XXX
A thought came to me as I was sculling restlessly on the cusp of sleep at 5AM last night (well, two hours ago). Apart from thinking that perhaps I should attempt to get significantly more than two hours of sleep in order to survive the rest of today, it also occurred to me that "X" is quite possibly the Grand Prize Winner for the award entitled The Most Superfluous Letter in the Alphabet. I mean, honestly. When it boils down to it, really, "X" can be almost entirely replaced by either the "cks" sound or the "z" sound, yielding an equally satisfactory "bocks", "ecksite", "tacksation" and "zenophobia".
Incidentally I do not understand why we feel the need to complicate our lives by having words beginning with "x", when a) the letter's primary phonic function ("cks") is unpronounceable as a prefix, and b) it sounds just like "z" anyway. I therefore propose that we remove the "X" from the alphabet and beef up the "Z" section a bit; all other words with "x" in it should be rewritten with "cks", and the Alphabet Song should be composed for 25 alphabets instead...
...or perhaps not. There's something distinctly unsatisfying about having someone called "Mr. Ecks"; legions of calculus students would be after my neck for removing the "x" from dy/dx (dy/decks looks properly silly); and think of all those pornographic websites/media that will have to change their content to "Ecksecksecks-rated".
Oh, just ignore me. I'm functioning on two hours sleep, no coffee (trying to cut down) and severe tension. Results in 1 hour 27 minutes. Who's counting? Not me.