

Do people actually say LOL now? Out loud? (And by people, I mean, you know, adults.) Do kids even do it? Am I that old?

See, the thing is, I'm almost willing to believe it, because listening to the quite entertaining Totally Rad Show podcast the other day, Alex, whose giddy wordplay I usually enjoy, came out with '[Name of somebody] FTW!'

FTW means 'for the win', for those of you even crustier and more clued-out than I.

But he didn't actually say 'for the win!', he said 'FTW!' 'For the win' has three syllables, even after a dozen beers. 'FTW' has five. The combination of vowels and consonants are bumpier and harder to say. It just doesn't make any goddamn sense.

WHAT DID YOU SAY MY CATS ARE NOT FREEBALLING GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN YOU KIDS WHO TOOK MY MEDICINE OH MY ACHING BUNIONS

I don't know. I guess I'll just go and have a nice glass of Metamucil or something.

[Update: I'd just like to say that after watching the first season that that Californication show is pretty much crap, with only sporadic flashes of brilliance. I've got to guess it's either written by committee or by dartboard, because it veers from well-written to laughably bad, seemingly at random. Too bad.]