Mr. Houston’s Opus – Pension Plan Puppets
From: William Houston
To: PPP
Oh, I’ve been taking shots at friends of yours. Oh noooo. I feel so badly [sic]. Truth is, you’re a pathetic piece of shit who can’t function as a real journalist so you operate that awful blog. Struck a nerve, didn’t I Julian? Because you’re a pathetic hack who can’t write and will never amount [sic] anything. By the time I was in my 30s I’d written two best selling books. You? You’re a nothing. Nobody knows who you are or cares. Good luck pal. You’ll need it.
I normally wouldn’t comment on this, but the guy is claiming the high ground as a writer and attacking a better writer for not being able to write. So I am compelled to point out: “I feel badly” is the kind of thing uneducated people say because they half-remember some distant rule about adverbs ending in “-ly” and they think it sounds correct and fancy. It’s neither. The same people, or their cousins, say things like “[whoever] did [whatever] to Jill and I” because they are afraid of “and me” and they have this vague (and wrong) idea that “I” is fancier.
If he wasn’t rudely staking a claim to being Mr. Writer, I wouldn’t have to point out that he’s an uneducated blow-hard. He is now no longer allowed to utter the sentence “I am a writer” unless he adds “who thinks ‘I feel badly’ doesn’t make me sound like a fool.”
I have nothing else to add to the Houston/PPP dust-up, but I encourage everyone to follow the link for the full carnage.