Now Hear This

Now that I’ve started one controversy, perhaps I can start another one, albeit of considerably less importance from a cosmic point of view:

Although I do not hold Beethoven in the same exalted state as some other listeners, I do nonetheless feel compelled to defend him when I hear performances of his piano concerti in which the pianist has chosen to use his or her own cadenzas instead of those written by ol’ Ludwig Van himself.

In my opinion, such pianists will go to the Special Hell, the Hell reserved for people who say enthusiastic things about 4′ 33″ and directors who make Don Giovanni a drug dealer in the South Bronx.

Be Still

“Probably?” Um….you want to bet your soul on that?

I link the story and paste the pic primarily because it connects to something I’ve been wondering about recently.

You see, Mom and I have been having a casual series of discussions on the nature of spirituality.  She believes that spirituality is a gift, something one is born either with or without, and that to attempt to explain or encourage the religious impulse to someone who lacks such gift is akin to trying to explain or encourage an appreciation of musick to somebody who is tone-deaf.

While I can see her point, I’m uneasy about this proposition for the simple reason that it would seem awfully hard cheese on somebody born without the gift.  What, exactly, is such a person supposed to do?  I mean, I can fully understand God’s wrath coming down on somebody who ignores or rejects His call (and Heaven knows their name is Legion), but what about someone who simply can’t hear it to begin with?

Doesn’t seem quite cricket to me.  But then again, I’m an utter tyro in these matters, so am probably missing some basic understanding of the matter.

We Wii

The Family Robbo received a “Wii Fit” kit for Christmas.

On our return home from our travels, Mrs. R asked me to set the thing up for her.  Despite my general contempt for the oxymoronic concept of exercise via video game, I agreed to do so, being as I am the family O.C. for putting things together or repairing them.

As I synchronized all the doodads and put the program through its initialization paces, I was offered a choice of what I believe they call “Mii’s”, that is, personalized characters that represent the player on screen.  Much to my surprise, there was already a Mii named “Dad” stored within the bowels of the Wii.  Clicking on it, I further discovered that it already knew an awful lot about me, including my birthday.  Subsequent inquiry revealed that the gels had created Dad Mii for their other Wii games.  I had not realized that the home unit stored all of this information and applied it to whatever game disk one cares to insert. (That’s its cover, of course.  In reality, such information is being stored and collated for transfer to Skynet, which will use it to lethal effect when the machines rise up.  You think I’m joking.)

Anyway, because I couldn’t figure out how to turn the damned thing off otherwise, I put Dad Mii through the Wii Fit’s initial fitness exam.  According to the results, I have the ideal BMI score, which is fine.  However, the machine also had a lot of offensive things to say about my sense of balance, including asking if I fell down a lot when I walked.

I replied out loud, “Only when I’m drunk, thank you.”

The impertinence!

On the other hand, perhaps such cockiness will be the machines’ undoing and in the end will save us from them.