Adjectives 11

Coalition Mediocre

Don't kill your darlings, nail your target.
bats, utterly bats
self-serving
woeful
debased (classicism etc)

Coalition Mediocre tall buildings for the wealthy (@brentcross)
fumbling, bleak and unromantic (observer.com on the Assange case)

drippy '70s footnote Paul Davis (Paul Whitelaw) (Christgau called him a “humourless singer-songwriter)

The musical numbers are spectacularly dull. (imdb on Hieronymus Merkin)

complacent leftist critiques (Fortean Times)

heavy hitter books (Moira Redmond)

the suffocating high-mindedness of church communiques (Guardian Jan 2016-01-17)

stunningly outré (Adam Nathaniel Furman)

Typical Moffat - almost unbearable winky cleverness. (BR)

blazing contradictions (Mike Savage, Social Class in the 21st Century, on interviewees who claimed “I’m not a snob” and then sneered at the naff taste of the lower classes)

Utter blithering incompetence is probably hip now. (Stef of Ing ‏@Stefing)

Without exaggeration, Morrissey’s fictional debut is the worst novel I can remember reading. It is gibberish, from beginning to end. Pretentious but sub-literate, it reads as if it has been translated, perhaps from Hungarian, using an internet translation engine. (Theo Tait, Sunday Times Oct 2015)

the Incredible String Band's world of music hall whimsy and sweetshop wackiness (Wildly arcane, literary and genre-defying Celtic/psychedelic/world music... forever changed the musical landscape before the magic somehow leaked away in the harsher light of the mid-seventies. BBC)

overblown oppressive vanity architecture (Darran Anderson on totalitarian buildings)

She smiles too much, in the manner of a profoundly alarming yoga teacher. (Hugo Rifkind on one of Lord Bath’s wifelets, Times Sept 2015)

crooning in a sort of affected, witchy pixie voice (Ditto on Lord B’s 1970 hippy folk LP)

Who does not dislike a 'boneless' hand extended as though it were a spray of sea-weed, or a miniature boiled pudding? (Emily Post on limp handshakes)

The carefully repopulated Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has issued a witheringly polite letter to the present home secretary, warning that her bill proposing a blanket ban on psychoactive substances is, to put it mildly, unenforceable. (New Scientist July 2015)

All those thoroughly forgotten books by them all. (Hugh Pearman on the Sitwells)

The horrific, scything pain of Rupert Pupkin's laughs. (Paul Whitelaw)
One of those sad, later Peter Sellers films. (Paul Whitelaw)
Truly dire knockabout panto Shameless, which did more to promote the offensive stereotype of the so-called underclass as a bunch of hedonistic, work-shy scroungers than a dozen Katie Hopkins columns. (Paul Whitelaw He also calls Sherlock "self-indulgent". No sh*it!)

Nowadays girls are obliged to apply for the job [of head girl] by writing a toadying letter. There are even templates and tips online. You are supposed to talk about life skills and challenges. Sample head girl manifestos smack of business plans, packed with public relations terminology. (Guardian May 2015)

Simenon makes the self-conscious avant-gardism of his time seem so much hysteria. (Irish Times)

the astonishingly trivial rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (Owen Hatherley, Guardian April 2015)

“I just can't account for the hostility that's been directed at our state,” he said, revealing himself to be either wildly disingenuous or unbelievably oblivious. “I've been taken aback by the mischaracterizations from outside the state of Indiana about what is in this bill.” (Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence March 2015 Update: He’s going to tinker with the religious freedom act so that businesses can use it as an excuse to discriminate against LGBT people.)

overwrought beseeching lovey dovey scenes (TD on Dr Who)

I have a surprisingly high tolerance threshold for wry inconsequential newspaper columns, meaningless filler though they be. (Hugh Pearman)

interminable slow trippy bollocks (GC on 2001)

They always turn up at auction in pristine condition, for the simple reason that they are completely and utterly useless. (Bargain Hunt auctioneer on a set of silver/gold spoons in a presentation box.)

weird orchestrated trolling (James O’Brien)

What an absolute shower of utter tossers >> Tory plotted with race thugs to stage fake EDL demo in bid for votes (‏@bat020)
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If we're going to regulate stuff every time Giles Coren gets all petulant and entitled, then the world is f****d. (@JonnElledge)

Johnny Dankworth provides just the right kind of smirky jazzy score. (imdb commenter on 1967 film)

urbane drama notes and condescending gardening advice (Peter Wildeblood on an imaginary newspaper, West End People, 1958)

I remember 'All things bright and beautiful...' as particularly infuriating in its simpering idiocy. (WUR)

Bleak, unsympathetic, and bloated; or deep, poignant, and spellbinding, depending on your taste. (Anon on Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections)

self-important, preachy and full of platitudes (Anon on Paulo Coelho)

young people were notoriously fish-brained (Anon on Rock ‘n’ Roll Britannia)

self-indulgent bollocks (Anon on art house movies)

Sinatra’s rat pack: “A collection of narcissistic show-offs.” (Philip French, Observer, February 13 2011

Stephen Fry: “Can we say he’s gratingly arch?” (@LadyofMisrule)

the excitement that every few years a new Doctor can run around CGI sets on unbearably sentimental scripts (@owenhatherley on Dr Who)

Grim, po-faced contemporary dance groups, who did things like depict the Jarrow Crusade through the medium of movement. (Age of Uncertainty on dance in the 70s)

More here, and links to the rest.