Iain and his birth as an internationally renowned critic

Picked up a Newsweek the other day and read this little treat. It instilled within me a sort of illogical disdain that I carried with me throughout the rest of the day. Being as I am the sort of person to share to others his normal, every-day illogical disdainery, I will now endeavor to do so.

Although before I write any further, let me say that any cliches to be found in this entry are there unknowingly. I'm not trying for some pedantic attempts at witticisms here, as it seems I have the entirety of the article's comments section to do that for me already.

Oh yeah, I went there comments section. You thought I was just going to talk about the article and leave you by the wayside didn't you. Not so. Burn.

At the beginning of the article the guy has a good point; cliches are the crutches that lazy writers rely on. About when he gets to "mass exodus" and his laughable exposition against the medicinal industry though, he loses me. Clearly it's a case of a good idea gone awry in the pursuit of a more entertaining article, but still, he just blatantly carries on.

Just take a long look at the article once you're done reading it, it consists entirely of alarmingly bad examples of colloquialisms in normal speech. Forgetting for the moment that a colloquialism, i.e. cliche, is a happenstance that occurs solely in informal conversations, and therefore both the part of my previous sentence "colloquialisms in normal speech" is redundant, as well as over three fourths of that article. What's the point of filling up an entire article with such terrible examples? I've mentioned this before to Ali, but when you're trying to be critical of someone, it is imperative that in the process you don't expose yourself for being the pompous moron you really are.

Here's a great example of it (no, not this entry, that article I linked to you earlier in the post). A stirring rallying cry, railing against the inadequacies of our nation's writing abilities, that in its single-minded zealotry, manages to transform an otherwise reasonable argument and possibly well written article into a meaningless piece of chest beating. A tirade devoid of meaning; merely a crotchety old professor airing his grievances, repeatedly and without end.

There. Illogical disdain complete.Then again, I'm probably missing the point of the article and magazine entirely, but hey, they don't call it illogical for nothin'.

While I'm still going though, I think I might just hit another topic. This subject reminds me of a logical fallacy-laden argument once given to me. That of, if you aren't capable enough to do something well, than you have no foundation with which to stand on in order to criticize. In response I always thought to myself, "Wow, how novel. You just single-handedly denied legitimacy to the thousands of people that hold job as reviewers, commentators, critics. Way to go. Douche." Now if only I could have thought of that when I was actually in that conversation.

The sheer amount of irony contained in this one post is overwhelming. I think I'll stop now.

Edit: While making this post I wrote "meaningless piece of drivel" only to replace it with "chest beating" to try to stick the drivel theme, but still to stay true to my pompous and decidedly not moronic tendencies. A quick Google search gives back the headline, "Is Chest Beating as Good for People as it is for Primates?" Touché God, touché.