"Whydja Have To Poke The Bear?"

Music of the Moment: Sweet -- Album: "The Best of Sweet"

Truer words were never spake, Devin, m'love.

I've been embroiled in a battle extraordinare with some hardcore Billy Idol fans on the Billy Idol fanclub message board. D. warned me "Don't poke the bear", but damnit, I couldn't resist shaking up the hornets nest a little. I'm terrible, I know. But I'm no pussy to take abuse lying down. (Okay, maybe sometimes. However, that's an entirely different subject.)

About a week and a half ago, I guess one of the members of the fan club message board was searching for reviews on his latest album "Devil's Playground." I'm not terribly pleased with these recent developments, and I'm not going to respond to any more of the taunting that a few members, (one in particular) seem to revel in. It's not worth my time anymore, and I'm sorely outnumbered, even though I've reiterated that I'm USUALLY a fan of his stuff, just not this particular album.

Now, I admit, I was a bit snide, and was feeling particularly catty the day I wrote that review seemingly detracting a little from the essence of my review by making some comments about his appearance, but all of it was meant in a humorous way, and apparently they've lost their sense of humour when it comes to their "God". You guys know better than that, and took it tongue in cheek, the way it was meant to be. That being said, I really did NOT enjoy his newest album, a release after almost 13 years of silence from the Idol-man. This of course, is my own opinion, and not one endorsed by a large number of reviewing websites, including Rollingstone.com, among others. I gave the album a pithy .5 shoes out of 5. Whereas most websites/e-zines/magazines gave him three stars on average.

Granted, I am not a journalist, though I have worked for a newspaper and a global magazine as both writer and part-time editor, as well as being a afficionado of music of all genres, and having a little over 18 years of music experience under my belt, and a large collection of music that I listen to on a very regular basis. However, according to the fanclub, I am *not* a writer, I was posing as an actual journalistic music reviewer, and have no experience, therefore I have no right to voice my opinion. Bollocks.

I'm shamed indeed. I should just crawl under a rock and die.

On second thought... No.. No I won't.

One fan, even went so far as to say that I was a failure as a writer AND a woman. Nice. All of this based off of my Blogger profile, (which she posted) and the one music review. I was mildly offended at how catty she became, and proceeded to defend myself; fairly well I think, facing her points with my own.

Did you guys know that you have to pay to comment on GSD? Hell, as far as I knew, Haloscan was FREE! Jeebus. Apparently SHE thinks she has to. M'eh. I don't even know why I let it bother me, but apparently it does. She proceeded to slam me, multiple times, calling me a "young, spoiled brat" and "immature", that I was "offensive", a "fraud" and a "freeloader", as well as many other nasty things. Shucks. I cried myself to sleep. Really. *rolls her eyes* I took some serious pleasure in telling her that she was assuming quite a bit about me, without doing research, which is what she was accusing me of doing regarding this album. The pot calling the kettle black, indeed. She threatened to have GSD get in shit with Amazon.com and Billy Idol inc. by posting up a picture of the album cover, (Like I do with ALL of my reviews, Jeebus.) And I'm fairly sure that amazon.com is SO going to complain for having MORE traffic to it's site. Yeah, I'm a little pissed off. The condescension that this woman was forceably throwing at me was palpable, and entirely unappreciated.

I hate the general populace, and it's quite frequent as to WHY I don't like them all that much. Perhaps I had the blinders on reviewing this album, and said a few things that were unprofessional, but I'm blogging, for fucks sakes. I'm not getting paid to do this. I'm opinionated, sometimes blunt, and I tell it how I feel it is. They have their blinders on when they don't accept someone's opinion for what it is, an opinion. There's something called freedom of expression, that apparently I'm not entitled to have. I disagree, and I'm going to defend it to my dying day.

The wankers.

You guys don't have to agree with me on this, I'm not asking for support, I'm just ranting.

Grrr.