This guy from Egypt on YM just asked me to think up a name for his Estate Agency business and I immediately came up with New Space. I think he's going with it!

Beethoven took the worst, most stupid, irrelevant, trivial, badly composed, unmusical piece of tripe and turned it into the World's greatest keyboard masterpiece of all time (according to some authorities). A neat party trick that took him four years (on and off) to accomplish.

Subtext 2 - I can turn the worst into the best.

There is a lot of humour in the music. Both 'good humour' and actual amusing moments (I have already mentioned the Mozart quote).

As early as Variation 1 (a kind of manic triumphant march), Beethoven is saying (subtext 3) 'ignore the theme you've just had the misfortune to hear, you're about to listen to some echt Beethoven now.'

Some of the later variations (29, 30 and 31 in particular) are among the most sublime and contemplative inventions of Beethoven's canon. We move into the realms of Romanticism which some scholars claim Beethoven always avoided only ever taking Classicism to its most extreme parameters.

Poem title: Diabelli Variations

Poet - James Norcliffe (I assume from NZ as this work is published at NZetc).

I love
this music

it laughs at
right-angles

it mocks
wallpaper

I play it
over

& over
& over

Link ~

http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Ba20Spo-t1-body-d6-d5.html#name-123883-1

I have been listening to this work for several hours today in the Schnabel recording. Apparently the Polish Pianist Anderszewski is one of the leading current exponents of this masterwork. It is also interesting to note that Brendel rates it as the best work ever written for Piano.

The 33 variations cover every Piano technique known at the time of its composition with a few of Beethoven's invention thrown in for good measure.

Variation 22 is an Allegro molto, alla ‘Notte e giorno faticar’ di Mozart (quoting Mozart's Opera Don Giovanni - a neat trick!)

Variation 32 is a Fugue - a difficult compositional device at which J.S.Bach excelled. Footnote - The Diabelli Variations are often seen as an answer to the Goldberg variations of J.S.B. (Goldberg was an even less gifted composer than Diabelli!)

When this crapulous Waltz in C major landed on Beethoven's desk, he laughed his head off (and probably nearly ripped it up in disgust)... however, after more careful consideration, Beethoven had a brainwave somewhat greater than Diabelli's conceptual idea.

He got wind of the fact that Diabelli had sent this Waltz to 32 other composers... and had the idea to pretend that he wasn't going to submit a variation to Diabelli for publication at all... that the piece was far too trivial to merit having variations written in its honour.

However, secretly for four years (1819-1823), Beethoven worked away at producing one of the all time immortal works for Piano. He composed a set of 33 variations (lasting over an hour) on the Waltz with the primary subtext one better than all of the other 32 composers put together.

Diabelli was an utterly talentless composer of the early 19th Century whose father happened to be a music publisher. He wrote hundreds of trivial works (largely for solo Piano) which were all published and put into print but are universally ignored today. However (in an almost conceptual way) he had a gigantic brainwave in 1819.

He wrote a piece of his normal compositional standard (i.e. total garbage) - a Waltz in C major and sent it to all of the composers working in Vienna at that time (including Schubert and the 8 year-old Liszt), asking them to write a Variation on the work which he would publish in one large volume.

I am having another website constructed. I met Joe Cheray (who is female btw) through Yahoo 360 (a mainly American blog, where I archive my best postings from this site) and she has started developing a new website that is being hosted by Bravenet.

We've only put up a couple of links pages and a biography so far, but are already developing a house style.

Links ~

http://www.creativexplosion.co.uk/

http://primarylinks.creativexplosion.co.uk/

http://linkscontd.creativexplosion.co.uk/

The URL of Znethru is ~

http://primarylinks.creativexplosion.co.uk/

Another sterling effort from the boys commentating on two-and-a-half hours of rain today (so far).

Putting Ice Cream in the microwave because you can't scoop it out.

I'm a bit stuck on this one ~

I tickle hedgehog to reveal haemorrhoid, 13 letters and the 8th letter is a Q.

Mine was Risotto and a glass of white wine.

I have to confess, another of mine!

Link ~

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=9522311794

(check the Q & As !)

I wonder what %age success rate these type of spammers actually get.

This morning's spam:

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Put "Register me for a free Membership" in the subject,
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special report as soon as possible, and also Your free
membership ID#.

My best regards,
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sid20032006@yahoo.com

Note: p.s. This is one time email. If you wish to remove.
Kindly email to sidney2005@america.hm with the subject of your email
"Remove Me"
This message is sent in compliance of the new email Bill HR 1910. Under Bill HR 1910 passed by the 106th US Congress on May 24, 1999, this message cannot be considered Spam as long as we include the way to be removed. Per Section HR 1910, Please type *

I suddenly had the brainwave to name my house!

I am a composer but my day job is teaching the Piano. I immediately thought of The Piano House.

I wrote to the local council (and apart from telling me it was going to cost me £57.20) they said I was not allowed to use the word 'The' in the title of my house name.

Next thought... My latest composition is my Jazz Symphony, so why not Jazz Symphony House?

They told me I was only allowed two words (max.) and that neither word could exceed two syllables! They also mentioned en passant that Jazz House would be fine, as would Symphony House! (I wonder exactly how they were pronouncing the word Symphony!)

After much pulling out of hair and screaming at young children, I thought I'd try Mozart House. This is a good name for many (hopefully obvious) reasons.

I suggested this to the council and sat back in trepidation waiting for their email response. Here it is:

Please could you let me know the theme or meaning of Mozart/Mosart.
Is it a name of a person, place or thing etc or has it any political/cultural meaning etc?

Thank you.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

There is an intriguing new Aussie website which features a variation of the old game 'Nim' which readers may not have heard of.

Well worth a visit, the website is here ~

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pearl.shtml

Background information on the game can be found here ~

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim

I am developing a theory why Genesis Lyrics are so hard to comprehend. Their music is on a very high level, I almost consider it to be an extension of contemporary Classical music rather than 'Rock' as it is generally classified (at least their early work before it became commercial). The music really stands up to multiple playings which is a test of great work. If the music had easy-to-understand lyrics it would somehow lower the status of the highly structured (and well thought-out) musical content.

Example of Genesis Lyrics:

There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag,
He used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag,
The frog was a prince,
The prince was a brick, the brick was an egg, the egg was a bird,
Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hard on your tail,
Hadn't you heard, they're going to change you into a human being!

This email made a jolly start to the day.

Greetings!,

My name is Jojelyn Ngoho
I am sorry for the unusual approach but I have acquired your email address as a person who is actively involved or is `looking for an online Business Opportunity'.

If this is the case I would be grateful if you would allow me to send you details of an `opportunity that I am currently involved in at the moment.

I did not want to send you any details until I had mailed you to seek your permission first,as experience has taught me that not all leads that we acquire are genuine`Business `Opportunity Seekers', If this is the case for you then please ignore this email as you have already been excluded from future mailing from me.

If however It would be ok to send you details of my `Opportunity then please send an e`mail to "jojelyn@bust.com" with "Register Me" in the subject line and your Name in the text body, without this I cannot send you any further information I am afraid.

So why not give it a try?... it's FREE anyway!...
Just give me a chance to show you how our program works.

You can cancel your membership anytime you want.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you very much for your time and your cooperation,

God Bless You and your Family

Yours sincerely,

Jojelyn Ngoho

The 2nd worst thing a new chat facility contact can ask you is wassup? Obviously the no.1 worst thing is ASL to which the standard answer is "drop dead, loser." The correct response to wassup? is "generally, the ceiling" (or if you are outdoors) "the sky".

I put in my full name - Jonathan Socrates FeBland into the anagram finder page (link below) and found the following (among many others).

A CABALA TREND TENS OF JOHNS
A SARABANDE CONS ELF NTH JOT

Link ~

http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html

Popped into one of these B & Q / Homebase/ Ikea/ Wickes type places today.

Had an item to return and a shopping list of 3 further items.

They swapped the faulty article - no problem there, but could not supply me with any of the other things I needed, even though they'd promised that they'd be in receipt of a large delivery last Friday.

Still, I suppose 1 out of 4 ain't bad.

I will be out all day, today representing my County (Middlesex) in The Metropolitan Cup an annual inter-county teams game held between the Home Counties.

The sport we are participating in? The card game, Bridge, which I would strongly recommend to anyone from age 6 to 76.

Who are these people who dry their hands on a tea towel?

I occasionally contribute to a poetry website where you only need to write a single line of poetry at a time. There are usually about a dozen poems in progress at any one time and if you can think of the next line for any of them, you write it in giving your name or if you prefer, anonymously.

Link ~

http://atlas.csd.net/~cantelow/cgi-bin/poem_view.pl/pyro/current_poems/0/6/

Here's an experimental one I both started and contributed several other lines to (although I didn't ever write two consecutive lines).

I'd never considered Asparagus a good colour for my bedroom walls,
nor had I thought of walls as a response to my choc-ice lust
but my inner fridge was talking to me today with greater than usual clarity
the penguin of desire had eyes alight with the reflected silver of fresh fish
I had a curious inkling of my neighbour Eric's proclivity for hang gliding
to spy on his languid wife and her walrus-like lover on the beach
nobody said marriage was more than a melting iceberg in martini seas
Oh damn it all, I could murder a sandwich with enigmatic ingredients
or a bowl of frivolous soup that refuses to take me seriously
How I pine for the windswept landscapes of the Ecuadorian Paramo
to be lonesome where the only spectacles are those worn by bears
And yet, and yet, how empty one's life can seem mayhap of a Wednesday afternoon
as minutes limp in frayed bandages to Friday night before unravelling
I envy those smug ones with burning obsessions and self-cleaning ovens
swishing their tv remotes and redefining the shape of the Universe

I have no idea how this sprang to mind, but suddenly this morning I was reminded of a curious incident that took place in 1974.

I used to be a huge cricket nut as a lad and have taken a hat-trick before now (I bowled 3 or 4 styles but couldn't bat for toffee).

One of the school afternoons in a 1st XI practise game I was umpiring for a bit. The other umpire was a favourite schoolmaster actually he was some kind of school vicar (do these posts still exist?)... anyway after a few overs, he wandered over to me in the middle of an over, I wondered what on Earth was going on.

His quietly-spoken words? "Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb". [Looks at me mysteriously] "...You know how umpires are always supposed to have mysterious conversations in the middle of the game, Jonathan!" ...and with that, he wandered back to square leg.

Batman's were The Joker, The Riddler and The Penguin (and probably others I don't know about)... but whose arch-rivals were:

Duckman ans. King Chicken

Beattie (from the BT adverts) Mrs Jones (She was the lady who always phoned through to order items before Beattie could buy them!)

or... draw 1-1 and lose on penalties.

(Sorry 'in' blogging joke - don't look too hard for the meaning of this post).

Technorati must be a polite bunch as well as being even more highly educated than the Literati.

I think this might easily become my new favourite catchphrase.

You are the weakest link, goodbye!

...entitled blue bear and friends, I had to get my toys to pose for this one very carefully and avoid blinking (where applicable).

Is this really my screen saver though? I think it is actually just my background image.

This is a Ryman memo cube (transparent).

I think I can safely say that I now have more internet friends than 'real life' friends. It can be very rewarding building new friendships online.

One thing I am slightly anti- though are these new people who 'hit' you with a quick random search on a chat facility.

They often don't even take 60 seconds to check your profile to find out if you are male or female.

Under the Major Government, the grey squirrel made great strides forward... grey was definitely the colour of the hour. Now however, things are different, we should see the red squirrel dominate once more.