Semantics matter. Semantics can be exceptionally important.

It seems no matter how much I try to leave this subject alone, the issue of word choice and how it can impact in ways that the politically correct clearly never gave a stuff about keeps coming back to haunt me. Being so linguistically inclined that one can read at what you jokers call an adult level at age three has that sad effect, I suppose. But lately, the proclamations by defenders of so-called person-first language that it is merely a matter of semantics have me shaking my head.

Varg Vikernes, Greifi Grishnackh, Buzrum… pick the name, but here is a bit about the music.

The original explosion of media attention around the Norwegian black metal scene occurred and was in full swing around the times of my fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth birthdays. I missed it, really. Being in my mid-teens, having a media that was still largely only one-way, and being in a country where the so-called music industry is basically entirely a suck on the knob of American and Japanese conglomerate music divisions, lent itself to that.

“So… what do you like?”

It seems like such an innocent question. But when I hear people ask it of me, I sense a certain derision and even contempt in their voice that cannot help but make me angry. But it is also a reasonable question when approached correctly. The truth of the matter is that although I define myself a great deal by what I despise, have contempt for, or outright hate, I also define myself by the things I enjoy, or more specifically, why I enjoy them.