Lord Dying, Misery Index To Tour

Lord Dying

So, this post isn’t just about an awesome tour — it’s about this blog, and me, more than anything else.

If you came here just to get Lord Dying and Misery Index’s tour dates, then proceed to the very end of this post.

But if you wanna know about this site making the F.B.I.’s watch list, then read on.

A few months back, I learned the hard way that you can’t make certain jokes online without attracting the wrong kind of attention.

I won’t recall for you here what was written in that post, which went up months ago and concerned the band Babymetal. But I will say that my comments were merely intended as dark humor. Nothing more.

I’m not a violent man. Ask anyone who truly knows me.

Anyways, so, it seems that some of Babymetal fans caught wind of this particular post I’d written when I was in an especially surly mood, and I guess some of them forwarded the link to the F.B.I.

I forget what day it was, but I was sitting on my couch, typing away when the front buzzer sounded. I rushed down the hall, and press the button to speak. “Police” was the response when I asked who it was.

I live on the fourth floor and there’s no elevator in my building. Thinking it was a friend of mine screwing with me, I looked down from atop the stairs to see who it was. It wasn’t one of my friends.

I stood outside my apartment door, waiting for the two men to make their way upstairs. When they reached my floor, I could see one of them was holding papers. “Wanna step inside?,” the officer asked me.

“Can we just talk out here?,” I asked. “Sure,” he said.

I have my name to the officer, who then explained to me that he was there representing the F.B.I. He asked me what my email address was. I recited my Google mail for him, which prompted him to ask me about GSA.

“That’s a blog I run, but I’m probably shutting it down,” I told the agent. I was then asked if I had ever written about Babymetal. As he started his question but before he mentioned the band, it dawned on me why they were there.

“Ugh, that post,” I thought, remembering how months ago, my lawyer ex told me that I shouldn’t worry about what I’d posted.

I told the agents (only one spoke) that I was the person who published the post, and that it was an innocent attempt at humor that apparently failed miserably. I told them my sense of humor was slightly off, but that I meant no harm to Babymetal. I explained the band’s divisiveness with metal fans, and the agent told me he understood.

“You can’t write things like that, though,” he told me. I nodded, and told him I knew that now. He told me that they have to look in to all threats made on sites that are reported to them. That’s when the agent thanked me for my time and both men left.

I didn’t write about this after it happened because I was slightly freaked out. Some time has passed now, and I write this post as a cautionary tale.

People write all kinds of threatening shit online. But you need to think before you type. Or your buzzer might sound unexpectedly one day, and you’ll get a visit.

Here’s those tour dates:

4/28: Harrisonburg, VA @ The Golden Pony
4/29: Frederick, MD @ Café 611
5/1: Brooklyn, NY @ St. Vitus
5/2: Worcester, MA @ Palladium
5/3: Clifton Park, NY @ Trick Shot Billiards
5/4: Montreal, QC @ Foufounes Electriques
5/5: Ottawa, ON @ Maverick’s
5/6: Toronto, ON @ Hard Luck Bar
5/7: Rochester, NY @ Montage Music Hall
5/9: Lakewood, OH @ The Foundry
5/10: Chicago, IL @ Live Wire Lounge

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.