The Moral Dilemma attached to my Computer

Moral dilemmas are fascinating things. They crop up precisely when they should, but that doesn’t mean we expect them. I had no idea when I arrived at the library I was carrying around a moral dilemma in my backpack. But sure enough, I am currently looking at it, wondering what precisely I am to do with it.

I am not a moralist, nor am I amoral; I’ve broken some hearts, rules, laws, and legs in my day. I also try to help out as much as I can, being giving and loving to those around me, hoping they will do the same. But I also love peace and quiet at home, and the right to sleep when I damn well please. I value one’s right to protection of self and property, yet in the end it might be worth it to just buy a new one…eventually.

Plugged into my USB drive on my laptop is my Cameroonian roommate Danielle’s mp3 player, a “Sansa Fuze+” allowing it to recharge. It is black, with 3.63 GB of memory, with only 82.1 MB free currently of shitty songs. Most of what she listens to is complete garbage, not only that but she will listen to the same song over and over and over again. For instance, she listened to “Tom Sawyer” by Rush for an hour straight last night. Why? I am not sure.

It isn’t that she listens to bad music, because she doesn’t actually listen to bad music. Hell, I’ve “borrowed” some of her selections while it has been plugged into my computer, finding unexpected treasure troves of varying degrees of quality. There isn’t anything of note in her catalog, lots of r and b, lots of emo-ish ballads about not being understood, lots of songs sung by women scorned about the scoundrel who hurt them, didn’t understand them, didn’t love them, or all of them combined. For every nine of those types, there is also a catchy Nickelback song (as if there is any other kind) or even Weezer. She also has quite a stash of Michael Jackson tucked away in its own file called “God.”

I was listening to Nirvana today, “Come as you Are” from their “Unplugged” album this morning and she asks me, “Why was this stuff popular?”

Not being a huge Nirvana fan back in the day, but having grown to appreciate it, I replied back, “I think because people then thought the music represented them, how they felt inside, saying the things they weren’t able to say. That, and it is quite catchy.”

“That’s stupid,” she says. “What’s the point about singing about how much life sucks and how terrible things are?”

I didn’t answer, I couldn’t get over the irony of her asking me this question, which leads directly to the moral dilemma I am currently staring at. The irony is that this girl, who does only two things, is asking this question. The two things she does: sit on the couch wearing a snuggie and watch either a terrible television show or movie (movies she has watched in the past weeks she chose to watch, apparently having the taste of a thirteen year old boy: the Blade trilogy, Bad Boys II, Mortal Kombat, The Karate Kid, the shitty Pirates of the Caribbean, Smokin’ Aces 2, Alien v. Predator, Alien v. Predator: Requiem. Upon learning this, not only did I feel a twinge of regret all of these movies reside in my vast movie collection, I felt it incumbent of me to queue her up a good lineup of movies to watch. What she has watched now that I have taken a firm hand in her movie training: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Smokin’ Aces (the original), Death at a Funeral (the British version), Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Godfather, and The Rock.)

The second thing she does is put on those headphones, turn the volume up as high as she can and either sitting on the couch in her snuggie or lying in her bed, she will proceed to sing at the top of her lungs those emo-ish depressed no one understands me songs and the love scorned songs and the forbidden love songs and the boy band ballads and the r and b songs she can’t keep up to in a fashion similar to that scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street when Freddy Kruger drags his blades across the chalkboard. There has never been a sound which will echo in my head like her voice attempting in vain to keep up with Whitney Houston during that part in “I Will Always Love You” (you know the part I mean.) Imagine that long “I……” sung by Roseanne Barr while taking a squat. That’s what I hear morning, noon and night when I am home attempting to do anything but listen to it. I’ve proceeded to walk around with my headphones blaring “The Ballad of John and Yoko” so the rhythmic percussions can almost drown out the cat castrations going on in my presence.

My sleep is off because of this singing. She sings as I attempt to sleep, she sings as I attempt to write. She sings or she eats and sleeps, and she only seems to sleep when I am not home. I’ve spoken to my other roommate about this, her boyfriend, and he feels precisely the same way as I do about it, but he’s getting nookie, so to him it is just a trade-off. Since I am not getting nookie, since I have to deal with it without any sort of reward, a moral dilemma slipped into my bookbag.

Dislike her annoying habit as I do, I still really like Danielle, so when she asks me for a favor, I oblige her in any way I can. This morning she asked me, as she often has, if she could plug in her Sansa Fuze+ into my computer to charge it; I agreed after telling her I was going to the library with it, which would mean bringing her mp3 player there as well. Trusting me as she does, she said that would be fine, only if it was okay with me.

I arrived at my favorite spot, a table near the periodicals on the second, main, floor of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center and placed my bag down and removed my computer. Temporarily forgetting about the mp3 player, it carelessly flew from my bag and onto the computer, almost in the same position it sits now, in the middle under the lamp, next to my computer, bringing with it the moral dilemma attached to the USB connector wire. What would happen if that fall out of my bag wasn’t onto the table at all? What if it happened outside in a snowbank or accidentally in the middle of Virginia Street as the number 7 bus to Stead was passing? Or maybe it simply vanished into the small spot on the table which leads to Narnia? Or what if I feign ignorance when I get home, insisting I didn’t take it with me at all, or it just somehow didn’t arrive with me to the library?

I would be much happier if I never heard her sing at the top of her lungs out of tune like she was being strangled, but can I be so cold hearted as to deprive her of one of her only two activities, especially when the other one attacks my sensibilities even more? I mean, she passed over the original Smokin’ Aces to watch the terrible direct-to-DVD sequel.

What’s worse? Living with terrible singing or even worse movies? Damn moral dilemmas, you have gotten me again.