(7:46 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Tuesday Hatred 19: The "Brownie" Edition

I hate the "German steamroller" approach to academic writing, in which one summarizes the results of the last 2500 years of human inquiry over the course of 600 pages, then appends a 30-page note with some vague indications of what one actually thinks. I hate the feeling that one so seldom ends up proving anything, and that the demand for more evidence can be extended indefinitely. I hate books that feel like they are 75% or more "asides."

I hate it when people say, "But I'm getting ahead of myself" -- even if they are the narrator to the movie "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." (Shout out to Robb! [I hate the term "shout out."])

I hate spending the whole day reading a book that I didn't really want to read in the first place. I hate the neck pain that results from long-term reading -- I'm only 25 right now, so it's only neck discomfort at this point, but I can tell it will eventually become pain. I'm worried about my eyesight, too, because I've become really used to seeing the individual leaves on trees.

I hate it when I flip over the grilled cheese and it doesn't stay together right. This is especially a problem when I add several different fillings, but it happened to me today with a "just cheese" grilled cheese, causing me to yell out "Oh F---" and causing Hayley to wonder if maybe something actually serious had happened.

I hate that I felt a weird sense of impropriety yesterday when I did my dark laundry and didn't do my whites on the same day. I hate having a feeling of entitlement.

I hate how slow the whole blogosphere feels lately -- not just this site (which is admittedly witnessing something of a production slowdown), but everywhere. Atrios must do 14 open threads a day.

I hate how now it's really, really important to talk only about how many incompetent people Bush has appointed to important government jobs -- yes, liberal pundits, that is the most important thing that Katrina brought to light! The Bush administration is more corrupt than other past administrations in terms of giving out government jobs to political cronies. That should be what your ire is raised about! Because, damn it -- we're Democrats! We're the party of competence and meritocracy -- we're the good kind of pro-business party, not like those corrupt, incompetent, cronyistic Republicans! They're the bad kind of pro-business party! (I figure the mid-term elections are far enough away that it's okay not to be a completely shameless Democratic party hack.)

But in all honesty, I am still a kind of meritocratic person -- or rather, someone who still wants to play by the meritocratic rules, even though I don't know the world works that way. I probably knew it didn't work that way the whole time.

Please share with us, via Haloscan comments or trackback, what you hate today.

WOW: Now this is a sentence --

Ich gebrauchte das Wort “Staat”: es versteht sich von selbst, wer damit gemeint ist—irgendein Rudel blonder Raubtiere, eine Eroberer- und Herren-Rasse, welche, kriegerisch organisiert und mit der Kraft, zu organisieren, unbedenklich ihre furchtbaren Tatzen auf eine der Zahl nach vielleicht ungeheuer überlegene, aber noch gestaltlose, noch schweifende Bevölkerung legt.

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