I'm Mad Again.

What the hell is wrong with me? Maybe it's the weather, sleep deprivation or those chattering harpies still fuming over Emily Zemler's From First To Last review (I wanna know how many of you FFTL sympathizers actually bought that disc. Not enough to fill a Mini Cooper, I bet). But lately, everything simply pisses me off.

In the last 10 days, I wanted to kill (with my bare hands, mind you) some guy from England who snatched a Pop Group CD away from me during the last three seconds of an eBay auction. I prayed for death by crosstown bus to the guy who beat me to the used copy of the Lounge Lizards' Big Heart Live In Tokyo disc (the Japanese pressing with three bonus cuts not on the domestic version, an item I've been seeking for &*^%$@g DECADES) that Downtown Music Gallery was selling.

I saw Tom Waits in Columbus a few nights ago. He was great (as usual), but when he was doing a mirthful, micro-monologue about obscure laws in Oklahoma, some asshat in the balcony yelled, "Why don't you play some music?" I wanted to stick my thumbs inside the heckler's trachea to see if I could get the human toilet to breathe chords.

A few weeks ago, that horrible television show...America Has Polyps? The show that's just as bad asBig Brother, where you can feel the IQ points leaving your body the longer you keep it on? Anyway, the celebrity judges were jockin' some pointy blade-face in a beret yarling a cover of Mark Cohn's "Walking In Memphis," not realizing said song was a cover and not the original mark of a "storytelling genius" or whatever babbling "the Hoff" was mewling about. (Your German fan club called: They want you to cover "Set 'Em Up, Joe.") I found myself getting... even...madder.

We got a smug email from some tart under legal drinking age who was incredulous the Misfits and Dead Kennedys didn't make it into our Blood Runs Deep special. The line that set me off (bolding added by me): "I expect you to write a piece for the aforementioned bands to compensate their absence from this magazine." Hey, Sarah: Arrogance is a big reason why many people (ones with mortgages, car payments and families to feed) feel your generation needs to be teleported back to pre-Christian Egypt in order to learn the character-building benefits of slave labor. Now go visit Five We Fought Over and go do something nice for someone for a change, mmkay?

Looking back on the events of the past few weeks of my life, I realize getting angry doesn't serve anyone. Hatred of anything tends to get in the way of everything else that's effin' glorious. Yeah, I know I'm slightly classier than Eric Cartman when I'm mincing over who's done me wrong, but it's probably more entertaining to read than 500 words on how much I love my Shetland Sheepdog. People like to piss-and-moan about stuff, simply because they can, but most of the time, it does nothing to elevate a conversation.

Think about it: How often do you use the word "sucks" when you really mean to say something merely "exists?" It takes a great measure of participation to actively determine if something is worthy of industrial-strength derision, or if it is merely ineffectual to generate any kind of emotion in you. And when you get caught up in the hate trade, you lose time finding the great things in life. While you were posting your hatred of We The Kings on some message board, you could've hung out at a local record store, hung out with a friend and played them some music you actually like; maybe you could've spent the time reading a book.

Let's wrap this up: The new issue of AP has an oral history of one of the most righteous bands in punk, H2O. I can't think of anybody in recent memory who has embodied a sense of punk-rock community more than singer Toby Morse. When writer Ryan J. Downey was seeking out testimonials from people who saw the band's rise, he got some responses from some great people, many who have been on the cover of AP. He also got an email from somebody that read as follows: "Nothing personal towards [sic] you, and I certainly love the boys in H2O with all my heart, but I have no desire to have anything to do with AP, as I think it's a steaming pile of shit."

Now you'd think I'd be fuming, right? Well, I laughed when I got that forward, but then I felt really sad. Hey, I'm totally down with said PAF-punk hating on AP, no prob. It's just that I know if I were given a forum to represent for my friends (especially someone as deserving as H2O), regardless if it was Paste or the McCain-in-08.baa website, I'd step up. Here's the twist: Avenged Sevenfold ringleader M. Shadows (who has so many problems with AP, he sabotaged our planned Taste Of Chaos 2008 cover) was more than glad to testify on behalf of one of his favorite bands. Sure, I still think he's a precious ponce and I know he's too busy working out or counting his money to care about anything I have to say, ever. His love for Morse & Co. is greater than his hatred of AP. In my book, that's sterling.

Moral: Don't waste time "hating" when you could be using it to find some joy. Or be a bitter footnote all of your life.