Stuff I love that I'll totally understand if you don't...

To Whom It May Concern:

I realize that I have ... peculiar tastes. I like a lot of things that very few other people enjoy. Understandable. I'm a preacher's kid, I work in technology, and I have spent the huge majority of the past 10 years in the indie music scene. I'm bored by political loyalty. I'm disengaged by predictable romantic comedies. I'm generally unimpressed with pop culture.

Having said all of that, there are a handful of things that I enjoy that I cannot actually endorse for anyone else. There are sounds, sights, colors, themes, feelings, and moments that strike a nerve with me and make me grateful which, having experienced the same, you may very well have the distinct feeling that your head is going to explode. I would like to list a few of those things here, if I may, just to clear the air. (This is not a line in the sand as much as an intervention I'm performing on myself.)

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Brak Show, and others - I simply can't get enough of this, and I MAY know 2 other people on the planet who share my addiction. However, here they are.
  
  
• Blonde Redhead, Bjork, Tom Waits, and others - I have no intention of converting you on this, but the way Blonde Redhead blends their poppy melodies with intimately daunting vintage tones, or the way Bjork grunts and scraps in the middle of her damn-near-perfectly articulated lyrics and flawlessly discomforting production, or Tom Waits' ... Waits... iness.
  Jeeeeeeeze.
  Can't.
  Get.
  Enough.
  
  
• Chuck Palahniuk, Quentin Tarantino, Irvine Welsh - I know. It's "violent" and "gratuitous", but they're just so GOOD AT IT! Fight Club for me, like many people, was the introduction to Chuck P's work. But Choke, Haunted, Diary, Stranger than Fiction, and a few others later, and I've gotten some strange internal callousness that won't allow me to be moved by much else.
  
  Until I see the newest Tarantino film. Exposing a new and revolting side of both Hollywood (he does Hollywood so well that it makes Hollywood look stupid) and bad guys in general, QT has made my list of the top 10 people I'd pay money to meet if I could.
  
  Trainspotting is a great movie. But the book makes "To Kill a Mockingbird" look like it was scribbled in cat urine on an alley wall. Irvine Welsh creates worlds on paper (and therefore, in your mind) that will give you jitters at night and nightmares during the day. He shows you a way that people's everyday life can progress into utter surrealist chaos. Apocalyptic on an individual level. For that, I'm grateful.

This is my post for the day. Deal with it.