On the way home today, I remembered a conversation I had with a colleague from my last place. It went something along the lines of:
Me: I want to do XYZ. Its faster both on the database and in the code, less code.
Him: XYZ is alot like ABC. ABC was on The Daily WTF, which is bad. Therefore XYZ is bad.
In other words:
All dogs have 4 legs. My cat has 4 legs. Therefore, my cat is a dog.
Lady, and gentleman, that's called an Association Fallacy. Just because a property of one thing has the properties of another, it does not mean that ALL properties are the same. The code maybe horrible because it has featured on the daily wtf, but it does not guarantee it. Infact, the code that I would have written would be alot cleaner, and faster than the code you wanted me to write.
But, its not my problem now :)