It’s annoying that when I log out of Hotmail, I am forced to see the front page of MSN. It’s a fairly frightful site at the best of times, even more so than the AOL UK front page, with it’s list of top ten embarrassing photos that Jade Goody doesn’t want me to see, but it annoyed me even more the other day. In bold type, it said, “Australia: The Verdict”.
Since then, I’ve seen a few more papers and articles all saying things like, “Find Out How Good Australia Really Is” or other such rot of epic tommytude. I’d much prefer it if they were honest and said, “read what one person thought of a film, then make your own mind up about it after you’ve seen it.” To imbue a single person’s (probably badly written) précis of a film as some kind of judgemental verdict on that film’s merit makes me think of a twelve year old trying to suck himself off.
A well-written review can be a wonderful thing. When it’s your job to articulate your thoughts on a given target, the only thing that gives you validity is your literary flair. If you can’t even write, there’s no point to you whatsoever. A review isn’t the be all and end all verdict of worth, it’s an ephemeral thought vomit. A review shouldn’t be a synopsis of something you’ve just sat through, it should be something with its own internal merit, something entertaining, something thought-provoking, otherwise it’s not writing, it’s typing.
It’s like prayer; an utterly worthless waste of time, a self-indulgent form of mental masturbation.
The inherent irony of this posting escapes me for now.
