To this guy:




Eric, I’m impressed you’ve stood your ground on my challenge. Good. That’s the first step. Now, I’m going to get this rolling with a little recap. To you I paid battle’s invitation by knife fight in the written world: cold, pointed words against a foe.

As you strode into the ring, losing your jacket and rolling up your sleeves, you produced from a sheath concealed behind your neck…the 1900-word essay.

This is Mortal Kombat, dude, not fey games of tag after a good reading of Byron. You could have DUG into me, Eric. I even glimpsed fleeting merit scrolling down the small book you wrote for me at 3 in the morning. Then I thought to myself, “Wow, why read this when porn’s a click away?” I started skimming. Jesus man, we’re not two old chums from the academy locked in a cursive game of Risk. We hardly know each other. Did you actually expect me to methodically read through your five-page English paper or were you just producing a manuscript for posterity?

If someone scrubs his boot into your persuasion, this is what you do? You attack him with the stuff he’s already ridiculed you about not two months ago? You bore him into basalt before the next foot-noted strike? I don’t recall Dutch ever taking that approach. Dutch would have his skull bouncing in the predator’s crotch-mounted trophy case pulling that kind of shit.

Now, Eric, I’m giving you another shot. If you’re not going to meet my knife with a blade, then I’m disappointed in you. You see, I don’t have a problem with SOMETHING you wrote. I got a problem with what you write. And my respect for you is going to be kissing the cow pie if you can’t come up with something better to stall my engine.

Here’s something to mull your cider, Eric:

Remember that line I wrote in my letter to you? You know; the one about the children of Ungoliant so eager to lap up your cold curds? Ungoliant was a hideous thing in Tolkien’s lore. In fact, her heart was so twisted by her ceaseless hunger that she bit and drained light from the world. I don’t respect what you do to music and its makers. I think it poison. That’s my conviction. And I will take my phial given by the lady, and I will jam it in your eyes until you stay your plague on music.

I’m not finished. Before you go deliberate your options, you’re going to park yourself and watch this. You’re going to watch and imagine I stole the fish you caught to feed your family in the skeezy part of Italy.

You gonna put up a fight for that fish or you gonna granny shot another book at me?

*No, you’re not Ungoliant. You a kid.

To this guy:

For what reason do I rise? I’m afforded the right as an American citizen to air my feelings about you over the net waves. I intend to exercise that freedom. Your PhD program? I oppose it, sir.

This is from your website:

“When I’m not blogging, I’m a PhD candidate at Indiana University, in the departments of Communication and Culture and Ethnomusicology. My dissertation will center on indie music fandom during the peer-to-peer era”

I’ve got some grievances I’m going to air here, Eric. But before I do, let me get this straight. When you finally get that piece of Indiana paper from the guy in the weird medieval cloak, you could be writing things like this:

“modern-rock guitars are stunningly bland and repetitious”

…As a mother-flogging professor?

Here’s my beef, Eric. Sometimes when I flick on the news, I hear about China and India producing an assload of cutting-edge scientists, top engineers, and mathematicians who don’t forget negative signs in calculus. Now, I’m not saying that America the Beautiful’s world-dominating universities ain’t churning out bright young minds. What I’m saying, if you catch my drift, is that maybe studying how Napster fertilized Radiohead’s internet base…should be something you do as a pastime. You know, like surfing Wikipedia or snapping black and white pictures of wheelbarrows.

Look, I know what you’re probably thinking. Who the hell is THIS upstart? How dare HE talk down to ma shit? What did HE accomplish? What level of education has HE completed? These are things you might ask.

I finished undergrad. I came out of college with a degree, but an ass-load of debt and not much else. So I respect people who are able to put in the extra miles and additional years to build a better life through school. I’m proud of how they push the envelope and advance the standing of our great nation across a competitive world. That takes determination, grit, and smarts.

But are you fucking kidding me, dude? What the hell are you going to be adding to society by furthering research in this field? You sure you’re in a field, Eric? Is it a field or just a half-acre of chaff? What kind of wheat ‘that field producing, son?

Aside from the obvious children of Ungoliant, who the hell else is going to study your research once it’s published? I’ve got a hunch who might. You know who just might read your dissertation in the field of “Communication and Culture” even more than the 5 music cretins with PhDs in the Sex Pistols? The god damned MUSIC INDUSTRY. Yep, I mean that art-crushing boogeyman so often referenced. With every piece of dense, plastic text, you could be gifting useful data to R&D departments of the very companies you think construct Lady Gaga out of legos. That’s either really funny or it murders my soul in this hard decade ahead. Or it could be complete bullshit. Hell, I’m just making it up.

Sure dude, be all grumpy and wave me off as a yappy corn dog. But consider this. The next time Arnie Duncan addresses the state of post-post-post secondary education, I don’t think more grant funding for “indie music fandom” work is going to be on his short list of priorities. Save your breath, son. I’m not saying I’ve walloped your poot tooter in life, Eric, because I haven’t. But wow dude…wow.

Hold your mule. One more thing you gotta do. You’re going to watch the following clip and imagine it’s me talking to you on a beach somewhere in the skeezy part of Italy.

Nah, I’m just messing with you. Did you actually do it?