Once you have your personal cheese affinity rating nailed down, add or subtract it to the rating above in order to determine the rating for The Helio Sequence's Love and Distance that best suits you. Here, -5 will signify that you have a deep-seated anathema for cheese, and +5 will indicate a deep-seated appreciation.

So, what you'll need to do is consider your own personal affinity for cheese, which can be measured by any number of factors: How well do you like Liberace? Notoriously bad sitcoms? Black velvet paintings, preferably of Elvis, bullfighters, or Elvis fighting a bull? Do you enjoy 'theme restaurants,' especially if the theme is indeterminate and mainly involves a glut of random pop cultural detritus hanging from the walls? Next, rate your affinity for cheese on a scale ranging from -5 to +5. Numbers are stately and immutable in their absolute precision, they limn what is, for all intents and purposes, a personal judgment (one heavily influenced, in this case, by my own relationship with cheese, which is not what one would call 'close') as an objective, universal one. See that rating up there? Numerical ratings are troublesome. But it is important within the context of this review, because your relative lactose tolerance is going to drastically influence your response to this record. Cheese, by its very nature, is frivolous. Cheese is grandiose, and not afraid to be maudlin- there is no obfuscation with cheese, no artful hedging of bets: Cheese is heart-sleeved and money-mouthed, and it dares you to insult it for being what it proudly proclaims itself to be. It storms in through the front door in a sequined tuxedo with lace cuffs, recites a ribald limerick and spikes the punch with peppermint schnapps. It does not slip in, fashionably late, through the side entrance. For another: Cheese is ostentatious, the dubious life of the party.

For one: Cheese is earnest, although not everything that's earnest is cheesy. Like postmodernism, grace, or pornography, we know cheese when we see it, and can list its qualities all day without attaining its complete essence. I now ask: What's cheese? Cheese is difficult to pin down. Biggie once asked: 'What's beef?' (and unfortunately, he found out).

Helio sequence love and distance