Update: Dan Brown Still Sucks

Now, I don't care if he's an anti-feminist or a plagiarist or an heretical insurgent* or whatever. He's a hack. A hack who sloppily wrote a very silly book that made whacking great gobs of the cold and hard.

But that's not why I am mad at Dan Brown.

I am mad at Dan Brown because twice (TWICE!) today I encountered the word "symbology." I smacked my head and said, "But...but that's not even a thing! There's no such thing as symbology. Surely not."

I am not a pedantic martinet, mind you, the kind who coughs ever so slightly upon hearing "contact" used as a verb. I get that the language evolves. But SYMBOLOGY??? It just sounds icky. It's both vague and pretentious, weighted down with self-importance and a superfluous suffix.

There are, of course, scholars who study semiotics or iconography, but they actually know stuff and do reasearch and don't often solve murders. And they especially do not treat the complexities of history, art, and literature as puzzles that can be solved by pulling the right lever. Real scholars know that the more one knows about signs and symbols, the more complex they become.

*I can't remember if it's ok to use this word at all anymore. But "enemies of the legitimate Catholic hierarchy" just seemed awkward. Rumsfeld, if you're reading (and I suspect you are), shoot me an email and let me know what I can say today. Peace out.

UPDATE:
I was watching tv last night and an ad came on for one of those vocational colleges. They were offering to train folks to become--hold on to your hats--"medical technologists." I blame Dan Brown.