From the “you just can’t this stuff up” file…. A woman wrote to the manners and morals advice column (written by someone calling herself ‘Prudence’) at Slate.com asking guidance about her boyfriend. The problem? [He is sexually aroused by death metal](http://www.slate.com/id/2200381/). Yes, this particular guy is better in bed when there’s Cannibal Corpse in the background than not, according to his girlfriend. She apparently doesn’t really care for that type of music (few do). But what is most troublesome for her are the “awful themes,” and that it “disturbs [her] that a seemingly well-adjusted man in his 30s [sic] is aroused by torture fantasies set to music.” She ends the inquiry with, “Am I being oversensitive about this?” Prudence’s advice? “As you describe it, you get through these sessions by trying to disassociate yourself from what is going on. This does not sound like a formula for sustained intimacy. ” Seems reasonble to me. The one issue that I have both with the question and resulting advice is the fact that both the girlfriend and Prudence both overstate the extent to which death metal discusses “female dismemberment” or “horrendous misogynistic violence” in its lyrics. True, that is one subject about which many death metal hands have written – Cannibal Corpse included – but it’s not the **only** subject. Examples abound, with the likes of Opeth who discuss themes like lost love, or Cattle Decapitation whose lyrics are mainly PETA- and Al Gore-friendly ideals. This girlfriend also takes issue with the sound, which she describes as “blasting noise with deranged growls and shrieks.” But from her letter, her main complaint is the lyrical content. So, it was rather lazy of Prudence to just assume that this anonymous person’s description of Cannibal Corpse’s lyrical content (used synecdochically here) was correct. Really, the girlfriend could ask her boyfriend to either use an iPod (Prudence jokingly suggests that the girl use one, which is absurd) or to just simply play death metal songs that don’t discuss violence against those with XX chromosomes. Maybe I should have an advice column…