The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Okay, so funny story... My all-time favorite band, Muse, is set to release their 9th studio album a week from Friday, entitled, Will of the People . As has been the case ever since I first heard the band in 2008, I feel like a kid a week before Christmas. Unlike when I was a child, though, I now have the ability to celebrate, or perhaps commiserate with fellow fans of the band (Musers), as we all anxiously await the coming album. For whatever reason, I decided to venture into new social-media avenues this album cycle. In previous such cycles, I simply took to Facebook, Twitter, and the band's homepage. This go-round, I decided to give Reddit and Discord a chance. It's been an interesting experience, to say the least. As ardent readers of mine should know, I've long held a strong love/hate relationship with social-media. I was one of the last people in my circle to switch from MySpace to Facebook, and I'm only on the latter anymore to better keep in touch with out-of-sta...

I may be weird, but I've never been a huge fan of Christmas music. It's the same songs every year, repeated time and time again for a couple months, mostly centering around a make-believe story most parents use as a lie in order to manipulate their kids into being "good" for 365 days, whatever that word really means. Having said that, though, after hearing about Cleveland's WDOK radio station banning the classic Christmas song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" due to its potentially sexist/ableist messages, even I said, "Isn't this going a little far?" After announcing its decision, host Glenn Anderson wrote this on the station's website: "I do realize that when the song was written in 1944, it was a different time, but now while reading it, it seems very manipulative and wrong. The world we live in is extra sensitive now, and people get easily offended, but in a world where #MeToo has finally given women the voice they deserve, th...