Hello, My Name is Pretentious Asshole

I had my first evening class at CSUN tonight. It's a creative writing workshop, meaning we will be evaluating each other's work for the rest of the semester. Sweet ride for the professor. Speaking of which, my professor is pretty cool. I'm pretty sure he's Mexican, but he looks like a Native American chief of some obscure little tribe that we have yet to demolish. His hair is cut short on top, but in the back, there's a short ponytail and a large bald spot. So it's a bit more complicated than your average mullet.

Oh and I made my first enemy in the class. Something tells me he will not be the last. I was reading his story and it was about an accident he got into and how he went over a cliff or something like that. It was pretty typical writing for a student attending a mediocre university. Tons of cliches, phrases like "my life flashed before my eyes" and "my heart raced". One thing really irritated me, though. He mentioned how when he slammed on his brakes, his tires screeched. He described the sound as "a sharp e-flat". Uhh, HELLO, pretentious asshole! What does that even mean? I asked him if he's a musician, already anticipating the answer. He said, "I play some piano here and there... I'm self-taught." Yes, I would have guessed as much. I told him that he might want to reconsider the wording there, and that the contradiction might confuse people who understand music. He said, "No... you completely misunderstood." No, believe it or not, I completely understood. I knew he meant a "sharp" sound. But a sharp e-flat just sounds ridiculous. It seems like a funny way of saying "My tires screeched a regular e-natural." And he shouldn't bother making that claim either, because I have my doubts about his self-learned perfect pitch.

...and why e-flat? I couldn't understand, so I asked him. He got me again. "Well, I play enough piano to know e-flat seriously sounds really bad... no matter what, when you play it, it just sounds way wrong." What a keen observation, surpassed in quality only by its eloquent wording.

So... What I learned in school today is that e-flat is "wrong" and, as we all remember from Spinal Tap, d minor is the saddest key of all and it makes people instantly weep. I will remember this for future music theory exams.