Music is a litmus test for cool.

Sometimes I think about music, and what it means to me, and contrast it with what it seems to mean to other people.

I have a reasonably wide variety of music on any given playlist. Acapella, ambient, post rock, post metal, big band, jazz, blues-rock, bossa nova, dream pop, alt rock, pop punk, Christian rock, ska, drum and bass, dubstep, industrial, doom jazz, screamo, showtunes, sludge metal, swamp rock, symphonic metal, synthpop, trip-hop, New Romantic, psychobilly, folk, post-hardcore, prog rock, goth rock, gospel, grunge, gypsy punk, hard trance, indie pop, indie rock, J-Pop, jazz metal, minimalist pop, the list goes on.

I’ve had plenty of people express surprise or even disgust at the fact that I can and frequently do swing from Copeland to Pelican to Glenn Miller to Fall Out Boy to Regina Spektor. I don’t quite follow the logic behind it; don’t most people find themselves listening to things they ‘shouldn’t’ like at some point? And beyond the age of 16, don’t most people find themselves maturing past the point of moralizing something as open to interpretation and completely subjective as music? I still feel a strong urge to smack anyone who asks, “What’s your guilty-pleasure music?” Are you fucking serious? Are you still in high school? Are you gearing up to make a call about my personality based on whether I listen to Tool or not?

And the stupidest part is, they usually are. Maybe I'm just lucky, but most of the people I seem to bump into in a social setting seem to have quite a lot invested in the idea that everyone they're friends with must have similar or exactly the same taste in music, and more importantly, we must all dislike the same music. I’ve started intentionally throwing out the most widely hated bands in my repertoire whenever people ask what music I’m into, just to watch them pull faces and make disapproving or disappointed sounds over something so petty. “My Chemical Romance.” It’s always followed up by a silent fuck you.

On people with opinions they really haven't thought about at all.

I can't help but laugh at people who seem convinced that music from the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s...well, okay, anything that wasn't released in the last decade, is automatically the pinnacle of musicianship, and all modern music "sounds the same" and "isn't up to the same standard".

Come on now. You'd have to be really, really stupid not to realize that the only reason you know those songs you adore from your parents' era is because they were the absolute best the period had to offer. As shocking as it may seem, music back then was generally pretty cookie-cutter, mass-produced, unremarkable or straight up irritating -- all the things these morons like to whine about in Youtube comments. (By the way -- is there a reason stupid people are completely obsessed with Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber? It's like they can't go five seconds on any music video without Christ compelling them to type out something along the lines of "THUMBS UP IF THIS IS BETTER THAN LADY GAGA" or "SO MUCH BETTER THAN JUSTIN BIEBER").

Now, I know Youtube comments are hardly a good place to find an outstanding sample of humanity, but I think they offer an insight -- of dubious value, admittedly -- into the mind of the average, not-too-smart, completely uninformed citizen of the Western world. And according to this proverbial citizen -- who was probably dropped on their head as a baby...repeatedly -- music has mysteriously gotten awful over the last ten years. Because that makes sense.

So please, dumbasses of the internet, I know you love Nirvana with all your alternative little heart, but the next time you feel like blaring your nonsensical opinion that "MUSIC THESE DAYS IS SHIT, KURT WROTE SONGS THAT WERE SO REAL, FUCK OFF JUSTIN BIEBER/LADY GAGA", don't. Just...don't.

On Maynardism and why you can tell people you don't like how they look, but they'll think you're an asshole.

I have a friend who is simultaneously quiet and brash. He has a pronounced tendency not to bother with such things as social niceties, and I accepted this long ago as a personality quirk rather than genuine vitriol. Tonight I was introduced to the idea that not everyone is willing to overlook it as such, in the form of another friend of mine becoming heartily offended over an unflattering comment he made on her appearance.
It was the kind of comment that was terribly worded, and knowing him as long as I have I could see immediately that he did not mean it in the way it came out, but by then it was too late. It had been said, the proverbial damage dealt.
And that, children, is why it's best to consider who we are talking to before we say anything that could possibly (definitely) be seen as rude or hostile.

I also spent some time in the company of the kind of people who drink until they vomit and then continue drinking/are pretty sure there's absolutely nothing undesirable about living in a constant cloud of pot smoke/declare poorly edited cartoons with little or no coherency to be 'exactly like a bad acid trip', which makes no fucking sense because modern acid rarely if ever causes visual hallucinations. Inevitably, Bill Hicks was mentioned and adoration heaped upon His Holy Name from all sides. I left before someone could bust out the Tool albums and begin pointing out the Bill Hicks references in the Tool songs. My only response to anything along these lines will forever be best summed up in this video:

Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that these pseudo-intellectual/edgy/whateverthefuck morons have made one very basic mistake.
Say a layman strikes up a conversation about quantum physics with a physicist. There's a good chance the layman will not understand a single thing the physicist is talking about, because the physicist is extremely intelligent and knows a lot more about the subject than the layman does.
Say a useless stoner pseud strikes up a conversation about who-the-fuck-can-tell-what with an average non-idiot person. There's a good chance the non-idiot will not understand a single thing the pretentious Messiah-complex-bearer is talking about, and sadly, they seem to think that this is because - like the physicist - they are just too clever for the poor layman to follow.

It's not because they're talking utter bullshit that has no intellectual or philosophical merit whatsoever. It's just that you don't get it, man.