Tab A goes into slot B.

If you just relax and take deep breaths it will only hurt for a second. This applies to many things.

When the diaper's really loaded up with poo, you absolutely MUST breathe through the mouth, NOT the nose.

Two blondes went to a costume party, both dressed as Betty Boop. When they saw each other, they were very angry, because they couldn't stand the thought that someone else was wearing the same costume. They started feuding, and one of them grabbed the other's name tag and changed it so that it read "Betty Bop." The second immediately did the same, so they were both wearing the wrong name tag and were angrier than ever.

Suddenly there was an unearthly moan, and a ghost appeared to them, also dressed as Betty Boop. It intoned, "Beware, mortals! I was once such as you, but through my pettiness and wrath I came to this! Beware, lest ye too suffer my grim fate! Beware!" But the two blondes ignored the apparition and kept feuding.

Things continued along those lines until the scat-singing contest. When it was the first blonde's turn, she did spectacularly, so much so that the audience demanded an encore. This made the second blonde so angry that she snapped, snuck up onto the bandstand, and slipped a bomb into the bass drum. But she greviously overestimated the length of the song, and it ended before she could get away. The drummer hit the bass drum, the bomb went off, and both the blondes and several innocent bystanders were killed.

And the moral of the story is: Bop, Bop, Boo-Bop: She Bopped; Bam, Boom!

The light bulb is a resistor (the resistance creates heat to make the filament in the bulb glow -- see How Light Bulbs Work for details). The wire in the coil has much lower resistance (it's just wire), so what you would expect when you turn on the switch is for the bulb to glow very dimly. Most of the current should follow the low-resistance path through the loop. What happens instead is that when you close the switch, the bulb burns brightly and then gets dimmer. When you open the switch, the bulb burns very brightly and then quickly goes out.

The reason for this strange behavior is the inductor. When current first starts flowing in the coil, the coil wants to build up a magnetic field. While the field is building, the coil inhibits the flow of current. Once the field is built, current can flow normally through the wire. When the switch gets opened, the magnetic field around the coil keeps current flowing in the coil until the field collapses. This current keeps the bulb lit for a period of time even though the switch is open. In other words, an inductor can store energy in its magnetic field, and an inductor tends to resist any change in the amount of current flowing through it.

A torque wrench allows you to gauge how much force you are applying which is often measured in foot pounds, inch pounds, or newtons.

Porcupines are mostly nocturnal, and are less active in winter, but don't really keep to any particular schedule. They have razor-sharp teeth to feed on bark and twigs, and razor-sharp claws to be able to climb trees to reach softer branches. They can grow to be fairly large--over a meter in total length, and quite wide. They stink. They also aren't as hygienic as other mammals, in that they will often defecate in their sleeping lairs.

Half Right: Porcupines are mostly nocturnal, and are less active in winter, but don't really keep to any particular schedule. They have razor-sharp teeth to feed on bark and twigs, and razor-sharp claws to be able to climb trees to reach softer branches. They can grow to be fairly large--over a meter in total length, and quite wide. They stink. They also aren't as hygienic as other mammals, in that they will often defecate in their sleeping lairs.

Watch out for winged porcupines. They are like flying rats covered in plague and poop.

Recent changes to the special education laws in Pennsylvania have taken away the classification of "mentally retarded" and replaced it with "intellectually disabled." I will be changing my insults on Fark to reflect that.

Was this a feral cat or an abandoned cat? For a cat to be considered feral, it has to have never had contact with humans. An abandoned cat has at some point been cared for by a person.

When I lived in Orlando, I had a small side business that involved catching and taming feral cats for re-sale. The money was great and quite often I'd re-sell the same cat several times after it had escaped its prior home.

A few things I learned about taming:

1. First step is catching them. You can get live traps at hardware stores, but they are expensive and people like to steal them. The easiest way to catch a feral cat is to lure it nearby with food and then throw a heavy blanket over it. It's going to fight like hell, so have a small, soft, rubber mallet handy to whack it once or twice to calm it down.

2. Once you've captured it, you need a temporary holding area to let it acclimate. Typically, I'd put the cat in the bathtub while it was unconscious and then tightly seal the top of the tub with two layers of cellophane. When the cat would get crazy and start banging against the cellophane, I could turn on the water to calm it. After a few days, the cat will have settled enough for you to handle it.

3. The important thing about interacting with feral cats is using a stern, clear, loud voice. These aren't housecats (yet), so they only respond to direct shouting. They are like furry Iraqis. If the cat isn't doing what you've told it, then pick it up firmly by the back of its neck and shake it like you were a big mother cat. If the cat bites you, then that's a clear indication that it can never be tamed, so either drown it or use the hammer to beat it to death. There are plenty of recipes out there that disguise the oily taste of feral cat meat, so don't think it's gone to waste.

4. Eventually the cat will be content to be held in your lap or at least it will let you press it against the ground and pet it. This shouldn't take more than a few days. Hopefully by this point you've set up a buyer, because the cat will be hungry. Feed it ketamine until it calms down, and then feel free to let the potential buyer handle it. Try to upsell more cats. ABC.

A daily fiber intake of at least 25 grams will prevent constipation.

Because f*ck you, that's why.

Thank you for protecting Wikipedia.
(We're not done yet.)
Close
Dmitri Shostakovich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Shostakovich" redirects here. For the conductor and son of Dmitri Shostakovich, see Maxim Shostakovich.
Dmitri Shostakovich in 1942

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [dmʲitrij ˌdmʲitrɪjevʲiʨ ʂɨstɐˈkɔvʲɪʨ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович;[1] 25 September 1906 - 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.

Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he also received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947-1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).

After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, Shostakovich developed a hybrid style, as exemplified by Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). This single work juxtaposed a wide variety of trends, including the neo-classical style (showing the influence of Stravinsky) and post-Romanticism (after Gustav Mahler). Sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque[2] characterize much of his music.

Shostakovich's orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. Music for chamber ensembles includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two pieces for a string octet, and two piano trios. For the piano he composed two solo sonatas, an early set of preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Other works include three operas, and a substantial quantity of film music.
Contents
[hide]

1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 First denunciation
1.2.1 Withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony
1.2.2 "An artist's creative response to just criticism"
1.3 War
1.4 Second denunciation
1.5 Joining the Party
1.6 Later life
2 Music
2.1 Jewish themes
3 Criticism
4 Women's Rights
5 Personality
6 Orthodoxy and revisionism
7 Recorded legacy
8 Awards
9 List of compositions
10 Notes
11 References
12 External links

[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Birthplace of Shostakovich (now School no. 267). Commemorative plaque at left

Born at 2 Podolskaya Ulitsa in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was the second of three children born to Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. Shostakovich's paternal grandfather (originally surnamed Szostakowicz) was of Polish Roman Catholic descent (his family roots trace to the region of the town of Vileyka in Belarus), but his immediate forebears came from Siberia.[3] His paternal grandfather, a Polish revolutionary in the January Uprising of 1863-4, had been exiled to Narim (near Tomsk) in 1866 in the crackdown that followed Dmitri Karakozov's assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II.[4] When his term of exile ended, Boleslaw Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia. He eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son, Dmitriy Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer's father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and attended Saint Petersburg University, graduating in 1899 from the faculty of physics and mathematics. After graduation, Dmitriy Boleslavovich went to work as an engineer under Dmitriy Mendeleyev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg. In 1903, he married Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, another Siberian transplant to the capital.[4] Sofiya herself was one of six children born to Vasiliy Yakovlevich Kokoulin, a Russian Siberian native.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a child prodigy as a pianist and composer, his talent becoming apparent after he began piano lessons with his mother at the age of nine. (On several occasions, he displayed a remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson, and would get "caught in the act" of pretending to read, playing the previous lesson's music when different music was placed in front of him.)[5] In 1918, he wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party, murdered by Bolshevik sailors.[citation needed]

In 1919, at the age of 13, he was allowed to enter the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov monitored Shostakovich's progress closely and promoted him.[6] Shostakovich studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev, after a year in the class of Elena Rozanova, composition with Maximilian Steinberg, and counterpoint and fugue with Nikolay Sokolov, with whom he became friends.[7] Shostakovich also attended Alexander Ossovsky's history of music classes.[8] However, he suffered for his perceived lack of political zeal, and initially failed his exam in Marxist methodology in 1926. His first major musical achievement was the First Symphony (premiered 1926), written as his graduation piece at the age of nineteen.
Shostakovich in 1925

After graduation, he initially embarked on a dual career as concert pianist and composer, but his dry style of playing (his American biographer, Laurel Fay, comments on his "emotional restraint" and "riveting rhythmic drive") was often unappreciated. He nevertheless won an "honorable mention" at the First International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927. After the competition Shostakovich met the conductor Bruno Walter, who was so impressed by the composer's First Symphony that he conducted it at its Berlin premiere later that year. Leopold Stokowski was equally impressed and gave the work its U.S. premiere the following year in Philadelphia and also made the work's first recording.

Thereafter, Shostakovich concentrated on composition and soon limited performances primarily to those of his own works. In 1927 he wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled To October), a patriotic piece with a great pro-Soviet choral finale. Due to its experimental nature, as with the subsequent Third Symphony, the pieces were not critically acclaimed with the enthusiasm as granted to the First.

While writing the Second Symphony, he also began his satirical opera The Nose, based on the story by Gogol. In June 1929, the opera was given a concert performance, against Shostakovich's own wishes, and was ferociously attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM).[9] Its stage premiere on 18 January 1930 opened to generally poor reviews and widespread incomprehension amongst musicians.[10]

1927 also marked the beginning of the composer's relationship with Ivan Sollertinsky, who remained his closest friend until the latter's death in 1944. Sollertinsky introduced Shostakovich to the music of Gustav Mahler, which had a strong influence on his music from the Fourth Symphony onwards. In 1932, he married his first wife, Nina Varzar. Initial difficulties led to a divorce in 1935, but the couple soon remarried when Nina became pregnant with their first child.[11]

In the late 1920s and early 1930s he worked at TRAM, a proletarian youth theatre. Although he did little work in this post, it shielded him from ideological attack. Much of this period was spent writing his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District; it was first performed in 1934 and was immediately successful, both on a popular and official level. It was described as, "the result of the general success of Socialist construction, of the correct policy of the Party" and said that such an opera "could have been written only by a Soviet composer brought up in the best tradition of Soviet culture."[12]
[edit] First denunciation

In 1936, Shostakovich fell from official favour. The year began with a series of attacks on him in Pravda, in particular an article entitled "Muddle Instead of Music". Shostakovich was away on a concert tour in Arkhangel'sk when he heard news of the first Pravda article. Two days before the article was published on the evening of 28 January,[13] a friend advised Shostakovich to attend the Bolshoi Theatre production of his opera. When he arrived, he saw that Stalin and the Politburo were there. In letters written to Ivan Sollertinsky, a close friend and advisor, Shostakovich recounts the horror with which he watched as Stalin shuddered every time the brass and percussion played too loudly. Equally horrifying was the way Stalin and his companions laughed at the love-making scene between Sergei and Katerina. Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when he went to take his bow after the third act.[14]

The article, which condemned Lady Macbeth as formalist, "coarse, primitive and vulgar,"[15] was thought to have been instigated by Stalin. Consequently, commissions began to fall off, and his income fell by about three quarters. Even Soviet music critics who had praised the opera were forced to recant in print, saying they "failed to detect the shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by the Pravda".[16] Shortly after the "Muddle Instead of Music" article, Pravda published another, "Ballet Falsehood," that criticized Shostakovich's ballet The Limpid Stream. Shostakovich did not expect this second article because the general public and press already accepted this music as "democratic" - that is, tuneful and accessible. However, Pravda criticized The Limpid Stream for incorrectly displaying peasant life on the collective farm.[17]

More widely, 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed: these included his patron Marshal Tukhachevsky (shot months after his arrest); his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks (a distinguished physicist, eventually released but died before he got home); his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev (a musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky; shot shortly after his arrest); his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhailovna Varzar (sent to a camp in Karaganda); his friend, the Marxist writer Galina Serbryakova (20 years in camps); his uncle, Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed).[18] His only consolation in this period was the birth of his daughter Galina in 1936; his son Maxim was born two years later.
[edit] Withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony

The publication of the Pravda editorials coincided with the composition of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. The work was a great shift in style for the composer, due to the substantial influence of Gustav Mahler, as well as multiple Western-style elements. The symphony gave Shostakovich compositional trouble, as he attempted to reform his style into a new idiom. The composer was well into the work when the fatal articles appeared. Despite this, Shostakovich continued to compose the symphony and planned a premiere at the end of 1936. Rehearsals began that December, but after a number of rehearsals Shostakovich, for reasons still debated today, decided to withdraw the symphony from the public. A number of his friends and colleagues, such as Isaak Glikman, have suggested that it was in fact an official ban which Shostakovich was persuaded to present as a voluntary withdrawal.[19] Whatever the case, it seems possible that this action saved the composer's life: during this time Shostakovich feared for himself and his family. Yet Shostakovich did not repudiate the work: it retained its designation as his Fourth Symphony. A piano reduction was published in 1946, and the work was finally premiered in 1961, well after Stalin's death.

During the years of 1936 and 1937, in order to maintain as low a profile as possible between the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, Shostakovich mainly composed film music, a genre favored by Stalin and lacking in dangerous personal expression.[20]
[edit] "An artist's creative response to just criticism"

The composer's response to his denunciation was the Fifth Symphony of 1937, which was musically more conservative than his earlier works. Premiering on 21 November 1937 in Leningrad, it was a phenomenal success: many in the Leningrad audience had lost family or friends to the mass executions. The Fifth drove many to tears and welling emotions. Later Shostakovich wrote in his memoirs: "I'll never believe that a man who understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about."[21]

The success put Shostakovich in good standing once again. Music critics and the authorities alike, including those who had earlier accused Shostakovich of formalism, claimed that he had learned from his mistakes and had become a true Soviet artist. The composer Dmitry Kabalevsky, who had been among those who disassociated himself from Shostakovich when the Pravda article was published, praised the Fifth Symphony and congratulated Shostakovich for "not having given into the seductive temptations of his previous 'erroneous' ways."[22]

It was also at this time that Shostakovich composed the first of his string quartets. His chamber works allowed him to experiment and express ideas which would have been unacceptable in his more public symphonic pieces. In September 1937, he began to teach composition at the Leningrad Conservatory, which provided some financial security but interfered with his own creative work.
[edit] War

In 1939, before the Soviet forces invaded Finland, the Party Secretary of Leningrad Andrei Zhdanov commissioned a celebratory piece from Shostakovich, entitled Suite on Finnish Themes to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army would be parading through the Finnish capital Helsinki. The Winter War was a humiliation for the Red Army, and Shostakovich would never lay claim to the authorship of this work.[23] It was not performed until 2001.[24]
Lev A. Russov. The Leningrad Symphony. Conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky. 1980.

After the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941, Shostakovich initially remained in Leningrad. He tried to enlist for the military but was turned away because he had bad eyesight. To compensate, Shostakovich became a volunteer for the Leningrad Conservatory's firefighter brigade and delivered a radio broadcast to the Soviet people About this sound listen (help·info). The photograph for which he posed was published in newspapers throughout the country.[25]

But his greatest and most famous wartime contribution was the Seventh Symphony. The composer wrote the first three movements in Leningrad and completed the work in Kuibyshev, now a settlement in Volgograd Oblast, where he and his family had been evacuated. Whether or not Shostakovich really conceived the idea of the symphony with the siege of Leningrad in mind, it was officially claimed as a representation of the people of Leningrad's brave resistance to the German invaders and an authentic piece of patriotic art at a time when morale needed boosting. The symphony was first premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and was soon performed abroad in London and the United States. However, the most compelling performance was by the Radio Orchestra in besieged Leningrad. The orchestra only had fourteen musicians left, so the conductor Karl Eliasberg had to recruit anyone who could play a musical instrument to perform the symphony.[26]

In spring 1943, the family moved to Moscow. At the time of the Eighth Symphony's premiere, the tide had turned for the Red Army. Therefore the public, and most importantly the authorities, wanted another triumphant piece from the composer. Instead, they got the Eighth Symphony, perhaps the ultimate in sombre and violent expression within Shostakovich's output. In order to preserve the image of Shostakovich (a vital bridge to the people of the Union and to the West), the government assigned the name "Stalingrad" to the symphony, giving it the appearance of a mourning of the dead in the bloody Battle of Stalingrad. However, the symphony did not escape criticism. Shostakovich is reported to have said: "When the Eighth was performed, it was openly declared counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet. They said, 'Why did Shostakovich write an optimistic symphony at the beginning of the war and a tragic one now? At the beginning we were retreating and now we're attacking, destroying the Fascists. And Shostakovich is acting tragic, that means he's on the side of the fascists.'"[27] The work was unofficially but effectively banned until 1956.[28]

The Ninth Symphony (1945), in contrast, is an ironic Haydnesque parody, which failed to satisfy demands for a "hymn of victory." The war was won, and unfortunately Shostakovich's "pretty" symphony was interpreted as a mockery of the Soviet Union's victory rather than a celebratory piece. Shostakovich continued to compose chamber music, notably his Second Piano Trio (Op. 67), dedicated to the memory of Sollertinsky, with a bitter-sweet, Jewish-themed totentanz finale.
[edit] Second denunciation

In 1948 Shostakovich, along with many other composers, was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, accused Shostakovich and other composers (such as Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian) for writing inappropriate and formalist music. This was part of an ongoing anti-formalism campaign intended to root out all Western compositional influence as well as any perceived "non-Russian" output. The conference resulted in the publication of the Central Committee's Decree "On V. Muradeli's opera The Great Friendship," which was targeted towards all Soviet composers and demanded that they only write "proletarian" music, or music for the masses. The accused composers, including Shostakovich, were summoned to make public apologies in front of the committee.[29][30] Most of Shostakovich's works were banned, and his family had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov says that at this time "he waited for his arrest at night out on the landing by the lift, so that at least his family wouldn't be disturbed."[31]

The consequences of the decree for composers were harsh. Shostakovich was among those who were dismissed from the Conservatoire altogether. For Shostakovich, the loss of money was perhaps the largest blow. Others still in the Conservatory experienced an atmosphere that was thick with suspicion. No one wanted their work to be understood as formalist, so many resorted to accusing their colleagues of writing or performing anti-proletarian music.[32]

In the next few years he composed three categories of work: film music to pay the rent, official works aimed at securing official rehabilitation, and serious works "for the desk drawer". The latter included the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry. The cycle was written at a time when the post-war anti-Semitic campaign was already under way, with widespread arrests including of I. Dobrushin and Yiditsky, the compilers of the book from which Shostakovich took his texts.[33]

The restrictions on Shostakovich's music and living arrangements were eased in 1949, when Stalin decided that the Soviets needed to send artistic representatives to the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York City, and that Shostakovich should be amongst them. For Shostakovich, it was a humiliating experience culminating in a New York press conference where he was expected to read a pre-prepared speech. Nicolas Nabokov, who was present in the audience, witnessed Shostakovich starting to read "in a nervous and shaky voice" before he had to break off "and the speech was continued in English by a suave radio baritone".[34] Fully aware that Shostakovich was not free to speak his mind, Nabokov publicly asked the composer whether he supported the then recent denunciation of Stravinsky's music in the Soviet Union. Shostakovich, who was a great admirer of Stravinsky and had been influenced by his music, had no alternative but to answer in the affirmative. Nabokov did not hesitate to publish that this demonstrated that Shostakovich was "not a free man, but an obedient tool of his government."[35] Shostakovich never forgave Nabokov for this public humiliation.[36] That same year Shostakovich was obliged to compose the cantata Song of the Forests, which praised Stalin as the "great gardener." In 1951 the composer was made a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of RSFSR.

Stalin's death in 1953 was the biggest step towards Shostakovich's rehabilitation as a creative artist, which was marked by his Tenth Symphony. It features a number of musical quotations and codes (notably the DSCH and Elmira motifs, Elmira Nazirova being a pianist and composer who had studied under Shostakovich in the year prior to his dismissal from the Moscow Conservatoire),[37] the meaning of which is still debated, whilst the savage second movement, according to Testimony, is intended as a musical portrait of Stalin himself. The Symphony ranks alongside the Fifth and Seventh as one of his most popular works. 1953 also saw a stream of premieres of the "desk drawer" works.

During the forties and fifties Shostakovich had close relationships with two of his pupils: Galina Ustvolskaya and Elmira Nazirova. He taught Ustvolskaya from 1937 to 1947. The nature of their relationship is far from clear: Mstislav Rostropovich described it as "tender" and Ustvolskaya claimed in a 1995 interview[citation needed] that she rejected a proposal of marriage from him in the fifties. (Certainly Shostakovich's daughter, Galina, recalls her father consulting her and Maxim about the possibility of Ustvolskaya being their stepmother.)[38] However, in the same interview, Ustvolskaya's friend, Viktor Suslin, said that she had been "deeply disappointed" in him by the time of her graduation in 1947. The relationship with Nazirova seems to have been one-sided, expressed largely through his letters to her, and can be dated to around 1953 to 1956. In the background to all this remained Shostakovich's first, open marriage to Nina Varzar until her death in 1954. He married his second wife, Komsomol activist Margarita Kainova, in 1956; the couple proved ill-matched, and divorced three years later.

In 1954, Shostakovich wrote the Festive Overture, opus 96, that was used as the theme music for the 1980 Summer Olympics.[39] In addition his '"Theme from the film Pirogov, Opus 76a: Finale" was played as the cauldron was lit at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

In 1959, Shostakovich appeared on stage in Moscow at the end of a concert performance of his Fifth Symphony, congratulating Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for their performance (part of a concert tour of the Soviet Union). Bernstein recorded the symphony later that year in New York for Columbia Records.
[edit] Joining the Party

The year 1960 marked another turning point in Shostakovich's life: his joining of the Communist Party. The government wanted to appoint him General Secretary of the Composer's Union, but in order to hold that position Shostakovich was required to attain Party membership. It was understood that Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1958 to 1964, was looking for support from the leading ranks of the intelligentsia in an effort to create a better relationship with the Soviet Union's artists.[40] This event has been interpreted variously as a show of commitment, a mark of cowardice, the result of political pressure, and as his free decision. On the one hand, the apparat was undoubtedly less repressive than it had been before Stalin's death. On the other, his son recalled that the event reduced Shostakovich to tears,[41] and he later told his wife Irina that he had been blackmailed.[42] Lev Lebedinsky has said that the composer was suicidal.[43] Once he joined the Party, several articles denouncing individualism in music were published in Pravda under his name, though he did not actually write them. In addition, in joining the party, Shostakovich was also committing himself to finally writing the homage to Lenin that he had promised before. His Twelfth Symphony, which portrays the Bolshevik Revolution and was completed in 1961, was dedicated to Vladimir Lenin and called "The Year 1917."[44] Around this time, his health also began to deteriorate.

Shostakovich's musical response to these personal crises was the Eighth String Quartet, composed in only three days. Shostakovich subtitled the piece, "To the victims of fascism and war",[45] ostensibly in memory of the Dresden fire bombing that took place in 1945. Yet, like the Tenth Symphony, this quartet incorporates quotations from several of his past works and his musical monogram: Shostakovich confessed to Glikman, "I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself."[46] Several of Shostakovich's colleagues, including Natalya Vovsi-Mikhoels[47] and the cellist Valentin Berlinsky[48] were also aware of the Eighth Quartet's biographical intent.

In 1962 he married for the third time, to Irina Supinskaya. In a letter to his friend Isaak Glikman, he wrote, "her only defect is that she is 27 years old. In all other respects she is splendid: clever, cheerful, straightforward and very likeable."[49] According to Galina Vishnevskaya, who knew the Shostakoviches well, this marriage was a very happy one: "It was with her that Dmitri Dmitriyevich finally came to know domestic peace... Surely, she prolonged his life by several years."[50] In November Shostakovich made his only venture into conducting, conducting a couple of his own works in Gorky:[51] otherwise he declined to conduct, citing nerves and ill health as his reasons.

That year saw Shostakovich again turn to the subject of anti-Semitism in his Thirteenth Symphony (subtitled Babi Yar). The symphony sets a number of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the first of which commemorates a massacre of the Jews during the Second World War. Opinions are divided how great a risk this was: the poem had been published in Soviet media, and was not banned, but it remained controversial. After the symphony's premiere, Yevtushenko was forced to add a stanza to his poem which said that Russians and Ukrainians had died alongside the Jews at Babi Yar.

In 1965 Shostakovich raised his voice in defense of poet Joseph Brodsky, who was sentenced to five years of exile and hard labor. Shostakovich co-signed protests together with Yevtushenko and fellow Soviet artists Kornei Chukovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Samuil Marshak, and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After the protests the sentence was commuted, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad. Shostakovich joined the group of 25 distinguished intellectuals in signing the letter to Leonid Brezhnev asking not to rehabilitate Stalin.[citation needed]
[edit] Later life
Dmitri Shostakovich (center) with his wife Irina and Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev

In later life, Shostakovich suffered from chronic ill health, but he resisted giving up cigarettes and vodka. Beginning in 1958 he suffered from a debilitating condition that particularly affected his right hand, eventually forcing him to give up piano playing; in 1965 it was diagnosed as polio. He also suffered heart attacks the following year and again in 1971, and several falls in which he broke both his legs; in 1967 he wrote in a letter:

"Target achieved so far: 75% (right leg broken, left leg broken, right hand defective). All I need to do now is wreck the left hand and then 100% of my extremities will be out of order."[52]

A preoccupation with his own mortality permeates Shostakovich's later works, among them the later quartets and the Fourteenth Symphony of 1969 (a song cycle based on a number of poems on the theme of death). This piece also finds Shostakovich at his most extreme with musical language, with twelve-tone themes and dense polyphony used throughout. Shostakovich dedicated this score to his close friend Benjamin Britten, who conducted its Western premiere at the 1970 Aldeburgh Festival. The Fifteenth Symphony of 1971 is, by contrast, melodic and retrospective in nature, quoting Wagner, Rossini and the composer's own Fourth Symphony.

Shostakovich died of lung cancer on 9 August 1975 and after a civic funeral was interred in the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow. Even before his death he had been commemorated with the naming of the Shostakovich Peninsula on Alexander Island, Antarctica.

He was survived by his third wife, Irina; his daughter, Galina; and his son, Maxim, a pianist and conductor who was the dedicatee and first performer of some of his father's works. Shostakovich himself left behind several recordings of his own piano works, while other noted interpreters of his music include his friends Emil Gilels, Mstislav Rostropovich, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Maria Yudina, David Oistrakh, and members of the Beethoven Quartet.

Shostakovich's opera Orango (1932) was found by Russian researcher Olga Digonskaya in his last home. It is being orchestrated by the British composer Gerard McBurney and will be premiered in December 2011 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.[53][54][55]

Shostakovich's musical influence on later composers outside the former Soviet Union has been relatively slight, although Alfred Schnittke took up his eclecticism, and his contrasts between the dynamic and the static, and some of André Previn's music shows clear links to Shostakovich's style of orchestration. His influence can also be seen in some Nordic composers, such as Lars-Erik Larsson.[56] Many of his Russian contemporaries, and his pupils at the Leningrad Conservatory, however, were strongly influenced by his style (including German Okunev, Boris Tishchenko, whose 5th Symphony of 1978 is dedicated to Shostakovich's memory, Sergei Slonimsky, and others). Shostakovich's conservative idiom has nonetheless grown increasingly popular with audiences both within and beyond Russia, as the avant-garde has declined in influence and debate about his political views has developed.
[edit] Music

For a complete list, see List of compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich.
See also: Category:Compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich (thematical selection of works by Shostakovich).

Shostakovich's works are broadly tonal and in the Romantic tradition, but with elements of atonality and chromaticism. In some of his later works (e.g., the Twelfth Quartet), he made use of tone rows. His output is dominated by his cycles of symphonies and string quartets, each numbering fifteen. The symphonies are distributed fairly evenly throughout his career, while the quartets are concentrated towards the latter part. Among the most popular are the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and the Eighth and Fifteenth Quartets. Other works include the operas Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Nose and the unfinished The Gamblers based on the comedy of Nikolai Gogol; six concertos (two each for piano, violin and cello); two piano trios; and a large quantity of film music.

Shostakovich's music shows the influence of many of the composers he most admired: Bach in his fugues and passacaglias; Beethoven in the late quartets; Mahler in the symphonies and Berg in his use of musical codes and quotations. Among Russian composers, he particularly admired Modest Mussorgsky, whose operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina he re-orchestrated; Mussorgsky's influence is most prominent in the wintry scenes of Lady Macbeth and the Eleventh Symphony, as well as in his satirical works such as "Rayok".[57] Prokofiev's influence is most apparent in the earlier piano works, such as the first sonata and first concerto.[58] The influence of Russian church and folk music is very evident in his works for unaccompanied choir of the 1950s.

Shostakovich's relationship with Stravinsky was profoundly ambivalent; as he wrote to Glikman, "Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise."[59] He was particularly enamoured of the Symphony of Psalms, presenting a copy of his own piano version of it to Stravinsky when the latter visited the USSR in 1962. (The meeting of the two composers was not very successful, however; observers commented on Shostakovich's extreme nervousness and Stravinsky's "cruelty" to him.)[60]

Many commentators have noted the disjunction between the experimental works before the 1936 denunciation and the more conservative ones that followed; the composer told Flora Litvinova, "without 'Party guidance' ... I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage."[61] Articles published by Shostakovich in 1934 and 1935 cited Berg, Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith, "and especially Stravinsky" among his influences.[62] Key works of the earlier period are the First Symphony, which combined the academicism of the conservatory with his progressive inclinations; The Nose ("The most uncompromisingly modernist of all his stage-works"[63]); Lady Macbeth. which precipitated the denunciation; and the Fourth Symphony, described by Grove as "a colossal synthesis of Shostakovich's musical development to date".[64] The Fourth Symphony was also the first in which the influence of Mahler came to the fore, prefiguring the route Shostakovich was to take to secure his rehabilitation, while he himself admitted that the preceding two were his least successful.[65]

In the years after 1936, Shostakovich's symphonic works were outwardly musically conservative, regardless of any subversive political content. During this time he turned increasingly to chamber works, a field that permitted the composer to explore different and often darker ideas without inviting external scrutiny.[66] While his chamber works were largely tonal, they gave Shostakovich an outlet for sombre reflection not welcomed in his more pub

In 1964, most elderly and poor Americans didn't have health insurance. That year, President Lyndon
Johnson issued his Great Society social reform package. The Great Society, among other things, created
the federal health care programs Medicare and Medicaid. By 2003, one-quarter of all Americans had
access to health care through these programs.

msk: they only respond to direct shouting. They are like furry Iraqis.



you owe me a keyboard, sir.

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

Sarcastica75: Watch out for winged porcupines. They are like flying rats covered in plague and poop.

You misspelled "pigeons." Farking sky rats.

Most comic book hero and villain's costumes are colored the way they are(yellow, green, red, blue) due to other colors being more expensive/difficult to print.

Even though the clitoris is like a tiny penis, you're not gay for playing with it.

rhino33: msk: they only respond to direct shouting. They are like furry Iraqis.



you owe me a keyboard, sir.

no, spentmiles owes you a keyboard.

Marcus J. Borg (born 1942) is an American Biblical scholar and author. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, holds a DPhil degree from Oxford University and is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, an endowed chair, at Oregon State University, from which he retired in 2007. Borg has been national chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, co-chair of its International New Testament Program Committee and president of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars. Borg is among the most widely-known and influential voices in progressive Christianity. On May 31, 2009, Borg was installed as the first canon theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

Borg was a faculty member at [Oregon State University] from 1979 till his retirement in 2007 as Distinguished Professor in Religion and Culture and the Hundere Endowed Chair in Religious Studies. He organized and lead two nationally televised symposia at Oregon State University in 1996 (Jesus at 2000) and 2000 (God at 2000). Borg was appointed Chair of the Religious Studies Department in January 1988. The Religious Studies Department was closed at the end of the 1991-1992 academic year and Borg became became a faculty member in the Philosophy Department.

Four-wheel-drive does not mean you can drive around like it's a summer day on a dry road. The physics of ice and water are still very much relevant, and you still need to be careful on the road.

Aarontology: Tab A goes into slot B.

hahahah, GREEN

You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig sh*t, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".

It is what it is.

Just in case you need a refresher course, here are the basic facts: Her clitoris is a small bud-like formation that is located slightly above the opening to her vagina, at the top of her inner labia. Clitoris size and shape differs from woman to woman, but it is generally between 1/8 to 3/8 of an inch in size. Her clitoris is the equivalent of your penis; it's packed with nerve endings and becomes engorged when she's aroused.

You always want to tune an acoustic guitar (at least) twice in a row. Even on nice guitars, the adjustment of other strings can change while getting one in tune.

Adjective Bird Whiskey: You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig sh*t, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".

You like that movie way too much.

Having a learning disability does not mean someone has low cognitive ability or a low IQ.

Only the lamest of turds that fall from the butt of TFD get green-lighted. It is a sad reality.

oldfarthenry: Only the lamest of turds that fall from the butt of TFD get green-lighted. It is a sad reality.

You submitted this, right?

You have your fire pit and a nice collection of wood. The only thing between you and a nice evening roasting s'mores is a spark. There are many "primitive" methods for starting a fire, and some are easier than others. Patience and calm are good practices to employ when attempting to start your fire. The following are techniques you can use with items found or on-hand.

Lens Method -- this technique involves using a magnifying glass on a sunny day. You can also use a disassembled camera lens or binoculars:

•Pile some tinder in the center of the fire pit.
•Hold the lens about a foot from the tinder.
•Angle the lens so the sun concentrates a small hot spot.
•The starter should begin to smolder very quickly.
•Blow on the tinder to ignite it and place small kindling twigs until the fire is stable.
Battery Method -- if you're stranded with your car or find wreckage from a boat or plane, you can use the battery to create your spark:

•Find some wire from the car or wreckage -- any engine wire will work.
•Attach two pieces of wire to each battery terminal.
•Get your tinder and touch the wires together above it.
•This should create a spark and the tinder will smolder.
•Pick the tinder up and blow on it.
•Once it lights, quickly transfer it to your fire pit and add small kindling.
Soda Can and Chocolate Method -- because many people fail to pack out their refuse, chances are you can find a soda can in the woods. If you have some chocolate, toothpaste or powdered cleanser on hand, use this method:

•Smear some chocolate or an abrasive onto the bottom of the soda can.
•Use the wrapper or some cloth to rub it into the can to polish it.
•Add more chocolate as needed and continue to rub for about 30 minutes.
•Wash the abrasive off the can with some water. Your goal is a shiny, reflective surface.
•Once you have a good surface, angle the can toward the sun and hold a piece of tinder about an inch away from the center of the can.
•Like a convex lens, the can will produce a concentrated hot spot and your tinder will begin to smolder.
•Gently blow on the tinder until it ignites and quickly transfer it to your fire pit.
•WARNING -- do not eat the used chocolate or toothpaste. It contains aluminum and is highly toxic.

mryoop789: oldfarthenry: Only the lamest of turds that fall from the butt of TFD get green-lighted. It is a sad reality.

You submitted this, right?

This is my fault.

It's not you.
It's me.

mryoop789: Adjective Bird Whiskey: You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig sh*t, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".

You like that movie way too much.

It's not possible to like that movie too much, only to like it too little.

/bloody pikeys.

Diamonds are made when coal is put under intense pressure. Diamonds put under intense pressure become foam pellots, commonly used today as packing material.

Self fellatio has about a 2% success rate.

mryoop789:

You like that movie way too much.

Are you saying I like Snatch way too much?

When two pitches are very close, but not exactly the same, the effect is to produce a "beat", which sounds like a chorus effect. This is why 12 string guitars sound so cool.

msk: hahahah, GREEN

Are they just green lighting random TFD threads every day?