Christmas morning arrives. You stumble excitedly down the stairs in your jammies, and your leaping heart cracks three of your ribs, puncturing your lungs as you see that long, rectangular package under the tree. You ignore the blinding pain and lunge for the box, figuring you can get in a few songs before drowning in your own blood. But as you tear open the wrapping paper, the realization that you’ve been swindled in God’s name sets in. This looks like Guitar Hero, but it’s not Guitar Hero. It’s Guitar Praise.

Your final gurgling moments are spent clawing at your mother’s face, spewing a sputtering mess of blood and words that sounds like “blurrrgh… cheap… gurruuurgmother… fuuurrglefucker!” You fall. You will never get to play the one thing that may have saved your rotten, sinning soul.

I have a problem. It’s an ugly habit that is destroying my life. When everyone else hates an album I love, a syndrome kicks in- its severity proportionate my peers’ collective hatred for said album- and I find myself compulsively determined to convince everyone that they’re wrong, that they just need to give it a truly objective chance.

Forgive me, but I am unable to stop loving The Distillers’ 2003 album Coral Fang.

While the rest of the nation was watching Barack Obama accept the Democratic nomination in Denver, Radiohead was in Santa Barbara, CA, bringing their international summer-long In Rainbows tour to a triumphant, if subdued, close. The biggest band in the world proved last night exactly why they can give their album away and still be a wild success; they’re maniacally passionate about what they do, and the authenticity of delivery matched with sheer instrumental genius lifts them head and shoulders beyond the lion’s share of arena bands out there.

Radiohead proved once again last night that they’re atmospheric pioneers in a purgatorial electronic landscape, where the running theme is delicate despair with bursts of angelic optimism. Whether they’re pushing industry envelopes, making crazy laser beam videos or simply blowing minds and dropping jaws with their music, this band is undoubtedly among the best of our generation.

Axl Rose didn’t call the FBI, but today it became more than obvious that someone really was serious about that threat. Johnny and I sat on a pew in the U.S. District Court building in Downtown L.A. as Skwerl sat behind glass, in handcuffs, and still in his jammies since the FBI arrested him at 6:59 this morning.

After five or so other cases were presented, the United States of America presented her case against Skwerl. The proceeding was mostly about what his bail was going to be set at. The U.S.A. requested bail be set at $50,000. Skwerl’s court-appointed attorney thankfully called B.S. on that one and recommended his bail be $5,000 and that this case is the kind of case where the defendant should have been summoned to appear instead of being accosted by five F.B.I. agents at his home in a quiet neighborhood.

Skwerl got himself hauled in by the FBI today over this whole GNR / Chinese Democracy leak fiasco, which seems to mean that people take this whole copyright thing pretty seriously. We weren’t going to make a big spectacle of this, since it’s obviously a pretty serious situation, but the plankton hacks over at the Los Angeles Times managed to pick up on the story and run it a highly suspicious impressive two hours after the incident went down. So here we are.