Why Phonology makes no sense

Like it says in the subtitle to this blog I don't talk about important worldly issues or try to convince you that "the best way to do something is this:..." or whatever else. Instead what you're probably gonna find here is mindless ramblings from me. I will not bore you about me and my day-to-day going-ons and issues --I don't think I ever will master the art of dayly diary writing. ever. for that matter-- but more of an overall picture of my thoughts on certain subjects. If I haven't bored you out entirely yet, here's an example which will ;) :

Linguistics. One of the obligatory subjects of the English course at Leiden University. Glazed over yet? Me too. Now don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of sounds, accents, dialects and the sort. Have managed to become quite skilled in a couple of them if I may say so myself. It's just, the branch of linguistics that deals with my-so-beloved sounds has gotten ridiculously out of hand. To specify even more: I'm not talking about the 'practical' Phonetics bit. Oh no, that's fine, fun even. No, what I mean is the 'theoretical' Phonology bit.
The reason I have an urge to share this is because this week I had to write my first (yes, third year student, you read correctly) linguistics essay. I choose the topic about 'the' four allophones of /l/. We have to explain the phonological rules of use for these said allophones and defend the use of this symbol 'l' for the phoneme.
All easy enough, but for one word: "phonological". You see, this is different from Phonetics in the way that it talks about sounds on an abstract level. Yeah. Whatever.
They spend the first two years teaching students the "Phonetic" rules of classification of sounds with its own set of terms, and then, in third year, they add a new system of reference that slightly differs from the first. Now we are taught that the lateral approximant (/l/) we all know and love is actually a sound which is phonologically classified as: [+ consonantal, + sonorant, +continuant, + anterior, + coronal, + voice] = [+ lateral] because the /l/ is the only sound in the English language that can be classified as such. And that is also the reason as to why the 'feature' lateral is redundant (there is no [- lateral] in English), so then we go back to the 6-featured classification. Talk about your vicious circle!
This is what I mean. It shouldn't be this ridiculously complicated to talk about sounds! Sounds are wonderful! They flow, they're real, they are the practical way to communicate, and most important of all: they constantly change! So why feel the need to 'classify' them if the way they are classified one minute is sooooo last minute the next.

Yup. Expect these kind of blah-stories from me and you won't be surprised/disappointed ;D
That's all for now. I'll see what I can do about the level of boringness for the next post. About that, I'll try to keep the blabbering up, but when you feel like it's been to long, please post a rant as to why.

PS: To post just click "koala grunts" below