And wins, while American Actress-ambassador Angelina anguishes about Almaz’s Addis Ababa AIDS adoption allegations in Awassa, which helps explain why political journalism is so zzzzzzz.

I know it’s customary to be charitable toward the recently deceased, but my reaction to the passing of Karlheinz Stockhausen is that another pompous, humourless arse has bitten the dust. I won’t miss him one little bit.

Richard Sanderson has posted on his blog an interesting obituary of Stockhausen, in which he refers to the English composer Cornelius Cardew’s book “Stockhausen Serves Imperialism”. Cardew was a pupil of Stockhausen, and produced a volume of similarly unlistenable noise. Stockhausen was certainly bourgeois, but given that Cardew served totalitarianism, the critique of his mentor carries little weight.

I’ve had the misfortune to hear quite a bit of Stockhausen’s oeuvre over the years. Take Stimmung, for example. This overlong and extremely tedious piece for voices was experimental music for the cultural hell that was 1970s middle-class suburbia. It was the kind of music played by pseudo-intellectuals in box houses with wall-to-wall nylon carpets and all the latest kitchen gadgetry.

An absolutely fucking awful racket.

Miaow!

Ali Eteraz is close. Andrew Coyne is closer.

Sohail Raza is closer yet, and Alan Borovoy is right on the mark, but it’s still all too much like a sitcom.

Following on from the recipe advice here — Hakmao has taken a look at a Heston Blumenthal inspired menu. There isn’t any Beluga whale’s spunk foamed up and encrusted upon a sliver of bull’s intestine but there is some Langoustine, onion and vermouth stock cubes, wrapped in edible gold leaf and dissolved in frankincense water, served with a spoon carved from myrhh. Yummy. Most christmassie indeed.

Real culinary delicacies from Gordy (proper man food — fish pie included, doeth follows).