1.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “Murphy lives in my computer”

2.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “The bad news is that I’m going to be getting married in the middle of the semester so you are all going to have to relearn my name.”

3.      Dr. Lobenhofer in September: “The first class last semester was cancelled due to an ice storm.  I’m hoping that won’t be a problem”

4.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “There are many reasons you should learn this material.  Music is cool is the best one and its not listed.”

5.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “CAMS is talking!”

6.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “Classical musicians live in a box.”

7.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “Fast period quite fast. Like Bond. James Bond.”

8.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “I have to inform everyone of the existence in music of a medieval torture device: the metronome.”

9.      Dr. Lobenhofer: “The problem with piano is that you have two hands and ten fingers.  That can be a good thing too.  It depends on whether you liked piano.” 

10.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Next time I’ll be nicer, today I’m feeling nasty.” 

11.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Don’t anyone look at me like, ‘I can’t believe you expect us to know this.’ Don’t worry, I don’t.”

12.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “It seems that if you had a really disturbed life you write very normal music and if you had a very normal life you write very disturbed music…” 

13.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Materials that make music… your cell phone being the most obvious.” 

14.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “That is a natural bass… ready to drag someone into the underworld.”

15.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Categorizations like this are a good reason why categorizations don’t need to exist.”

16.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Wow!  Cool!  My iTunes decided to have a coronary.”

17.  Ashlynne: “Is the bagpipe a woodwind?” Dr. Lobenhofer: “No, the bagpipe is a freak!”

18.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “You have an exam on Thursday *class groans* Sometimes life just doesn’t go your way.”

19.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Unfortunately the Italians came up with the opera, so all the female characters end up dead in the opera.” 

20.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Once I counted the number of operas where no female characters die, I found six including Ghosts of Versailles where all of the female characters start out dead.”

21.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “You won’t be held responsible for nationalities I haven’t given you.”

22.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “There are actually people at PHC who have not taken piano lessons.  This is a good thing.”

23.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “I will always try to be nice for class.  Notice I said try.”

24.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “If you don’t speak music, don’t worry, you won’t have to do that for your exam.”

25.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “If I am Beethoven… God help me!”

26.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “The one constant motif is that technology hates me!”

27.  Dr. Lobenhofer, I’m hoping that when I change my name, all of this will change.”

28.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “At the bottom of your page write fugue.  Do not mispronounce it, for obvious reasons.”

29.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Kill dry-erase board markers! Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!” 

30.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “That would be really funny.  Funny, but sick.”

31.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Catgut logically enough is not as strong as steel.”

32.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “I promise you that that will be the last time we see Veggie Tales in class.”

33.  Jordan: “My heart is breaking over here.” Dr. Lobenhofer: “Sing madrigals.”

34.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “It is possible to miss up to 20 multiple choice questions on the exam and still get an A. Some of you have done this.”

35.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “If you’re talking about music theorists, you are nuts.”

36.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “Think highly caffeinated thoughts.”

37.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “I always wrote the papers at the very last second… I know to many people like me?”

38.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “I have never in my life been this busy, thankfully you only have to plan a wedding once in your life.”

39.  Dr. Lobenhofer: “If you learn nothing else from this class about Beethoven, know that suicide is not the answer… to anything.”

40.  Dr. McCollum: I am your substitute, Dr. Lobenhofer is obviously…” Dan: “…is no more.  She was married, no more Dr. L.”

1.      Dr. Baskerville: “Implicit in the desire to rule yourself is the idea of not having someone else rule over you.”

2.      Dr. Baskerville: “Why is Britain an island?” Class: “Because umm… God made it that way?”

3.      Dr. Baskerville: “If you keep going on like violating human rights we’ll get stuff like the metric system… There are people in England who a getting arrested for not using the metric system… It’s really, really terrible.”

4.      Dr. Baskerville: “Alright I’m all out of time, we’ll come back to this next class.”  Class: “Actually you still have ten minutes.” Dr. Baskerville: “Oh, you’re right. Okay then….”

5.      Dr. Baskerville on British Elections: “It’s not pretty, it’s not ceremonial; it is dangerous.”

6.      Dr. Baskerville: “What is question time? It is fun, but it doesn’t actually accomplish much.”

7.      Dr. Baskerville: “The quality of the debate is inversely related to the importance of the issue.”

8.      Dr. Baskerville on British Parliament: “A chamber full of grown men acting like naughty schoolboys.”

9.      Dr. Baskerville: “What’s so funny?” Class: “Dr. Montgomery walked in and then back out.” Dr. Baskerville: “He was probably offended by the subject matter… I don’t blame him.” We were studying the EU.

10.  Dr. Baskerville: “If you want to spend your life on something and learn nothing else, then learn Hungarian: it’s impossible to learn.”

11.  Dr. Baskerville: “There is a fine line between a tip and a bribe.”

12.  Joey: “Japanese students who do poorly on exams are known to commit suicide and I thought that sounded a lot like PHC students.”

13.  Joey: “Japan is to Ayn Rand, what satan is to Jesus.”

14.  Dr. Baskerville: “That’s kinda what Chinese communism was, enormous amounts of death.”

15.  Cate: “They say that the first Americans crossed the Bering straight 15,000 years ago.  I wasn’t there at the time, so unfortunately I can’t confirm this.”

16.  Jeremy: “I just want you to know that the Aztecs would often mix blood in their chocolate.  We don’t do this anymore.” Dr. Baskerville: “We hope.”

17.  James Barta: “Wow! Mexico has a spicy history.”

I knew there’d be trouble,

It’s what happens when you live,

But hope is like a flame that never dies.

Hard’s the road that I have taken,

But I walk it unforsaken,

So I rejoice in trouble and pain,

Because I feel my heart begin to change.

God, make me stronger,

So I can wear the cross,

I’m weak, I’ve fallen down so many times.

I will bear the weight of sorrow,

It won’t seem so great tomorrow,

Death to lose and life to gain,

But now I feel my heart begin to change.

Lord, I want to know You,

I don’t care for nothing else,

‘Cause nothing, no one else can satisfy.

Here’s my heart, O please just take it,

I’m afraid, but please just break it,

I know this trial is not in vain,

Because I feel my heart begin to change.

~"Brand New Thing" The O.C. Supertones

            The classic stereotype of American culture today is the “instant gratification” classification.  Stereotypes may be frowned upon in today’s politically correct society, but the reality is that they can provide important insight into the workings of culture.  America’s identity as a nation of rapid consumers is verified any time you visit a supermarket or watch Americans race along the highway.  It seems to me that this mindset that so much of America has embraced can be traced back to one of the fundamental attributes of the American people.  Alexis de Tocqueville famously highlighted America’s commercial drive as one of its most distinguishing characteristics.  Americans exhibit a peculiar restlessness and tend to be very individualistic, driving this tremendous commercial machine.  I believe that this restlessness created a very interesting and potentially hazardous commercial mentality in the American people. 

            When we consider the idea of restlessness probably the first idea that comes to mind is the image of a child who just can’t sit still.  Tocqueville identifies it in Americans as a sort of perpetual motion, American’s as a people just can’t sit still, we need to do something.  Obviously this motion has great potential: all this energy can be channeled into all sorts of useful outlets, but in order for it to be useful and not just a hindrance this energy requires incredible focus.  Apart from this, Americans would just flit from project to project without ever really accomplishing anything, like I have seen many children do.  Essential to creating focus is having a clear goal.  With a clear, desirable goal in mind, there is little the restless American drive cannot accomplish.  However, like all truly restless people, Americans can’t actually settle on a single goal.  As G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy once said, “Progress should mean we are always changing to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.”  Since we can’t settle on a single goal, we’ve managed to create an incredibly versatile intermediate goal which we can all use to reach our differing ultimate goals.  Infinitely storable, flexible, and useable, money is something that makes a great temporary goal allowing us to store up for that ultimate end.  It is from this intermediary that I believe so many of the ills of our instant gratification culture stem, as well as the instant gratification effect itself.

            First, money is addictive.  Something about the nature of man and the nature of money makes them attract each other incredibly strongly.  Money tends to draw and hold our focus, so on one hand it acts as a great counter to the American tendency to restlessly wander without actually getting anywhere, but on the other hand, because it tends to consume our focus, we become excessively focused on the end (the money) to the point where we lose sight of the means.  This is a huge problem. For one thing it produces an ends justify the means mentality.  The Bible itself says, “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil” (Titus 6:10).  By focusing excessively on money we justify any means we take to get more of it: cheating, lying, stealing, not just in the big things, but in the little things as well.  Here a little, there a little, while you compromise your humanity.

            Second, use of an intermediary end tends to divorce the means we use from our ultimate end.  What I mean is this: we separate our work (the means) from our happiness (the ultimate end).  One half of our lives becomes a drudgery so that we can enjoy the other half.  Work and play can coexist; work can be enjoyable and, dare I say, was meant to be enjoyable.  We have divorced the means from the end, but the reality is that the means are a part of the end.  This is the flaw in an ends justify the means philosophy: by compromising the means we inevitably compromise ends precisely because the means are a part of the ends.  C.S. Lewis illustrates this concept beautifully in The Great Divorce.  In the book, his character asks one of the denizens of heaven how life on earth will look in hindsight from heaven or hell.  He receives the reply that earth will not seem like a separate place at all, but for those in heaven it will seem like the first steps into heaven, and for those in hell it will seem like the first steps into eternal torment.  Similarly, the journey is a part of the destination; the means is a part of the end.  The practical results of this is that work loses its joy and dignity and becomes mere drudgery.  This also gives birth to sense of entitlement to joy when we finish our work.  Since we spent all this time wading through hard work we should have the right to enjoy our free time.  This sense of entitlement is one of the other major critiques of our culture and I believe it finds its origin in the divorce of work and joy.

            Additionally, it is from this separation of the ends and means that I believe the desire for instant gratification finds its origin.  When the journey has no value, but only the destination, then why make that journey any longer than necessary?  We want our ends (i.e. gratification) as quickly and painlessly as possible (i.e. instantly), because the means are pointless.  Now, of course this faulty philosophy is only accentuated by the smorgasbord of stuff offered to, but this is an effect, not a cause of our restlessness and need for instant gratification.  As any economist will tell you a market grows around demand, not the other way around.        

            Third, money is inherently materialistic and is therefore extremely limited as a means: it can only achieve materialistic ends. If the ends people ultimately strive for were materialistic in nature, then money would be the cure to the deepest ills of the human race, but the reality is that man’s ultimate goals of happiness and fulfillment are not materialistic in nature.  Men try to fill them with material, but the material stuff of this world is not of the same material as our souls and therefore a deeper means, a different material than the stuff of this earth is necessary to satisfy our souls.  As a result, money and the ends that it purchases are inherently insufficient to satiate the hunger of the soul.  This makes it’s own contribution to America’s restlessness.  We keep jumping from material thing to material thing seeking happiness and as each disappoints we move on. 

            Finally, as money craves attention, it often makes people forget that it exists to be a temporary end in the first place.  It becomes an end unto itself.  Since money is designed to be a means, it fails miserably in the role of an end.  It has been said that money makes a great servant but a terrible master.