Sci Fi Channel Changes Spelling of Name, Moves To LA To Give Acting a Try

Sometimes words just stop sounding right. Say umbrella or danish or camp long enough and the very fabric of human language begins to unravel in your head. An alternate spelling can do the same thing. After a couple years, the word singular looked incorrect because Cingular was everywhere. 

When the Sci Fi Channel pulled a Diddy and became Syfy (same pronunciation), I immediately got sad because this meant I'd need to maintain a pre-existing association but to a brand new word. It's like when they rename stadiums. Or this.

You cannot trademark a genre. Trust me, I know how this works and don't bother trying to register "Historical Choose-Your-Own Sex-venture," because I have a friend who tried for like years but the fascists at the patent office just wouldn't get off their fat asses and talk to me even though I worked really hard and spent a lot of time and money writing it. My friend, not me.

Apparently this rebrand is the result of not being able to trademark Sci Fi. The channel was all, "We've been around long enough. Let's lose the Saturn and regular spelling and go for more of a lobby-of-a-pharmaceutical-company feel." 

Syfy. Imajn Gr8r Spellng.

Also, if you went to college you probably have nicknames for venereal diseases because you're immature. And if you're like me, you called your freshman year dorm room neighbor Syphie because he got lucky on move-in day and he immediately thought he had syphilis, which was hilarious because that's something 19th century impressionist painters get but the name stuck. So Syfy reminds me of that also. Good one, national television channel. Way to make me think of STDs but in the future!

If they are truly going through with this new spelling thing, they should rename all their shows to reflect the change. Meaning Battlestar Galactica is Batlstar Galaktyka, Quantum Leap is Kwantum Leep, and all those daytime airings of Steven Spielberg's A.I. will be Kil Yerself.