Even The Onion is Mortal

I have to remove the link to the Onion in my web feed because over the last year they definitely replaced all their writers and the new writers are very annoying to me. I realize in a satire institution they have to have new blood because no one can write at the top of their game about the same news cycle events. You need a new voice that understands the market and identifies with the target audience or at least says the same shit in a different way. I get it. I imagine I would last two years on the staff of The Onion before the dismal irony and non-stop parody of our own desperation got to be too much. Eventually even comedy writers get scared that they are not only doing nothing in the wake of one disaster after another but they are mocking the reaction of people who are legitimately trying to do something. And this contradiction has occurred even to humble Oggy in his times of reflection.



Alas, the new generation of Onion writers frankly stink. The word I loath most in the English language is "Just". It's only proper use is as follows:

Adjective

Based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair: "a just society".

If you use that word in any other form like, "I just give up." or " Just fuck it all to hell." Or "I just can't take it anymore" or "I just don't get it." then you have abused the word and misused it and taken an awful shortcut to communication that obliterates geometry and sense. I'm guilty of it in speech but I'll give you a nickle if you can find that word in my writing. It's been a conscious effort to exile that word except as it was intended. Sometimes I do a word search and then remove the word "Just" when it's a filler. I hate to be a Strunk and White word nazi but that's how I feel.

Well, writers of The Onion apparently have taken the opposite approach and use it in their conversational articles. The satire isn't funny, it's boring, it's not original, it's not titillating and it just stinks. I can imagine the 23 year old writers who think they reached the pinnacle of creative writing because they now hawk corny T-shirts with their articles and drink Beeritas casually after company meetings. They have become their own self-referential assholes. Like The Simpsons stopped being funny ten years ago, The Onion is entering a dull period and I can't recommend them anymore. (just) The fact some kids entering college think it's funny still is (just) a mere reminder that society is in decay. I'll check back in a year when the kids grow up.

While I'm at it I'll delete the Transforming Cultures news feed because they insult me with their bi annual articles as some over-educated punk travels the world giving lectures about worms and moaning about conservative ethics. You guys haven't transformed shit...not even your own blighted world view. Give me one week in the oil field with your soft Princeton ass and then we can talk about transformation.