Haydn Symphony No 88 4th mov. Bernstein Wiener Philarmoniker

As all lovers of Haydn rondos know, a Haydn rondo is a succinct and witty narrative, in which there are no more superfluous notes than there are superfluous words in a story by Voltaire.

Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God--the end of Jordan Peterson's Usefulness and Validity as a Thinker (Philosopher)

I have not listened to more than a sampling of this--but quite enough to know that I heartily despise it and am profoundly bored by it.  It is a second-rate re-mastication of ideas and subject-matters that were valueless and third-rate to begin with.  What's amazing is how much there is of it: Given worthless, inane, vacuous premises, like the "philosophical implications of the Bible,"  it is the hopeless and ineluctable self-imposed duty of  lesser intelligence (which Peterson thereby proves himself to be) to expatiate upon them endlessly.

Listen, stupids, and learn:  There is no truth, literal, metaphorical or symbolic, in Christianity. Stop poking at it.  In its decay and corruption, Christianity is a corpse that can no longer be galvanized.

In this world, so full of sorrow, ignorance and horror,

There's no point in pretending that one pays any attention to the common view of things, either to concur with it or to dissent from it. Most especially is this true of intellectual, artistic (musical) and educative/pedagogical concerns.  Really, what does it boot us to speak of child-care or education in a nation where over half of its constituent states officially practice the corporal punishment of children?

So I missed the Grammys--all 84 categories of it--and did not even realize that it had happened for several days afterwards.  And I'm glad I did.  I think.  Still, 84 categories of what?  

Mozart's Birthday 2018

For a lot of us post post modernists there's really nothing in the world that we recognize as divine but the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; so we celebrate Mozart's birthday as our only possibly genuinely religious holiday.  It's fine if you don't understand this--being Mozart-worshippers, we're used to people who, for whatever reason, don't venerate Mozart as we do, and are incapable of comprehending that music is an art (something noble and sacred), and that Mozart is, in a special sense, the greatest artist that ever lived, and that--to name only two things--the clarinet concerto and the clarinet quintet--are both, every single note of them, from end to end, absolutely sublime. You either "get" it or you don't.

Still, it occurs to me that there are other composers that the many-headed have no understanding or appreciation of; some with, some without, the imputation of sub-humanity that failure to realize the divinity of Mozart naturally brings with it.  A composer whom an insensitivity-to makes one, alas, more beast than man would be Henry Purcell. While a composer to whom one might be indifferent--or, let us say, defensively insensible--without dropping further in the scale of humanity than Rude Peasant (that is, not quite so low as the Ox he drives) would be Tomaso Albinoni.  There is, bluntly and frankly, no hope for the clod of less than human clay who does not feel the sublime pathos of Dido's lament.  But it's possible (I think, in all charity) just to be so bewildered  and overwhelmed by the high-stepping, fugacious regality of Albinoni's Concerti a Cinque that one might fail to recognize their perfect (albeit rebarbatively princely) beauty.

Mozart - Concerto no 23 in A major k 488 - Daniil Trifonov and the Israe...

Perfection! Astoundingly better than Horowitz or Rubenstein.  Note the relative slowness of the first movement--which gains so much thereby in delicacy and (perhaps the word is) poetry.

Mozart: Bassoon Concerto (complete) in B-flat major K 191, Aligi Voltan ...

This has never been more beautifully played, I think; nor has the bassoonist who plays it ever been more comely. Or downright cute.  But of course Aligi Voltan, diplomato a pieni voti presso del Conservatorio di Venezia, e dal 1999 primo fagotto dell'Orchestra di Padova e di Veneto (anche di molte altre orchestra), does not even think about his smashing Italian good looks when he plays Mozart and Vivaldi--just about keeping his double reed wet (but not too wet) and supple (but not flaccid).

Maria Tipo: Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major K 467 (Mozarteum O...

To my disgrace, I had never heard of Maria Tipo before I found this her version of the Mozart 21st piano concerto, which in my estimation surpasses even Artur Rubenstein's.  I think that I perhaps agree with François Couperin that women are just naturally better clavecinistes than men--and in general perhaps therefore are (yes, I can admit it), over all, better than men. Although, generally speaking, of course, I still find men to be way sexier, smarter and more fun.  I can say this because I adore Paul et Virginie and greatly like Bernardin de Saint Pierre (as did, remember, Napoleon--"Votre plume est un pinceau"); while at the same I pretty much detest Rousseau (and his godawful heteronormativity).  Anyway, this which is everybody's favorite Mozart piano concerto, was the first piece of real music to be played in Boston (at a concert of the Boston Symphony in 1846), after the Puritans had worked so long (by then, a little more than two centuries since the founding of Plymouth Plantation in 1620). and so successfully, at killing music. And the response to the music of Mozart, of the heirs of the Puritans and Pilgrims--the revelation of the extent to which the musical parts of their souls had been damaged and no longer functioned--is at once edifying and horrifying:  "Not music (as we now, in the year 1846, understand it), but the memory of music...." So much was lost when the beauty (the wit, the grace and the sense of fun) of "Papistry" was extirpated from lives and minds of Protestants.  Imagine hearing the andante of this concerto as "the memory of music"!

Priviligié? Moi?

Fortuné maybe.  Then again, maybe not so fortuné.  But definitely not "privileged." 

Cop Kills 16 Year-Old Inside Courthouse

The name of the wantonly murderous Deputy, and his address and whereabouts, have been kept secret: Already, 'tis said, anonymous threats have been made against his life.  Indeed.  And none against the lives of his superiors?  ¿Como no? 

God, how I detest and despise Halima Mansoor and the spineless, abject (slow, stupid, sub-human) creatures (like herself, one supposes) that she champions!

And I congratulate Mr. Ansari: for realizing, albeit somewhat belatedly, that fucking so insipid an excuse for a human being would be tantamount to bestiality--and for desisting before he sullied himself.  There are, after all, worse (fouler, slimier, stinkier) things than assholes to stick one's dick in.

Things widely believed in that just ain't so:

The badness and harmfulness of: (1) offshore drilling, (2) vaccinations, (3) genetically modified organisms (GMO's).  The goodness and intrinsic value of (1) "diversity" and (2) "multiculturalism."

HAITI IS A SH*THOLE

As are also, notably, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan,  Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Cameroon--in that, in all these countries, cholera is endemic, and in some, pandemic.  I have just learned that there's a difference, but I'm not sure what it is.

It used to be a sin even to want to have sex with women; now it's a crime.

Oddly, having sex with (other) men (which used to be even more sinful than having sex with women), has become neither a sin nor a crime, but a socially approved pastime.  Progress!

Well, what DO you call countries where cholera is endemic, if not "Shit-holes"?

If this be racism--Well, frankly, what does it matter?  The thing about racism, after all, seems to be that, apart from the hateful company of one's fellow racists, there's nothing wrong with it: It's simply the formulation, and the statement, of inconvenient, unpleasant and utterly irrefutable truths:  (1) Intelligence is hereditary.  (2) Negroes are incapable--not only of dressing stone--but of organizing themselves into civilized societies.    

Noam Chomsky on stupid people

Noam Chomsky - Institutional Irrationality

We're wasting our time trying to invent different special kinds of intelligence (e.g., the odious, oxymoronic "emotional intelligence"),

for no better, transparently doomed purpose, than to make stupid people, and (face it) whole stupid races, feel less hopelessly stupid (which, sadly, makes them even more stupid, because there is, after all, nothing they can do about it)--when, what would really benefit us all, to be fully conscious and aware of, are the several ways that many members of our species actually have of being, when all is said and done, stupid. There is, for example, what we might call primary stupidity which consists of the inability to speak or think rationally: which is, for example of course, the outstanding mental deficiency of Donald Trump; which usually includes, as Trump's does, such secondary deficiencies as the inability to read or to write legibly. There is then what we might call the complementary stupidity, evidenced in Trump's loyal followers, which consists of the inability to perceive functional stupidity in others, and/or to believe that such stupidity is of no moral, rational or ethical consequence.

And there, in a nutshell, in Trump's stupidity (which is almost certainly genetic or physical in origin)--and in the refusal or inability, due to vanity or interest, on the part of both Trump and his supporters, to acknowledge his stupidity--are revealed the two fundamental causes of unreason (which is the essence of stupidity): (1) Ineptitude (or, if you will, incapacity) itself, and (2) dishonest mendacity which tries (with diminished capacity) to deny and conceal ineptitude: Witness Trump's searingly embarrassing explicit attempts to deny his stupidity and to call himself (Sic!) a "genius."   Whoa. Like nothing the world has seen in an incompetent head of state since--Well, the New Yorker says since Nero, but I'd say the nearer comparison would be Commodus or Caracalla, or (even closer to home) Heliogabalus.

Damn it, I caved (in) and bought the complete (automatically renewing) monthly subscription to the New York Times today:

Much as I do disapprove of the vicious, war-mongering Establishment Whore--and wary as I am of the likely (indeed quite probable) mendacity and bias of anything printed in her--She's got the most intriguing articles, written by the most talented (if hardly the most veracious or honest) writers.  I'm not going over to the Other Side--merely getting a clearer, more comprehensive view of it.

Modern Times: Camille Paglia & Jordan B Peterson

What Happened to Men and Women? - Camille Paglia & Jordan B Peterson

Camille Paglia - Men and women used to live in separate worlds