Poetry

Let's be honest here - who the hell really needs poetry? We all know its history - it was something our high school english teacher dreamed up just to torture us. Although sometimes poems can be cute (childhood rhymes we still remember) or meaningful (There once was a man from Nantucket...), mostly poems are like babies: they're beautiful to their creator, but to other people they are just irritating.

Back in the days after the Revolution, our nation was busily forming its identity as the complete opposite of evil Britain (driving on the right side of the street, using eating utensils differently, preferring coffee and dumping their precious tea in the drink, etc.). Despite all this revolutionary zeal, we then proceeded to borrow a tradition of theirs and created the stunningly useless office of "Poet Laureate."

What a load of unmitigated crap.