Editorial

“Of all the joys in life, I think I like nitpicking the most.” – Wally, of Dilbert

This completely sums up my outlook on life. I love editing other people’s papers. It’s the one thing that always puts me in a good mood. Also enjoyed: criticizing bad movies, criticizing good movies, mocking people’s poor fashion choices, and harping on grammatical errors. Criticism is the way to go, in my opinion. And as per that, my opinion is all that matters. See how fabulously that works out?

However, lately I’ve hit a bit of a problem in musical criticism. Because, as we see above, I love to mock other people’s choices. But in the arena of music, I has no room to talk whatsoever. I tend to listen to almost anything, or so it would seem. My musical tastes run so varied that eclectic doesn’t even cover it. I think that owning CDs by: Britney Spears, Dashboard Confessional, DMX, Yo Yo Ma, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs should qualify me for some sort of federal grant for people who can’t make up their minds.

Because it becomes very difficult to answer any questions concerning musical tastes. Not only can I not give a reasonable answer as to what I like most, this puts me in no position to judge other people’s choices.

How can I tell someone that country music is the work of Satan when I’ll listen to Nickel Creek any time of the day? That popular music is consumer driven, well orchestrated corporate marketing ploys when I harbor a secret girl crush on Hilary Duff? That Clay Aiken sucks when…nevermind, Clay Aiken obviously sucks. But the point remains!

While I do love a good dose of hypocriticality now and again (like the new word I invented?) there seems to be something ugly about this sort of musical snobbery.

Which is very strange, since I tend to dress only slightly better than your average vagrant outside Taco Cabana, yet feel no compunction for slagging someone for wearing one of those damn trucker hats. And I can’t write a coherent sentence to save my life (see: every entry on this website) but I’ll cover anything you’ve ever written with half legible comments and slashes in red ink.

So just to summarize, I would relish being a book editor because of my inherent love of breaking down someone else’s work based on my own tastes, but would balk at being a music critic because I feel my lack of taste would disqualify me.

Sometimes, I read over these things I write and I wonder: “this guy graduates college in less than two months?” Ah, the mysteries of life.