Funny but True...and Forbidden

Read this. Now.


The Ten Most Important Things They Didn't Teach you in School


Among the many things I love about Cracked.com, this has to be the single most alluring: if you took out all the dick jokes and smarmy captions (the dick jokes should stay, mind you; they are finely-crafted), this is a lucid, well-researched essay with ramifications beyond entertainment. It may be a top-ten list, but it also would be a fantastic curricullum for a life skills course. Keep in mind, this is coming from a guy who teaches life skills courses.


I would pack up and move states to work at a school that would let me teach kids that success is about "1. Talent 2. Hard Work 3.Randomly Meeting the Right People and Not Pissing Them Off," or a chapter called "Why Hippies Have Never Discovered a Single Disease Cure." Pardon the cliche, but Cracked.com is often funny because it is true. In my experience, most American teens are so steeped in inauthenticity from all sides of the culture that they find a lack of bullshit absolutely intoxicating. But despite the obvious interest kids would show in this stuff, a teacher would get fired for phrasing it this way (i.e. effectively). It'll never be common sense until we teach it to everybody.

Honoring the Iconoclast: F. U. Fitzgerald

Pictured Above: shameless, hate-mongering filth

I present to you my first example of startling critical insight: an expose on that hack F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Waste of Time and a pointless Read

When I first read this book, I thought it was very bad. Then in class it caught my interest again. I do not know why. I wasted much time reading critical appraisals, but they are all junk. So is this book. I don't care what anybody says there are *SEVERAL* parts that *DO* seem to be "scribbled drunk" and are nearly unintelligible. The book is filled with all kinds of errors, particuliarly chronological. There is also plenty of *PREJUDICE* and *RACISM* in this book. Wolfsheim is singled out as "a small, flat nosed Jew" despite the fact that he never mentions this. Nick also constantly refers to his "tragic nose". What garbage. Also when Tom talks about the "Superior Nordic Race nobody seems to care *IN THE LEAST* about the horrible things he is saying. Nick's maid is refered to as "my Finn", which is so racist as to be almost unintelligible. Daisy and Gatsby are proposterous characters. The idea that they can never get together *MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER*. I don't care about society standards that is completely ridiculous. That Daisy would even think of staying with Tom dates this book *HORRIBLY* at the very least and more realitically turns into *A VIRTUAL CARTOON*. How and why Gatsby would do what he did is not believably in the least. Gatsby would never have gone to Oxford if he had truly cared about Daisy. The Confrontation makes absolutely no sense. Tom calls Gatsby a bootlegger with a drink in his hand. That is *THE WEAKEST WRITING I HAVE EVER SEEN.* Don't bother to read this book.

Did you know that the plot isn’t in the right order?! And the characters are racist?! How DARE the author fail to correct those fictional peoples’ make-believe prejudices and synchronize their pretend actions with the Navy Master clock!

This great mind not only summoned up the courage to contradict 80 years of critical praise, but the style of writing clearly shows that such bravery was entirely selfless. For example, notice the subtle use of the caps lock key that ever so slightly draws the reader’s eye to the important parts of the review. The reviewer even sacrifices his/her credibility for the sake of the reader's well-being, artfully misspelling “particularly” after pointing out Fitzgerald’s numerous errors, no doubt to provide an example of what those errors might look like. Zounds! This paragraph is practically drowning in helpful spelling examples!

Thank god there are reviewers like this in the world, standing vigil on the ramparts of Amazon.com, to save us from such morally-polluting filth.

Honoring the Iconoclast: An Introduction

Pictured Above: an example to admire

In lieu of actually coming up with a focus for this blog and sticking to it, I’ll be spending a large amount of my time reviewing a bunch of things that fall into my pedestrian areas of interest (comics, books, movies, music, education, politics, etc). I feel that you, the reader, need more irrelevant opinions about things you may or may not be interested in; the internet is running short on such commentary.

Criticism is a time-tested strategy that both provides material to write about and the comforting illusion that the writer is somehow participating in his largely consumer existence. But I’m walking in the footsteps of giants here. Out of deference and respect for my forebears, I present my first recurring series of posts, Honoring the Iconoclasts.

Honoring the Iconoclasts will curate the greatest examples of literary criticism found in the rich scholarly field of Amazon.com. Specifically, I seek out the fearless opinions of those readers unafraid to tackle the enthralled tastes of the canon, those mavericks unafraid “to calls them like theys see them.”

Stay tuned and prepare to have your mind blown.