So it seems people are divided.  I’m getting comments from people that either think my post on Hanson was 1) a fun adventure story or 2) horrible and I should die.

Either way,  I was only being honest.  In fact, I think yesterday’s post represents a whole new era for me.  From now on, I’m going to be totally true to myself and write about the hardest hitting issues I deal with in my brain and in my life.  “All that is required of a great artist is complete honesty” said…..someone interesting.

And if you don’t like it….well, I guess you can be one of those people that take out their anger on comments on websites.  Bad comments used to bug the hell out of me as a young man with a full brow of hair…but now….I don’t even think I care.  Guys I look up to like Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation) and Christopher Hitchens could fill a medium-sized castle with angry comments.  But they’re completely honest, and intelligent, and funny, and….who cares about anything else?  Tact?  I believe in such nonsense less and less, and anyways, I can’t imagine that the people freaking out and telling me to drive my car off a cliff are worried about tact.  So you know what?  Fuck it!  WOW!  I wrote the word ‘fuck’ on my blog!!!  AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME!!! HAHAHAHA!!!

Plus, how entertaining are hateful Twitter messages like this?  “Chris Merritt sounds like every rock star wanna be, music elitist, penis wrinkle i’ve ever met. Originality = FAIL.”  A penis wrinkle??  Amazing!  I’m not even a whole penis, just a single wrinkle!  Originality = WIN (although “wannabe” split into two words implies slight illiteracy?).

Regardless, I won’t ever edit or delete comments (unless it’s a really extreme case of hating on someone other than me).  I hate censorship.

But I think it’s time for more music reviews.  This proves it to me.  And more music.  And more science.  If you want the educated opinion of someone who has sacrificed every imaginable human comfort for trying to make great art, and trying to explore every nook and cranny in our strange existence, come here.

Here’s something else to keep in mind:  I think people have a tendency to take offense whenever possible.  Often, people confuse honesty with aggression – I’m rarely trying to be aggressive on a personal level, and usually I’m just trying to be funny.  When I talk about the Hanson interview, for example, people tend to read a single negative sentence, and then take the rest of what I say as aggressively hateful or something.  Not the case.  Try to use your powers of reason, folks!  There are positives and negatives to almost any situation.  Assume I’m not an angry lunatic (usually), just a passionate nerd trying to introduce people to quality and reality.  In the case of the Hanson show, I had a great time, overall.  I thought it was great.

People love to be offended.  I think “being offended” is a bunch of crap, anyway.  It usually means you’re wrong about something and afraid someone is right and have no other intellectual recourse but to claim “offense”.