Travels in Nihilon

I saw this hardcore punk band play for a benefit show last night. They followed the punk template to the letter - loud, offensive, confrontational, heavily tattooed, sardonically ironic, with songs that mostly sounded alike (a high voltage buzz). And they successfully shocked a number of elderly women right out of the hall.

I must be getting older. Responsibility is setting it. I enjoy a good bout of nihilism as much as the next fellow, but it makes me very tired to watch all that energy being expelled on nothing. Just leaking into a puddle only to evaporate. Maybe that's fine when you're twenty, but a decade later you start thinking about leaving something in your place. Less wastefulness, please. Let's channel that energy into building something that wasn't here the day before. Let's bottle adolescent angst as a natural resource & use it to power hospitals.

"Fuck you" just isn't a very important message to me. I've heard it before. But I guess they're just discovering it for themselves, rolling their tongue over it experimentally, like a baby's first teeth.

The guitarist sported a really spiffy Gibson Les Paul. Looked expensive - wonder where he got it from. He'd better have stolen it or I'll be disillusioned.