Getting my point across

This following letter was written by me in regards to an article. (published in Richmond, Virginia) about how good Straight Edge kids are. Here is my reply that you should all read and take to heart. This was later published in the Richmond Music Journal since Style Weekly didn't want to show the "other side" of things. This isn't exactly how it appears in the journal cuz I added some stuff to it later on and they edited parts of course, but this gets the point across.

Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 17:43:43 -0400 (EDT)
To: rmail@richmond.infi.net
Subject: Reply to last week's (may 27th) article on Straight Edge

To the editor of Style Weekly,

I'm sending you this reply to the Straight Edge article that was in your
may 27th edition. I'm going under the alias Guybrush Threepwood and I'd
appreciate it if you left that in there.

Hate-O-Bored
-by Guybrush Threepwood

Hi there, I figured I should say something after reading your
article on Straight Edge entitled Out Of Step With The World last week. I
don't drink, I don't do drugs, but I will be DAMNED if I am ever called
Straight Edge. Think about it people, is it REALLY necessary for you to
declare yourselves a member of the X-files every time you talk to
somebody. Well, to many people it apparently is. I shampoo my hair a
five times a week....I guess its sort of a lifestyle I've got going
here.....HEY! YA KNOW WHAT!? I THINK I'VE GOT THE SHAMPOO EDGE! Please,
were all human and were all stupid. So every single one of you elitist
militant wannabe do-gooders can just call it a day, because nobody cares.
Many of you aren't kids anymore and are obviously yearning for a new tree
house to dwell in.

A young boy walks up to a scary huge steel door, knocks on it, and
instantly a small opening appears with two big eyes looking down upon him.
Whats the password? The lad thinks to himself for a while because
everything he thinks he believes in depends on this. He musters up all the
strength inside him and utters the words which he will be expected to
uphold for the rest of his pathetic life...I have no use for drugs or
alcohol, I am Straight Edge. The door opens and he is handed his secret
decoder ring and is welcomed with many pats on the back and a handful of
soy. This newfound unity feels great to the boy inside......but something
is floating around in the back of his head and it REALLY bothers him.

The wee tot knows that there are quite a few contradictions in his
lifestyle. For example; being Straight Edge, or nailed to the X as these
pseudo prophets would say, is supposedly very individualistic. I'm sorry,
but correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that a bunch of people beating up
ONE kid from Virginia Beach at the Duration show? Doesn't sound very
individualistic to me buddy. Sounds like Straight Edge is just a supped up
form of a fraternity. Finding people who disagree with them, beating the
piss out of them in a 50 to 1 fight, and then laughing about it later over
a beer or a soy cream cone (Depending on whether you are in a fraternity
or a straight edge militia. Oops, did I say militia? I'm sorry, must have
been a typo...) But our young boy just shoves it into the back of his
mind, because all of these other people around him are doing it, they're
all straight edge so it must be right. Sounds like a parody of an
anti-drug commercial to me. The sad thing, is that this parody....is a
reality.

To the people of the X that are also vegan or vegetarian, I
deliver a special message. You think you're doing good, but your not. You
are doing worse, I've explained this many-a-time to people of all sorts,
straight edge or not. Whenever you leave the house and walk around
outside, you are crushing tiny animals that you don't even pay attention
to. You can whine about animals rights all you want, but in the end, yer
just going to come out sounding like an unusually violent hippie. On
Valentines Day millions of people send each other the corpses of plants as
a declaration of LOVE. I cannot stand this atrocity anymore. If people can
kill the plants which give us air, the very life source that we depend on,
then I can kill the cows. Sure, hunting for sport is stupid, there's no
point to it. If you kill it, eat it. Its just that simple. But, from now
on, on Valentines Day, I'm sending my lover a slab of beef. Id rather send
my lover the corpse of a cow than the corpse of a plant. After all, cows
do eat the plants which give us air. Cows also release harmful gasses into
the air which I don't think that O-Zone layer appreciates to much. In fact,
I talked with the O-Zone layer the other day and it was telling me how its
going to spare me because I'm consuming quite a few cows every year. What
better way to say I LOVE YOU than with beef.

Anyway, there was a comment in last weeks article saying that
there is no sexism or racism in the straight edge scene. A@#%(@&*#%!!?!?
You've got to be kidding me. Half of these straight edge kids have been
depriving themselves from sexual activity for so long that sexism has
become inherent. They've been circle-jerking for so many years that they've
grown to hate the other sex. Just off the top of my head, I can easily
think of a friend of mine who is straight edge and he's annoyingly vocal
about it (egad! I'm not straight edge, yet I have some friends that are!?
Wah!) Guess what, he refers to his genitalia and what he'd do to women all
the time. I'm not naming names, because he's still a friend of mine and I'm
not going to pick on one person because its not just his fault. Everybody
in this scene is to blame for the same false sense of righteousness. As
for racism, its everywhere hidden in the prettiest corners of the earth to
the ugliest slum lands of hell...and I'm sorry, straight edge is not
excluded from it. No, it doesn't promote racism, but that doesn't mean some
of the (fraternity) brothers don't stray from the rules every now and then.
I believe that the entire straight edge philosophy is based upon flexible
moralities, and I need not speak to prove it to myself or anybody else.
All I have to do is listen and watch them all being so full of themselves
and thinking about how everybody else is wrong and evil.

At one point in last weeks article, it said "In a society where
the message is drink, drink, drink, smoke, smoke, smoke, [its good to
know] somebody else shares these feelings, and i can find comfort in
that", RIGHT AFTER it discussed (but didn't go into detail) the Virginia
Beach kid getting into a fight with Hate-O-Four. ...I like to fight said
one of the members. So were replacing intelligence with brutality in this
straight edge club eh? MAYBE this really *IS* a fraternity were talking
about here. MAYBE the violence label that worries the straight edge kids
is a REAL PROBLEM, and trust me, there are PLENTY of cases out there just
like the recent Duration incident. MAYBE you should listen to the music
for the MUSIC itself instead of a stupid message. I have NOTHING against
the sound of straight edge, hardcore, punk, or whatever other kinds of
music were talking about here. But the messages they're trying to
incorporate into the music angers me. In a society where everybody wants
to fit in, its not surprising that many people are jumping on the straight
edge wagon. But guess what! I'm hoping to pop the wagons tires and send
them all crashing into reality. Yeah right, I'm just a single person right.
I need UNITY! STRENGTH! A BAND! A SMALL POPULACE IF YOU WILL! I need all
these things to get my anti-sxe message across to people....right? It's
quite amusing how we all seem to think were so individualistic even though
we don't realize the many things in our lives that make us who we are. And
I'm no better, trust me.

Look, I don't do drugs or drink because somebody told me not to, or
a group of umpteen militant toddlers beat me up with skateboards and it
made me realize how wrong I am. I've had enough of my own experiences since
my youth to get me to not do that stuff. Hating alcohol the first and only
time I ever had it in church. I couldn't get that nasty aftertaste of the
wine that morning. And I couldn't leave to get a jolt cola because I was
too busy singing songs in praise of Allah....or whatever that cynics name
is. You know, that god guy who supposedly lives up there in the sky. Well
if he's there, he's gonna be the first one to get screwed by the O-Zone
problem....that's all I've gotta say about that. As if the taste wasn't bad
enough,  Also hearing of people that I knew of who died in car
accidents related to alcohol...how much more did I need? As for the drugs.
Well, I never tried them, but I also spent MANY MANY years hanging out
with people who used them extensively. Lemme tell ya, I've never seen
people act so stupid in my entire life....then again, I haven't been to a
straight edge show yet. haha. On top of that, in college I saw HUGE
problems with cocaine, as well as rumored deaths. Sorry, the NBC public
service announcements didn't tell me not to smoke marijuana. The mere
stench of it was enough to push me away. Sure its always nice to meet some
people that don't do drugs or drink, but does that mean I should segregate
myself from the ones who actually do these things? NAY.

The way Janet Giampietro glorified the straight edge lifestyle was
quite pathetic. All the talk about converting people, I almost DIED laughing!
(it must be all that meat that I eat right?) Janet, I know you wanted to write a
spiffy article about straight edge, but you need to realize that most of
these toddlers ARE fake (or poseurs as you called some of them). And the
ones that always have lived up to the immortal guidelines of straight edge
are too closed-minded for me to have a tolerable, intelligible
conversation with. I'll admit it, I'm a gal who loves annoying people, and
I've been having a field day with the straight edge scene for a long time
now. I approach it with a look of pity on my face yet a roar of laughter
inside my chest. For example, if any of you were to go to my Straight Edge
Hate blog, you would either die laughing because you
thought it was funny or that I was a moron. Either way, I accomplished
what I wanted: I extracted a chuckle out of you. Still, I've received so
many messages from infuriated scenesters, including threats which I often
use as an example of their inability to confront a person verbally instead
of physically.

So please, I welcome you all to take a peek at my blog, and
maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll say I'm just another ignorant
bastard who's bashing something she knows nothing about. Maybe you'll say I'm
going to die young anyway because I am a proud MEATATARIAN. Well to all of
you violent scabs out there, I'd like to end this little commentary with
something for you to ponder:

You are all working so hard to live a lifestyle that is so pure and
perfect and free of harm to your body and even perhaps our neighbor the
cow. During all of this, make sure you look both ways before you cross the
street! There's an ENTIRE WORLD of problems out there that you aren't even
covering and any one of them could hit you like a speeding bus at any
given moment.

p.s.: A hefty handshake goes out to anybody who knows where my alias
Guybrush Threepwood originated from. I'd be quite surprised to find
somebody who actually knows of this name.

THERE YA HAVE IT!