Caution: Morally Outraged Teenager On the Loose

THIS is the root of my current insomnia.

Of course, my legs are cramping up like mad so being in pain may also be keeping me from sleep, but the fact of the matter is the sun's rising, the birds are chirping, and my brain's still going a mile a minute.

It's that time of month again. By which I mean Rant Time, just to clarify.

If you haven't read the article, I suggest you skip past this post, as you'll probably understand about 3 percent of it.

---

The mere fact that someone actually took the time to write the above linked article is almost like an insult on every good song ever produced. Someone needs to sit that person down and read them the definition of "emo" music. While they're at it, I also suggest courses such as "A Million Reasons Why You Should Look Things Up in the Dictionary" and "Why You're Not Supposed to Write Your Own Opinions and Pass It Off as Fact 101".

I'm not the only one with a mind brewing with comebacks, either, it seems.

Pixie, for one, wrote two such comebacks herself, a and b. This woman has a major in fiction and screenwriting, folks, so she's one to be taken seriously.

Another is the Lovely Lady Jess. She posted a very good rant on the subject, and the following is a portion of it:

Music doesn’t kill people. If this girl wanted to die it was because she had problems, maybe she was messed up, maybe she got bullied, I don’t know. And this “double life” thing pisses me off too. She obviously had no one to talk to about how she was feeling, maybe she thought no one would understand, that they would judge her or maybe she was just doing it for attention. I mean she was 13 for Christ sake, we all know how hard being a teenager is what with all that darn peer pressure and such - so why did no one bother to get inside her head?

Oh and yes, the My Chemical Romance thing. YOU’RE ALL FUCKED IN THE HEAD. Even if I didn’t like My Chemical Romance I’d still be pissed off because it’s clear for anyone with a brain to see that they don’t promote self harm. Yes, some of their songs are about death but just because they’re talking about death doesn’t mean they’re saying, “GO KILL YOURSELF KIDS BECAUSE I LIKE IT WHEN I INFLUENCE PEOPLE TO DO SUCH THINGS, IT GIVES ME AN ERECTION.”

Apparently all these little emo people believe that when they die they go to the black parade - yes well, that just highlights the fact that they are FUCKING INSANE. You can’t look at something like a music video that’s came from someone’s imagination and say, “Oh of course, that’s where I’m going to go when I die! Why did no one tell me this before? The Bible has been bullshitting me for years!” The people who write these articles are as equally insane as the people who believe they go to the black parade.

My Chemical Romance don’t encourage self harm, prejudice, racism, sexism or any other bullshit. They tell you to fucking talk to somebody if you’re feeling bad. If these journalists weren’t so fucking retarded they would have seen that. It makes me so angry to read stories like this were retards bad mouth bands who are actually trying to help kids because they want someone to blame.

Selah. End of. THINK ABOUT IT

You can stick to that age-old claim about how system music carries bad evil spirits that will kill you in the night, and how those horrible bands with their horrible singers are nasty gay guy-liner-wearing puppets in the hands of Satan but really, in the end they're just people. People who like to sing, who have TALENT, people with lives, families, even wives and children.

Take Gerard Way, frontman of My Chemical Romance, as an example.

After he experienced 9/11 practically first-hand, he was so shaken up about it that he quit his job and started the band. He did so because he wanted to change lives. Sure there's this large media bullcrap feast about the suicide, and they hype on and on about how MCR is a destructive force aimed towards the tender lives and hearts of teenagers worldwide, but what about the millions of others they've SAVED? Sure that ONE girl who commited suicide just might have done so because she was a fan, but that's just a rumor, a hypothesis. What about the stories that are REAL, about all of those kids who were depressed and fucked up and just wanted everything to end but then they listened, really listened to the lyrics one day and decided that maybe there was something to live for after all, maybe they should listen to what their favorite MCR song was saying and get help for themselves? Voila. Because this supposed "emo" band GAVE a shit and wrote songs with lyrical content that hormonally imbalanced teenagers could relate to, another life has been saved.

So what I'm wondering is, Why can't the media ever focus on the positive? For that matter, why can't the media ever focus on the FACTUALLY CORRECT? They named Fall Out Boy as an emo band, for chrissake! If FOB isn't pop punk I don't know what is. Next thing you know they'll be calling McFLY soul-sucking emo leeches just because Dougie Poynter wore guy-liner to a redcarpet event.

I love MCR. I listen to FOB, Green Day, Blink 182, Paramore, Say Anything, all those bands who have been inaccurately labelled "emo". Yes, I wear dark makeup. Yes I suddenly changed my hair style from wavy plain brunette to straight blue-streaked brunette a few months ago. Yes my favorite color is black, and yes it's been so for the past four years. Yes I have the occasional depression spell, and I may be emotional, but does this all make me emo? Am I in a cult, addicted to the Internet because it's a means to get my fix of gore and depression? AM I SLASHING MY WRISTS AND WAXING LYRICAL ABOUT HOW I WISH MY LIFE COULD END?

No. I don't think so.

But if the media had any say... well. Let's just say you'd have my permission to say "I told you so" when I finally bow to the "peer pressure" and commit suicide. Because, if I'm so emo, it's inevitable, right?

I'll warn you, though- you'd be in for a long wait. I'm kind of attached to this life at the moment.

Rant over? You've gotta be kidding. I've barely begun.