Black and White

I could probably write a list of the reasons why it's awesome to be me, at the top of which would be my massive, throbbing sense of humility, followed immediately thereafter by my knack for comedic hyperbole. Slightly farther down on the list (but pretty kickass nonetheless) would be my ability to see just about every conflict, argument, or basic decision in life from multiple viewpoints. Nine times out of ten, I can weigh the pros and cons of any given situation in a rational, emotionally detached manner--and while my emotions and personal beliefs often end up having a significant influence on my decisions, I can at least respect the idea that there might be some rational basis for other courses of action.

This respect is at the heart of all civilized discourse. [Editor's note: if you're looking to find rational conversation, AVOID THE INTERNET AT ALL COSTS.] Just because you disagree with a guy doesn't mean that A) his concerns are automatically invalid, B) he has nothing to offer in an intelligent discussion, C) he's Hitler, or D) all of the above. No one is going to be one hundred percent correct all the time, in large part because this is the real world and there are usually multiple solutions to any given problem. Theoretically speaking, a given problem might have one optimal solution, but the probability that someone would be capable of finding that solution is pretty much nil--especially considering that people will often disagree on what constitutes an optimal result.

Long story short: when it comes to complex social matters such as politics, religion, and morality, no one is ever going to be completely right. Everyone has their own idea of what "the good" is, and there comes a time where you have to be honest with yourself and realize that you're not perfect, and unless you're the second coming of Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ, neither is your particular definition of morality.

While the term "subjective morality" is something of a dirty word (especially among Catholics), the fact of the matter is that not everyone agrees on what behaviors are inherently sinful--unless it's abortion, in which case a good Catholic will ignore all other matters at hand because that's the one issue we're allowed to consider in the voting booth. I mean, forget health care, social justice, the death penalty, and things like that: it's our moral responsibility to vote for the candidate who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, even if he may or may not also advocate the state-sponsored euthanization of all homosexuals.

Because that's how morality works, right?

Honestly, there are few things in life that frustrate me more than people who see the world in black and white. We live in a world of vibrant color--not to mention of highlights and shadows--and the boundaries between right and wrong are often blurry, and can be seen differently by different people. And hell, there's a pretty big gap between theory and practice, as Catherine the Great was quick to point out.

Is there one right answer, one definitive solution to what exactly is right or wrong in any given situation? That's a good damn question. It's possible, but the one thing I'm sure of is that no one on earth has all the answers, and anyone who tells you otherwise can fuck right off. We are all human; we are all fallible. And yes, that includes you, Benny. (Is that the second time I've used that image? I need to find a new one.)

And yes, I know that many people would say that the Bible is the single, definitive answer to all questions of right and wrong, to which I say "BULLSHIT." The Bible is a book which (divinely inspired or not) was written by men, and any charlatan can twist the words of scripture to suit his own purposes, including the fucking devil. Biblical literalism can be used to justify any number of awful things, including slavery, murder, and genocide.

Of course, the Bible isn't evil--far from it. It's an object. A tool. In the right hands, a Bible can soothe the souls of afflicted sinners and bring them closer to God; in the wrong hands, it can do as much damage as a plague or a tactical nuke.

What's more, this doesn't just apply to Christianity--the Bible is a good example because most people I know have at least a passing familiarity with it, but the same risks apply to any belief system or ideology, religious or secular. The problem isn't the core principles (most of the time); it's extremism. It's the inability to compromise, or to even consider the idea that you might not have all the answers.

Aaaaand this is where we come to the dangers of seeing the world in terms of black and white. While one can make the argument that pure good and pure evil do exist, it's best to think of them along the same lines as mathematical limits: infinitely approachable, but ultimately unattainable. It's a much healthier alternative to considering your cause to be the pinnacle of truth and justice, as we will see in a moment.

Submitted for your approval: former Republican presidential candidate (and 2012 hopeful) Mike Huckabee wishes that every American could be forced at gunpoint to listen to the writings of historical revisionist David Barton--"And I think our country would be better for it," he says. Barton's version of history and the methods he uses to spread his message are highly questionable (to be generous), but that's not the point. It would be equally disturbing if Hillary Clinton suggested that all Americans be forced at gunpoint to listen to a reading of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

The problem here is that you have a man who is so utterly convinced of the moral superiority of his own position that he is willing to use the threat of violence on an entire country in order to make them think the same way he does.

That is, for lack of a better term, sickening. I don't care if he backpedals and says that it was just a joke; shit like that is not fucking okay.

The problem with reducing the complexities of the world to a simple battle of good versus evil is that everyone has to fall on one side or the other. If it's "us versus them," then anyone who isn't actively fighting for our cause is the enemy. In a black and white world, the forces of light and goodness can do no wrong, collateral damage be damned. This is the type of thinking that we see in suicide bombers, and it's incredibly fucking dangerous.

I don't care who you are, what you believe, or whether you agree with me on every political and religious issue. All I need from you is respect, and the understanding that you might not have all the answers. God knows I don't.

You have a brain; use it.

Further Adventures in Music Sales

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone! (Note that I didn't say St. Patty's Day, because if you say that then you're probably retarded. No, really. Go get yourself checked.) A word of advice to my army of devoted readers (shut up; don't burst my bubble): green beer is shit, and no self-respecting human drinks it. Yes, that includes you.

"But Charlie," you might say, "your average bro drinks green beer on St. Patty's Paddy's Day like it's his job!" To which I would reply, "That's because bros have no self-respect, nor can they technically be qualified as human. Now run along; the adults are talking."

Thankfully, most of the people who read my blog drink actual beer for actual people and not that Natty Ice shit--unless you're under 21, in which case I'm sure that you have never consumed any alcohol ever in your short, miserable life. Because underage drinking is wrong and nobody does it. Right?

Yeah, probably. Moving on.

It's been a little while since my last post, because apparently having a full-time job and a fuckton of Rossini to learn means that you don't have free time ever. Color me shocked. So, to honor the larger of the two black holes which are sucking away my will to live free time, I present you with another episode of Adventures in Music Sales! I'd make it an ongoing series, but I'm leaving in May, so there's really not much of a point anymore.

Snark ahoy.

Anecdote the First: So this guy walks into the Choral and Organ Department a couple weeks back, wearing some sort of chef's hat/beret hybrid and looking generally like he could be the (slightly) younger brother of Mr. Jimmy "The Rent is Too Damn High" McMillan. This fine fellow has decided that he wants a book of English organ music by anonymous composers, and asks us if we can help him find it. This isn't the craziest request that we've ever gotten, so we go through the usual questions.

Does he know the title of this theoretical collection? No.
Does he know who compiled these pieces? No.
Does he know the publisher? Hell no.
Is he even sure that this is an actual book that exists anywhere outside of his imagination? Take a wild guess.

In fact, the only information he can give us about this dubious collection is that he can hum one of the tunes. OH WELL THEN THAT SOLVES EVERYTHING. We just so happen to have a special super-secret music search engine in our back room that will find any piece of music in the world as long as you can hum it! And by that, I mean "Get the fuck out of our store and don't come back until you've at least verified that this fabled collection exists."

Anecdote the Second: This lady comes in with two pieces of solo music (read: not from my department), and asks if we have them in stock. I check our files and tell her that we don't have any choral arrangements of those two in stock, but we can order them if she'd like us to. She asks if I'm sure that we don't have them, and I repeat that we don't have any choral arrangements of either piece in the store at this particular time. She proceeds to go out front to the sheet music department, where she finds a solo arrangement of one of the pieces, and returns with the music in hand, telling me that she found it after all and giving me an accusatory look that seemed to suggest I had misled her in some way.

BITCH THIS IS THE CHORAL MUSIC DEPARTMENT. When I tell you we don't have a piece in stock, I am pretty explicitly referring to CHORAL MUSIC. I don't see how this is hard to understand. I wasn't lying or disrespecting you, but you will feel my wrath if you keep acting like a jackass.

Anecdote the Third: This one isn't so much a specific anecdote as much as it is a gripe about my least favorite type of customer. A depressingly large number of the calls we get in the Choral and Organ Department go something like this:

Customer: Hi, I heard [piece of music X] on the radio/on this CD I just bought, and I'm wondering if you have it in an SATB arrangement.

Charlie's inner monologue: Son of a bitch.

Charlie: Okay. Do you know who the composer or arranger is?

Customer: Oh, I don't even know that it has been arranged for SATB. I just wanted to find out if it was available.

[Charlie seethes with silent fury.]

Customer: ...hello?

Charlie: I will destroy everything you have ever loved. With fire.

Customer: What?

Charlie: I said, "Please hold."

Okay, so, certain aspects of that sample conversation may have been exaggerated for comedic effect. But not by much.

The point is, a good choral customer does a bit of research first and actually verifies that [piece of music X] is actually in print--or at least was at one point in history (c.f. Anecdote the First)-- before trying to order it. These people, however, are not good customers. They're idiots, and for some reason they all want to order gospel music.

Gospel music is problematic for sheet music retailers, because everyone and their brother has released an album or six of gospel songs, most of which haven't been put into print form at all. The stuff that has been printed as sheet music tends to be overwhelmingly for solo voice and piano with guitar chords, which means fuck-all for me specifically. It is only the rare, extremely popular gospel song that gets arranged for choir.

So! If you're cruising down the highway with your radio tuned to the Gospel Hour on 97.9 STFU and you hear someone singing "Jesus! Jesus! Look What I Can Do! You're Not Lookiiiiiing" or "I Kissed the Christ (and I Liked It)", chances are those pieces aren't available for SATB and you shouldn't even bother asking.

Because if you do, I might just shank you in the face. Consider yourselves warned.

Cinema Snark: I Am Number Four

There's a sinking feeling I get in my gut when I see a trailer for a movie I know is going to be absolute shit, but I also know deep down that I'm gonna go see it anyway. That's how it was with I Am Number Four, the latest angsty-teen-supernatural-romance-bullshit-but-hey-look-at-that-cool-violence movie. (Actually, that trailer makes it look way the hell cooler than it ended up being.)

Blah blah, evil aliens with shark faces are killing off the last survivors of another alien race who are hiding on Earth, blah blah, nine alien teenagers are developing unique superpowers. Also, the good aliens have to be killed in sequential order for some reason. Three of them are dead, and teen heartthrob/douchebag Alex Prettyboy Pettyfer is Number Four, so OH SHIT HE'S NEXT AHHH and yeah I could give a shit. His real name is never mentioned; he's always referred to by his number or whatever fake human name he happens to be using at the time, which leads me to believe that this defunct alien race was some sort of totalitarian society that didn't believe in names because they promote individuality and self-expression. You know, maybe those murderous shark-people in black trenchcoats are actually the good guys, freeing the galaxy from the tyranny of the Whatever-the-Fuck-Those-Number-People-are-Called race!

But wait, that would actually be interesting--so of course that can't happen.

No, the movie pretty much takes the standard approach to the whole "high school student with superpowers" thing, and it works about as well as it ever does--which is to say that it makes me wonder if anyone who writes movies or TV shows about kids in high school ever actually went to high school at all. Everything is so shitty and cliched and oh wait, who did you say wrote this?

Oh.

That's right, the screenwriters were Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the dubious duo responsible for Smallville. Everything suddenly makes sense now: the bad dialogue, the forced love plot, the angst about having keep your superpowers a secret... Yeah, this all sounds very familiar. Pardon me while I shoot myself in the face.

Honestly, there was nothing at all about this movie that was worth my time or money except the violence. Oh, and the scene where Four's guardian (Timothy Olyphant, who seems to have a thing for starring in shitty action movies) tells him to man the fuck up and stop being such a whiny little bitch about wanting to tap Quinn Fabray's fine jailbait ass. Because that was priceless.

Honestly, the whole reason I went to see the movie is because I like the whole "badass telekinetic guy" character type that seems to have emerged in the past few years. Telekinesis has always been a useful power, but telekinetics were often depicted as being frail--i.e. mental powers were generally associated with physical weakness. To make matters worse, the power tended to be limited either to defensive tactics, moving relatively small objects, or moving larger objects very slowly. To be honest, I didn't think telekinesis was that cool when I was a kid--I would have preferred shooting eye beams like Cyclops.

But now, with movies like Push and games like The Force Unleashed, you have a new (usually male) breed of telekinetic. He's physically tough, he knows how to use his power to attack and defend, and he can toss people around like fucking ragdolls because he's badass. There's much less focus on the physical and mental exertion that goes into the power, and it's often implied that it's actually easier to throw someone through a wall than it is to control the outcome of a die roll. Massive power comes naturally, but finesse takes time and experience.

I Am Number Four definitely follows the new model, which makes its action sequences really cool to watch. Unfortunately, that's the only thing the movie has going for it at all. It's not really worth the time and effort it would take to properly shred the rest of the movie, so I'll just leave you with some bullet points:

- The movie never explains why the nine alien children are numbered sequentially, or why they have to be killed in numerical order. That's lazy and arbitrary storytelling.
- The villains are terrible. Half the time they're supposed to be creepy and they're not, and then they start talking and they're just plain retarded.
- The name "John Smith" raises more flags than it lowers. It's like calling yourself "John Doe" and expecting that no one will notice you've given yourself a fake name. If you want generic, call your superpowered alien child "Tim Johnson" or something. Jesus.
- Apparently Number Four's glowy-hands and his telekinesis are two completely separate powers... except for when he uses them to do exactly the same thing.
- Cool girls don't look at explosions.
- The whole "use your hand powers to recharge me" thing is the most obvious sex metaphor I have ever seen, right down to the orgasm.
- Speaking of lazy storytelling, "members of our alien race only fall in love with one person ever in life" is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Especially because the love interest in question is human and you don't even know that she can reproduce with you. You know what would make sense? Reproducing with another member of your nigh-extinct race, who has powers of her own, has saved your life like six times in the span of twenty minutes, is probably better in bed than the artsy chick, and clearly wants your glowy-hands alllllllll over her.
- Yeah, just don't go see the movie. It's terrible.