Category: Humor and horror

Suite in B

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of P.D.Q. Bach by Peter Schickele. (Strictly speaking, the above isn’t P.D.Q.B., though it is from one of the early albums.)

Here’s another approach to Beethoven. (Via the Borderline Boy.)

1965 also saw The Baroque Beatles Book of Joshua Rifkin.

According to the liner notes of a reissue, Schickele was the first choice to write the arrangements, but he had just been signed to a different label, so Rifkin got the job. Incidentally, Rifkin sang in the first performance of P.D.Q. Bach’s “Iphigenia in Brooklyn.” A few years later, he would jumpstart the ragtime revival with his Scott Joplin recordings.

Here’s a more modern approach to the Beatles.

Glorieux’s Beatle recordings, which range stylistically from Bach to Bartok, are out of print, but you can find them on YouTube.

… comfy armchairs with ejection seats for emergencies

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres:

“I am a conscientious objector to child conscription, on grounds that I should not have to suffer for a disintegrating school system’s failure to provide teachers or study materials of even minimally adequate quality.”

And:

Then again, Harry was standing in a bank that literally stored your money in vaults full of gold coins guarded by dragons, where you had to go in and take coins out of your vault whenever you wanted to spend money. The finer points of arbitraging away market inefficiencies might well be lost on them. He’d been tempted to make snide remarks about the crudity of their financial system…
But the sad thing is, their way is probably better.
On the other hand, one competent hedge fundie could probably own the whole wizarding world within a week. Harry filed away this notion in case he ever ran out of money, or had a week free.
Meanwhile, the giant heaps of gold coins within the Potter vault ought to suit his near-term requirements.
Harry stumped forward, and began picking up gold coins with one hand and dumping them into the other.
When he had reached twenty, Professor McGonagall coughed. “I think that will be more than enough to pay for your school supplies, Mr. Potter.”
“Hm?” Harry said, his mind elsewhere. “Hold on, I’m doing a Fermi calculation.”
“A what? ” said Professor McGonagall, sounding somewhat alarmed.
“It’s a mathematical thing. Named after Enrico Fermi. A way of getting rough numbers quickly in your head…”
Twenty gold Galleons weighed a tenth of a kilogram, maybe? And gold was, what, ten thousand British pounds a kilogram? So a Galleon would be worth about fifty pounds… The mounds of gold coins looked to be about sixty coins high and twenty coins wide in either dimension of the base, and a mound was pyramidal, so it would be around one-third of the cube. Eight thousand Galleons per mound, roughly, and there were around five mounds of that size, so forty thousand Galleons or 2 million pounds sterling.
Not bad. Harry smiled with a certain grim satisfaction. It was too bad that he was right in the middle of discovering the amazing new world of magic, and couldn’t take time out to explore the amazing new world of being rich, which a quick Fermi estimate said was roughly a billion times less interesting.
Still, that’s the last time I ever mow a lawn for one lousy pound.

There may be a Harry Potter fanfic worth reading, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

(Via J. Greely.)

Link-o-rama

Bingo

A game to play next time you read a second-tier fantasy novel. (Via J. Greely.)

Advisory

Some trigger warnings for other literature.

1944, near Naples

Italy, 1944:

88 airplanes were a total loss. Eighty-eight B-25 Mitchells – $25,000,000 [1944 dollars] worth of aircraft

Vesuvius, 1944

Update: More on Vesuvius here.

Anthony Sacramone’s list of the twelve funniest books ever written is better than most such lists, though it’s missing Terry Pratchett, Robert Benchley and a few others. ((I was pleased to see that someone else remembers Will Cuppy.))

“Let us build a fairyland for the people by dint of science!”

North Korean slogan or TED talk tidbit? (Via Jonah Goldberg.)

A large serving of silly nonsense is below the fold.

Continue reading “Link-o-rama”

Linkety-link

Some nonsense to pass the time while I wait for the plumber to replace the water heater so I can take a shower for the first time since Friday:

Everyone is linking to this, and so am I: I love the sound of a good fisking in the morning.

Fifty shades of something:

31. Ethereal Eggshell: Applied properly, this creates the absolutely vital impression that you do not sweat, menstruate, consume, or digest food.
32. Invisibility Indigo: Have you given birth to a child while not being a duchess? Are you over thirty in a town that is not New York or Los Angeles? Hush, you are a ghost. Ghosts are pretty when they are invisible.
…
42. Shame Scarlet: One of our favorite DIY looks! You can assemble it out of almost anything: fat deposits, acne scars, stretch marks, skin irregularities, makeup purchases, food preferences, and, our personal recommendation, failure to meet expectations compounded by the fact that you weren’t supposed to try.

I recently posted a little “spot the girl” quiz. Here’s another, more challenging one.

Spot the girl

No, I don’t know which one she is, either.

Top Ten Unreleased Gaelic Whisky Names:

9 – Laphroaig Tigh-Eiridinn Loisgeach

Burning Hopsital – Intended for one of their special Feis Isle bottlings. But the producers felt that given their already pretty complicated distillery name the customers might be overchallenged by the pronunciation.

Tolkien, corrected:

Tolkien’s original translation is justly famous and beloved. He treeherds an unwieldy ancient text into lyrical modern English and captures the vast scope and romance of the epic.

It is also deeply flawed.

Tolkien refers to Quendi people as “elves,” a common term in his time, but considered highly offensive today. And while Tolkien was a great scholar of the Quenya and Sindarin languages, his command of Late Vulgar Adûni was rudimentary at best, and his translation of the Red Book suffers for it.

Peter Jackson to film the Silmarillion, in 72 parts.

Sylvain Chomet, the creator of The Triplets of Belleville (recommended), tells the story of La Vieille Dame et Les Pigeons.

An evening with Richard Thompson:

Beware the millicent

A visit to the poetry corner: Lewis Carroll meets Anthony Burgess, as translated by John-Lewis Lookingglass.

The Rasoodocky

Twas dobby and the chellovecks—
That’s Pete, George, Dim, and me, the boss—
Did sit and drink some vellocet
When came this great goloss

“Beware the millicent, my droog!
His nozh to skrik, his hands that skvat!
Beware the staja godman well,
who vreds boys in their spat!”

I took my shlaga in my hand,
And said “Come malchiks, ookadeet!”
Then viddied I old Billy Boy
This did I gavoreet:

“Ho, ho! If it’s not stinking Bill,
I thought I nuked the smell of cal!
Come take it in the yarbles now,
You eunuch jelly thou!”

Bill dropped the young devotchka down
That they had stripped nagoy
He spat and flashed his britva out
And crarked “Let’s get ‘em, boys!”

One, two! Plesk, shive!
My brothers, ‘twas a glorious drat
They creeched and horned and dropped their knives
And ittied skorry back

Twas dobby, grand, and horrorshow
We droogs retired, fagged and fashed
I raised my glass of honeygold,
“A toast! To our next crast!”