Hell is a singular repeating song.

I don't know when I decided this, but it was early on in my days of Catholic school education. In attempting to explain Hell to us, they attempted to explain torture to us. That's hard to explain to children who have experienced very little real pain in their lives.

Meanwhile, I was already attempting to come off as a "serious listener," the 3rd grade version of myself was deeply into Garbage's self-titled album, Spawn: The Album, The Prodigy's Fat of the Land, Nirvana's Nevermind, and coming home to dance in the afternoon sun to Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral. Yes, I was a pudgy, angsty 3rd grader doing interpretive dances in the living room to The Downward Spiral. My peers were interested in classic rock and pop music, if they listened to music at all. There were older boys whom I'd met in after-school care that were obsessed with Korn. They had bad haircuts, but they made me want to listen to Korn. And Marilyn Manson. They were in detention a lot, and their parents had divorced and remarried. It was a Brady Bunch situation in which a mother with two dorky, effeminate sons married a man with two angsty goth sons. I was intrigued at that age.

Anyway, at some point or another, I discovered that there were songs that I simply did not like hearing that I heard often. Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll" is one of these songs. I began to hate Bob Seger, though at the time I did not make the connection that he also sang "Turn the Page," which is one of my favorite songs and thereby cancels out his crimes against humanity in having written the song "Old Time Rock & Roll." Then I picked up on the fact that "Hell" could be used as a kind of adjective if "-ish" was added to the end of the word. I made the connection that I found it "hellish" to hear "Old Time Rock & Roll." By that reasoning, in Hell, I might be forced to listen to that song over and over again forever.

It wasn't long after reasoning this out that I also decided that it was possible that an individual, upon entering Hell, was told that there would be only one song played for the individual for all of eternity, and that the individual was then given a choice of what song they wanted to hear. So, the person picking their favorite song would end up hating it within a week, I reasoned.

I never did find a "favorite song." When people tell me that a song is their absolute "favorite song," part of me thinks "you poor bastard, it won't be after an ETERNITY IN THE FIREY PITS..."

Then I realize that I'm assuming that this person's going to Hell. Then I decide that I'm probably right, if Catholic school taught me anything.