Merk answers your intraweb questions.

[Merk]

You are absolutely right.

God dammit SDP I really wish I had your life and I'm not being facetious when I say that.

[SoDeepPolaris]

You are absolutely right.

God dammit SDP I really wish I had your life and I'm not being facetious when I say that.

You wanna live with your parents, not even get hired for retail jobs and think really hard about saving for b-school? At least I'm meeting with the city planning department to talk about some volunteer intern stuff today...ughineedmoneyz.

K.

[Merk]

You got rockin' GRE scores, great grades, can probably get accepted into your desired grad school, you're in shape, you could probably get sweet vagina anytime you wanted to if you put in the effort, your friends don't mock you for being a shadow of your former self, both of your parents are still alive, you live in a beautiful countryside, you probably live in a nice ass house, you have an aura of intelligence and respect, and you have access to good craft beer.

Money is nice and it does make you feel powerful but it's an empty power. I might have enough cash to support an average lifestyle and buy Drummania cabinets but I would trade it all to go back to Shin Merk years and do things differently.

Post some flattering pictures of yourself on OkCupid and you will get dates, this I can promise you.

[SoDeepPolaris]

You got rockin' GRE scores, great grades, can probably get accepted into your desired grad school, you're in shape, you could probably get sweet vagina anytime you wanted to if you put in the effort, your friends don't mock you for being a shadow of your former self, both of your parents are still alive, you live in a beautiful countryside, you probably live in a nice ass house, you have an aura of intelligence and respect, and you have access to good craft beer.

Money is nice and it does make you feel powerful but it's an empty power. I might have enough cash to support an average lifestyle and buy Drummania cabinets but I would trade it all to go back to Shin Merk years and do things differently.

Post some flattering pictures of yourself on OkCupid and you will get dates, this I can promise you.

I'd trade it all for a magic carpet.

[Riot]

Merk, this is one of my favorite songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8aK4xbJOqQ

I'm not sure if you know much about Bad Religion, but they are widely known to use a very strong vocabulary when writing songs. In fact, the lead singer has a PhD and teaches high level classes at UCLA. Fat Mike, the leader of NOFX, has a lyric in a song about Bad Religion that says "I bet Suffer, then I bought a thesaurus", with Suffer being the title of one of Bad Religion's early albums. The point is, BR's lexicon is often advanced to most plebes (I'm trying to use Merkisms here, because I feel like this topic of word choice applies to your posting style).

Are lyrics like "Hey Mother Mercy can your loins bear fruit forever? Is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure?" / "Hey moral soldier you've got righteous proclamations, and precious tomes to fuel your pulpy conflagrations" awesome or pretentious?

My question is, how do you feel about lyrics in songs lending to the overall tier of the song and its staying power? Do you think hefty words is one of the reasons Bad Religion has been around for like 25 years, or is it more because of their booty-thumpin beats? Basically, to create a perfect song, does it have to have S-tier lyrics, S-tier rhythm, and whatever other S-tier elements you might look for, or is music just bangin' and drivin' music that shouldn't focus on wordplay but instead on giving aural pleasure. ; )

[Fluffyumpkins]

Merk, this is one of my favorite songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8aK4xbJOqQ

I'm not sure if you know much about Bad Religion, but they are widely known to use a very strong vocabulary when writing songs. In fact, the lead singer has a PhD and teaches high level classes at UCLA. Fat Mike, the leader of NOFX, has a lyric in a song about Bad Religion that says "I bet Suffer, then I bought a thesaurus", with Suffer being the title of one of Bad Religion's early albums. The point is, BR's lexicon is often advanced to most plebes (I'm trying to use Merkisms here, because I feel like this topic of word choice applies to your posting style).

Are lyrics like "Hey Mother Mercy can your loins bear fruit forever? Is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure?" awesome or pretentious?

My question is, how do you feel about lyrics in songs lending to the overall tier of the song and its staying power? Do you think hefty words is one of the reasons Bad Religion has been around for like 25 years, or is it more because of their booty-thumpin beats? Basically, to create a perfect song, does it have to have S-tier lyrics, S-tier rhythm, and whatever other S-tier elements you might look for, or is music just bangin' and drivin' music that shouldn't focus on wordplay but instead on giving aural pleasure. ; )

Please bear in mind this is the same man who also wrote on his Twitter page that he was filming and co-producing a television series called "Punk Professor".

[Riot]

He also wrote a dissertation called "Monism, Atheism and the Naturalist Worldview: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology" and won awards from UCLA on his work. Obviously any mainstream thing, especially a TV show, would have to have a dumbed down generic title to promote to an audience who would have no idea who he is otherwise. Usually TV show titles are dumbed down enough to let people know exactly what to expect getting themselves into should they decide to make a pitstop there on the ol' DVR.

[Fluffyumpkins]

He also wrote a dissertation called "Monism, Atheism and the Naturalist Worldview: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology" and won awards from UCLA on his work. Obviously any mainstream thing, especially a TV show, would have to have a dumbed down generic title to promote to an audience who would have no idea who he is otherwise.

Here's one for you Merk:

Why do people fight tooth and nail to defend celebrities from ridicule, but will not defend their friends, family, or even themselves from defamation? This is not me being a smart ass. I really don't understand.

[Riot]

Chad I am going to slap your shit.

Are you insinuating that I don't defend myself/family/friend from defamation or just people in general? People defend celebrities because they are impersonal and usually produce some kind of content that we identify and create self-identity around. Therefore, they are like objects that represent our personalities a lot of times, and an insult upon a celebrity, a certain song, a videogame, whatever it might be can be taken as an insult towards the individual who likes that person/thing. Our personalities are anchored in all sorts of things and I think we as humans take personal offense if we feel a lack of validation from other people who don't appreciate or at least acknowledge what we are about or what makes up our set of interests.



We are an amalgamation of experiences, hobbies and quirks.

[Merk]

Sorry for the delay I actually had to do work this morning!

Are lyrics like "Hey Mother Mercy can your loins bear fruit forever? Is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure?" / "Hey moral soldier you've got righteous proclamations, and precious tomes to fuel your pulpy conflagrations" awesome or pretentious?

My question is, how do you feel about lyrics in songs lending to the overall tier of the song and its staying power? Do you think hefty words is one of the reasons Bad Religion has been around for like 25 years, or is it more because of their booty-thumpin beats? Basically, to create a perfect song, does it have to have S-tier lyrics, S-tier rhythm, and whatever other S-tier elements you might look for, or is music just bangin' and drivin' music that shouldn't focus on wordplay but instead on giving aural pleasure. ; )

This is kind of hard to answer since music and its appreciation are so fucking varied between every person on Earth that I couldn't give a solid, sound answer. It's up to interpretation really - is that particular lyric objectively pretentious? By the textbook definition of pretentious, I would say "Yes." Laymen don't generally use "fecundity," "trammel," and "conflagrations" in their prose and the people that do use those words are trying to be showy or sound academic.

That brings me to a good point actually - I oftentimes think that language is used to separate and marginalize people to create a sense of elitism. If you've ever read a dissertation you'll see just how fucking out there people are in their terminology and vocabulary. Academia goes so far out of its way to not put things in layman terms that it's a wonder how shit ever gets done. But I digress...

For your second question, I really don't pay a whole lot of attention to lyrics when I listen to a song initially. I'm much more interested in the beat and melody than whatever message the song is trying to get across - if the lyrics themselves end up being clever or germane with my worldview then that's an added bonus! I really just treat the human voice as just another instrument. Jen is all about lyrics while I couldn't give a shit about them. An S-Tier song needs a good balance between beat, rhythm, melody, treble, bass, and vocals. What those things are exactly is different for each person! A lot of people like The Beatles, Chad hates The Beatles. I like JCore, no one likes JCore. I wouldn't put too much weight on any one thing in music.

Bad Religion has been around because they (the members) like what they're doing and people go to their shows. I mean there are some shitty bands that have been playing for longer than 25 years and I don't think the quality of their music has anything to do with their longevity.

In other words, the great thing about music is that everyone is wrong about everything but it all works out in the end and we get high as fuck.

[Merk]

Here's one for you Merk:

Why do people fight tooth and nail to defend celebrities from ridicule, but will not defend their friends, family, or even themselves from defamation? This is not me being a smart ass. I really don't understand.

Riot actually answered this one pretty well! There's not much to add other than that some people have trouble separating between The Actor and The Character.

Let's consider Ottumwa. When we went there we had an idea of Steve Wiebe in our head from what we saw in King Of Kong. We had no idea what he was like as a person, we only had an idea of him as an "actor" in a tongue-in-cheek documentary - our expectation of him was that he was this hard luck do-good who could play a mean game of Donkey Kong. Thankfully he ended up being a nice guy, but if he was an asshole in person, would our view of him in the movie have changed? Some people only see the actor for their character(s), some people can differentiate between the two, while pessimists think that all actors are assholes and can't understand why others defend them tooth and nail.

I really have no desire to meet celebrities in person because I just know it will make me appreciate their movies less. I will inevitably have an ideal vision of them in my mind that will be tainted by their pill popping and depravity.



So fat.... So fucking fat.

[Fluffyumpkins]

People defend celebrities because they are impersonal and usually produce some kind of content that we identify and create self-identity around. Therefore, they are like objects that represent our personalities a lot of times, and an insult upon a celebrity, a certain song, a videogame, whatever it might be can be taken as an insult towards the individual who likes that person/thing.

Let's all buy products to help us achieve that sense of self-identity. Let's open our mouths and be force-fed our individuality. Hush. Now is the time for silent prayer:

#worshipimportantpeople

[Riot]

I'm not saying it's right or good (or that it's bad), but just that it's reality. It's impossible not to be influenced and shaped by outside stimuli, media, people, corporations, etc. It all rolls together in us and makes us us!

[Fluffyumpkins]

I'm not saying it's right or good (or that it's bad), but just that it's reality. It's impossible not to be influenced and shaped by outside stimuli, media, people, corporations, etc. It all rolls together in us and makes us us!

Well of course that's true, but it doesn't explain why people fight tooth and nail to defend celebrities. We are more influenced by so many other things on a day to day basis.

I think people just like to be part of a cause.

[Merk]

In the end we're all just trying to bust a nut.