Skip to main content

Opinion as Fact

I don't know how to fully explain this kind of personality, but it goes like this: when discussing music, movies, comics, DVDs and so on with other people, a person presents his/her opinions as unwavering, hard facts. There is no room to debate them because these views come across as strict and binding. The person could care less about another person's thoughts and ideas because he/she refuses to listen to anyone else. Certain ways he/she express him/herself (whether it's tone of voice, amount of time listening to another person or various other mannerisms), often give off the impression that he/she is above and better than everyone else. I wonder why a person is like this, but also realize that it's not something I should dwell on. I don't run into this kind of personality often, but when I do, it's hard to forget.

My first encounter with a person like this was back in college. A friend of a mine knew a guy who knew a lot about movies, music and comics, but he also came across as a jerk when he discussed them. For example, he would tell me all about his thoughts and feelings on John Woo's classic Hong Kong films, but he rarely acknowledged my thoughts and opinions on them. When he did, he often shrugged them off and rarely gave me a chance to respond. All of this gave me the feeling that his views were law. Plus, he would brag about what he had (like his copy of the long out-of-print version of The Killer released through Criterion). In his eyes, because my copy of The Killer didn't have a handful of deleted scenes and Woo's student film, I was prime for ridicule. Folks, just writing all of this down makes me wonder if this really happened in elementary school. I never took offense, but at the same time, I wonder what made him be so snobby.

I have a theory that we all have mental holes in our lives. Some holes are small, some are medium and some are really large. How we work with them is different for every person. Some want to fill these holes with money, material possessions, alcohol or drugs in order to cover up core desires like love, support or confidence. How people show or hide these holes tends to get carried over in aspects of their personality.

As much as I blog here about my views on life, I know that not everyone will agree with what I think. I like to hear about differences of opinion, just as long as they're discussed in mature and tactful ways. I've been at the receiving end of a few one-sided conversations to understand how uncomfortable they can be. I enjoy open dialogue because no one person has all the answers.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air

Hello, Control

I'm still a big fan of iTunes . I haven't tried Napster , Urge or eMusic as I've been perfectly happy with Apple's program ever since I downloaded it two years ago. However, an annoying new feature has come up with its latest version, 7.0. Whenever you pull up your music library, a sidebar taking up 3/4ths of the screen appears plugging the iTunes Music Store. Why is this an annoyance? Well, first and foremost, since you can't close the sidebar, you can't escape it. I believe a music library is a private collection, a spot away from the music store. So what's the need for constant advertisements and plugs? To provide a better visual, let me describe what I see whenever I pull up a song in my iTunes library. When I listen to "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans, I see a graphic for Left and Leaving , the album that it comes from (and available in the iTunes Music Store), along with a list of the Weakerthans' other albums,

Politics Shmolitics

Yesterday, the more pleas I saw for people to go out and vote, the more uncomfortable I felt. Plenty of the blogs I hit up everyday said something along the lines of "Vote and if you don't, don't complain." Folks, this is why I find discussing politics so alienating. There are plenty of reasons why I don't discuss politics on here or in my everyday conversations. The biggest reason is because I don't have a lot of interest in politics in the first place. By what I've seen, heard and read for the last eight years, political debates are usually pissing contests. Judging by the views I've processed, it would be easy to think that we're all slowly going downhill either on the left, right or down the middle. Yet I don't think we're going totally downhill or totally uphill. Debating the direction we're going seems futile, especially when adults start screaming at each other like they're in grade school. To my ears, political debates are s