I never thought this would happen

I shut down a CD half-way through. I shut it down because I could not stomach the music; and the music, if you please, was Beethoven's Piano Sonata op.57, the Appassionata.

The trouble is that it was played by Glenn Gould. Now I have heard GG perfomances that I liked, but this one can only be described as perverse. It was incredibly long, but that was the least of it; it was long because every figure, every passage, every note, was lingered on to an incredible extent. Trills, which are meant to trill if not to thrill, were practically broken apart into their component sounds. background figures which only serve to make the foreground stand out were brought to the forefront and treated like main themes. Over the whole performance hung a mephitic cloud of intellectual vanity. Worst of all, he makes it boring; and that is the one thing Beethoven never is. ,.

Something's going very wrong with the Tunisian revolution

Italy's southern islands are being flooded with Tunisian refugees - the biggest wave in years. Why did nobody in the international media - including Italy's, mind you - keep their eyes on Tunisia once Ben Ali had left?

I have a great idea for an epic story I'll never write

The hero goes down to Hell. He goes through all kinds of unleashed human evil, travelling at once through history and through the human soul, seeing all the aberrant reasons and the twisted emotions that lead to the worst results. And in the end, when he gets to the bottom of Hell, he finds that the Devil is this little pale guy with glasses, wringing his hands and saying continuously: "This wasn't what I meant! I didn't mean it to end like this!"