Hilarity itself.

Today, I was told by my roommate of a musical piece I'd not heard of before. It is by John Cage, who brought us such wonderful "works" as 4'33" and a bunch of arrhythmic music students at breakfast. He did, on occasion, it turns out, write music. He wrote a piece in 1987 which provided only the following tempo instructions: Play the piece as slowly as possible. He even included special "silent notes" in the piano version: you hit the key so slowly that the piano doesn't actually sound the note. I'm not sure how well that would work on an organ (that'll make sense in a second), but for a piano it actually does affect the sound, even if no human could possibly hear a difference.

Anyway, some music students and (surprise surprise) philosophers got together to discuss just what was meant by "As slowly as possible". They decided (for some asinine reason) that 639 years would be a good amount of time in which to play this particular piece, written for organ (see? I told you!) because of the expected lifespan of the organ on which it is being played. I'm not sure, but I got the sense from the Wikipedia article that the organ hasn't been fully built yet; they're adding pipes as necessary. Who could blame them? They've got the time. Anyway, to listen to the current chord (instituted on May 5, 2006; due to change on July 8, 2008), go here. This is the sound the organ is making. For more than two goddamn years. But it's by John Cage, so hearing anything at all is a pretty good start.

Today's post brought to you by parentheses. Maybe I need to spend less time coding at work.
... Nah.