13 August 2006

Deconstruction is more fun than Construction

Black ooze bled from the machine, dripping down onto the pock-marked pavement. The grease quickly mixed with the dust and disappeared from sight as the machine continued to drive a groove in the pavement. I held on to the jackhammer for dear life, not wanting it to perforate my person, merely the patio.

The cement patio at the rear of my parents' house has been cracked since they bought it. It only really started to look bad in the last couple years. This year my Dad decided it was time to do something about it. Friday he borrowed a jackhammer from a friend of ours. Yesterday we worked on tearing up the slab. We finally figured out how to utilize it properly about fifteen minutes before the owner of said jackhammer showed up to assist. He blitzed through it like butter. We had been much less effective but were still able to tear it up and start dragging it away. It was tiring work and I am quite sore from assisting.

We haven't started on the replacement slab yet. It was obvious as we destroyed the previous slab that it had not been generated properly. It was uneven, had air pockets and was attached to the house, all of which nearly guaranteed it would crack. Laying the replacement will be tricker work than removing the damaged one.

Criticism is the same way. It's easier to rip apart a movie or a book we don't care for than it is to create one of our own. This is not to say that people shouldn't have opinions on things, we should, or that we shouldn't be demanding of the quality of our entertainment, we should. Some people don't seem to love anything rather than deconstructing things, taking them apart to see only the flaws, and explaining why your opinion is dumb. Some of these people, somehow, even get paid to not enjoy things and then explain to us why we shouldn't enjoy them either.

Some people can do. Some people can't do but can teach others how to do. Those who can't do and can't teach, write manuals to explain how to do. The people that can't even do that criticize the way the manuals are written.

Do yourself a favour: find someone whose opinion you agree with on movies, tv shows etc. It might be a friend or a writer on a web site or a blogger, someone who shares their opinion out of the joy of doing so, not because they went to film school twenty years ago, flunked out and became a critic instead. You've got a better chance of getting a reasonable opinion on things that way.

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