THIS PLANET'S A MESS!
-- The B52s
Don't get me started. And the goddam Zeta Beam is broke again, so I can't escape to Planet Vleeptron in the Dwingeloo-2 Galaxy (I think it's in The Local Group), where Captain Beefheart is playing every night except Bangerday at the Cafe Drek. I can't believe I am stuck on this wretched failed noxious violent planet while Captain Beefheart is playing in Poortown in Ciudad Vleeptron. The Dead Milkmen are opening for him, singing their notorious cover of The Doors' "Love Me Two Times."
MY DEAREST BELOVED BLOG READERS,
Whilst the Much Too Holy Land is having its Senseless Violent Endless War du Jour, while the Bush Administration and Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld and Cheney threaten Yet Another American War against Iran to fill my homeless shelter with shattered drug-addicted PTSD military veterans, while Iraq swirls further down the toilet in our Glorious Plan to Shove Democracy Up the Tuchases of Asian Muslims at the barrel of an M-16 using Depleted Uranium bullets ...
THIS is the best I can offer all my Sisters and Brothers stuck on Planet Earth. (Open in New Tab, if your browser has that option. Then you can keep reading While U Listen.)
The tune's NOT me own invention. It's a little ditty by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose 250th Birthday this sad planet is celebrating in 2006.
I so sincerely hope that if you open it and listen to it, its beauty and charm, its adventure and thrill, it's lurid hypermodern romance will leap through your ears and directly to your Hearts, where for a few moments, you will feel Pride in being a member of the Human Race, Pride in somehow being authentically related to this very goofy young Austrian who brought such eternal Pleasure to the Human Heart.
My brother just told me that when NASA's Voyager robot probe sent the golden audio CD of Earth Noises out into the Universe, with several samples of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, some guy wrote:
"That's just bragging."
Indeed. But the next time they ask me to make a golden audio iPod to send to our Sentient Neighbors in the Melkweg, I'm gonna cram it full of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Maybe giggle I'll throw in his original Lyrics to these dreamy tunes.
(As Amy's mom told her: "Never play with anything meant for the toilet.")
And when are we gonna do the Shock & Awe Thing to those goddam North Koreans? (I just heard a rumor on Letterman that Kim Jong Il just got married. Should I send them a cheese board or a toaster oven?)
Also it's time to kick some Lichtenstein Butt! As all of you know, the Lichtensteiners are the cause of all the wars in the world. And the Pentagon should do something about those goddam Walloons, too. (I'm sorry, I've been drinking tequila this afternoon.)
This is really about the most charming MIDI I've ever heard. The performance is by Katsuhiro Oguri. My only complaint is that in a MIDI, you can't hear the performer humming along with the music while he plays.
The antidote for that, of course, is to run out and shoplift Glenn Gould's Mozart Piano Sonatas. Listen to a Guy In Pure Rapture.
TONS of Free Mozart MIDIs on this site!!!!!!! Such Happiness! Lock the door, send the Kinder to summer camp, disconnect the phone, Download your tuchas off!
BIG CLASSICAL MUSIC NEWS!!!
Workmen fixing the sewers underneath the Strasse of Berlin DE knocked through an old brick wall and discovered LUDWIG von BEETHOVEN'S OLD STUDIO, with his Pianoforte and EVERYTHING!
And at first the workmen thought they'd found Beethoven's corpse -- but it was More Amazing Than That!!! Beethoven was ALIVE!!! ALIVE!!!
But acting very strangely ......... He had a big pile of his music manuscripts on the piano, and he had a big rubber eraser, and he was rubbing out all the music! Erasing all the notes of symphonies we had never heard! Never even known he'd written!!!
A puzzled workman asked him very respectfully: "Herr von Beethoven -- what are you doing???"
Beethoven was very startled to see the workmen, and replied:
"I'm decomposing."
~ ~ ~
Chosun Ilbo
South Korea (Seoul, I guess)
Monday 24 July 2006 08:12 Korean Standard Time
Kim Jong-il
'Marries Former Secretary'
[foto cutline:] A picture presumed to be of Kim Ok when she accompanied Cho Myong-nok, North Korea’s first vice chairman of national defense, to Washington when he visited as special envoy of Kim Jong-il in October 2000, from the U.S. Defense Ministry homepage. (Yonhap)
[foto cutline:] Rare Sighting of Kim Jong-il’s Clapton-Loving Son
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has married his former secretary, sources claimed Sunday. Kim has been living with Kim Ok (42) since his wife Ko Yong-hi died of cancer in 2004, and she is effectively the communist nation's "first lady," they said.
Responses from the government here have been mixed. One high-ranking official said he "never heard this before," while intelligence sources in Cheong Wa Dae would neither confirm nor deny the claim.
According to the sources, Kim Ok, a trained pianist, served as personal secretary to the North Korean leader from the 1980s until early 2004, and later accompanied Kim Jong-il on his visits to military bases and in meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries under the pseudonym Kim Sun-ok. When Cho Myong-nok, North Korea’s first vice chairman of national defense, visited Washington as a special envoy of Kim Jong-il in October 2000, the name Kim Sun-ok appeared among delegation members. Seoul says it cannot confirm they are the same person.
Several sources confirm that Kim Ok has been close to Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il’s cook of 13 years Kenji Fujimoto, who returned to Japan a few years ago, said in his memoir that a personal secretary with "Ok" in her name gained the confidence of the North Korean leader. Shin Yong-hee, a former dancer in North Korea’s Mansudae Art Troupe, said when Kim Jong-il was not accompanied by Ko Yong-hi at parties, Kim Ok would be sitting beside him. Shin recalled her as a petite woman with a pretty round face.
High-ranking North Korean defectors tell a slightly different story. They say Kim Ok has been living with Kim Jong-il since the mid-80s after working as pianist in North Korea’s Wangjaesan Light Music Band, but jealousy between her and Ko Yong-hi was intense. North Korean officials would call her "comrade secretary" in public but "Queen Min," after the late Chosun empress Myeongseong, behind her back for her daring and intelligence, the defectors said. Kim Ok had to go into exile due to the conflict with Ko, but reappeared and has acted as virtual first lady since Ko’s death, another defector said. However, Kim Jong-il is living with a woman in her 30s with the surname Na who graduated from the prestigious Pyongyang University of Music and Dance, he added.
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