Did you go see Henry Rollins last Sunday at Shryock? If the answer is “no,” you’re a fool and a piker, and you missed out on the best visiting lecturer since Ice-T. Rollins rocked the intellectual house, and cracked me up more than South Park’s been doing lately.

I’m going to be upfront and admit that I wasn’t familiar with Rollins’ work going into this lecture – not a bit. I was just going for the novelty of it, and the hope that he would be at least as smart, thought-provoking and funny as Ice-T was last semester. As it turns out, he was even better.

Henry Rollins was an well-spoken and angry (yet also strangely jovial) speaker and gave the crowd two fascinating hours of solid magic. His topics ranged from serious to facetious to outright sad, and between all the personal stories of his family and career, he never let us forget that it was our future he was concerned with.

Between his ideas on solving America’s pollution problem – us all taking one giant step north and taking over Canada – and his plan to turn the KKK into a festival of man-love; his touching stories of relating to his family and a lost love; and his visceral, powerful anger at the apathy of American youth and the pathetic mainstream culture so many accept as the only source of entertainment, Rollins delivered a blistering set of pain and bile that delighted and astounded me.

It was well worth the $12 ticket price. It was worth twice that.

I know what you’re thinking:”Wait, she’s talking about something she likes? She likes stuff?” Yes, as a matter of fact, I love Henry Rollins; but it’s only because he hates stupidity as much as I do.

Let me be clear about something, for once. When I say “stupidity,” please don’t think I’m faulting anyone for what they have to work with. No one can control their natural abilities and should not be disdained for such when they have no say in the matter. No, what irks me beyond all reason and rationality is willful ignorance:someone with no desire to become better than they are – or insufficient will to make it happen.

Striving to improve yourself is the name of the game, the entire point of being here in this life. Human beings are built to learn – why on earth would you want to deprive yourself of the one activity that pays you back all your life? You don’t really know why you’re here. You don’t really know where you’re going when you die. If you disagree with that, I’d say faith is nice, but I’m talking KNOW here.

All you can really say with dead certainty is you are here (or it seems pretty much like you are), so you’d better damn well make the best of it. Enjoy life. Do what you can to improve yourself and your situation. If you take that long slide into mindless apathy now, you’re probably going to be around for decades of that (shudder to think) – but if you are seriously committed to gaining new knowledge, there’s no limit to what you can do.

I love to harangue you, my readers. I do it, like Rollins, in the faint hope that someone is actually listening and will actually take it to heart

C’mon, don’t you want to be like Henry? He’s thirsty for knowledge too.

Crystal is a senior in cinema and photography. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian.