What's worse... intellectual laziness, or relational laziness?
Incidentally I don't mind listening to people rhapsodize about how they love someone. I find that the people who are bored are those who can't identify.
I've never played games with people and taken what they said literally to annoy them,
Then if that is true I'll have to go on thinking you're just not as talented as you believe you are.
if my supervisor wants to write 1000 words of obtuse rant which makes him look like a bombastic fool, I let him jump off that cliff. Which he does frequently
Is your supervisor open to learning? Perhaps your approach closes that door. If he is open to learning, then you come off as extremely selfish, wishing to keep your niche instead of helping your fellow man improve.
I seriously would like to see some of your fiction so I can judge your "music of language" for myself. Your opinion of writing rings hollower and hollower as we go along.
There is some very old, tired material rotting under the sun, however, and the stink of it in text is penetrating and stifling.
You miss the point once again. There is NOTHING new under the sun. Including YOUR stuff. So if you wish to apply "stink" to that, I will concede that point.
Every beginning piece of advice about writing warns against reliance upon cliches...
So if someone chooses to use one on occasion (especially in the context of a paragraph refuting your argument) *that*constitutes reliance? Speaking of verbicide...
BritSpeak is less than amusing with Brit coworkers who toss in BritObscenities, and think they're not understood by the hapless Americans.
I think they're hilarious. People told me that Brits were rude. I think they're great... in an idiosyncratic way. British humor is so cerebral, very little of this toilet humor we have in the US. I wish I could have spent more time there than my brief 2 days in London.
If your amusing stories about your cats tied into the conversation it would be worth bringing them up.
My point about my husband was that he has all the same frustrations about language that you have, and yet he doesn't come off the way you do, even with the limitations of a text medium. He must be doing something different.
For one thing, he doesn't make it his job to correct everyone he runs into or make fun of their way of phrasing things. If he is unclear, he asks. I didn't see you asking for clarification, just making fun, which to me means you're not interested in understanding what he's saying at all, and only interested in being understood yourself. If your work is communication you have got to realize it's a two way street. Not everyone may be as gifted as you, but you could be more gracious about the fact. You could encourage rather than beat people down, regardless of whether or not you disagree on the subject at hand. It would be a great indicator of character for you to help your ideological opposition to formulate his arguments more clearly.