Well, I may have previously told you about my schoolmate Barry.
He's as thick as a poorly schooled house brick, and has no discernible talent, besides sucking up to people.
He managed to blag his way all through our arts education, seemingly effortlessly, just by "being friends" with the right teachers,
producing nothing but poorly produced, clichéd work, even winning a competition which landed him a free-lance job at a high-profile company which dabbled in similar clichés (and rejected truly creative entries as being "too deviant").

His final project was skewered quite horrendously by the jury (who was none too soft on any of us), but his project mentors, whom he relentlessly sucked up to, managed to get him a narrow passing grade by giving him an artificially high grade on the theoretical thesis (he has the literacy of a ten year old).

I should note he fashions himself an advertising genius, and a gifted artiste, who has "innotative concepts" worth their weight in gold, at one point even claiming to have invented the bio-dome. No, seriously.

Recently, we heard a prospective employer finally had the guts to tell him how crap his work was to his face, something we never dared to do.
High fives were passed around vigorously.

*rant over*
(Caustic Armadillo consists at least 30% out of custard, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:02, 6 replies)

fair enough he's probably a knob but
he blagged his way through an art education - isn't that the point?

he won a competition to get a job - hardly his fault if the judges liked his stuff and not yours
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:14, closed)

I suspect your last sentence sums up the real reason for his dislike of Barry...
As an aside, Anyone else seeing the irony in all the whining going on this week?
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:41, closed)

The competition thing was annoying for a different reason
One of our other classmates, a brilliant cartoonist, had actually won the competition, but the company representatives decided at the last moment not to give him the prize because they thought his style was too "edgy" for their company.
So they gave the whopping cash prize to Barry, as they felt he'd be "safer", and Barry then spent two weeks boasting about how they had chosen him for his talents.
(Caustic Armadillo consists at least 30% out of custard, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:47, closed)

I doubt you'll like this..
They *did* choose him for his talents. The fact his (allegedly mediocre) art isn't to your taste really isn't the point.

At that particular moment he fit into their expectations.

That's life. Sometimes you get rewarded for things you don't deserve (like me being paid today for spending a lot of time arseing around today reading this qotw).

Sometimes you don't get rewarded for things you arguably do deserve (when you do unpaid overtime for days just to help a customer out, and then the fucker decides to insult you because you expected them to do some work as well).

From what I can see the artistic world is even worse for this sort of thing.
(EssY, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 17:51, closed)

Does he have
a Wasp T12 Speechtool?
(LickOutTheJamsMotherfuckers!, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 15:19, closed)

He has an equivalent:
A huge Canon with an oversized telescopic lens, suspended at groin-height without a shred of irony.
(Caustic Armadillo consists at least 30% out of custard, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 17:22, closed)