18 October—A few days ago the FBI arrested a Naugatuck man who used YouTube to threaten to kill Republicans. “I’m prepared to kill Republicans. Eager to do it actually. I already have targets in my local community selected,” David Dyer posted, adding that he had “a lot of hollow points.” He’s out on a piddling $100,000 bond, confined to home and monitored electronically. You wonder if he’s had to surrender his passport.

For the record, Republicans also have a lot of hollow points. And so do Democrats. Wait a minute. Dyer was referring to bullets, wasn’t he? Well, Republicans have those, too. And so do Democrats.

You also wonder if Donald Trump’s FBI would have been allowed to arrest a person who threatened to kill Democrats or anyone Trump or his stooges didn’t like.

Trying to forget about the anus-in-chief for one day, then, here’s an earworm for you. It’s a traditional German Christmas song, “Ich schlief, da träumte mir,” (“As I Slept, A Dream Came to Me”). Forget about the words, it’s the delightful tune. A number of composers wrote variations on it, including Johann Christian Bach and his big brother Carl Philipp Emanuel. CPE’s 24 keyboard variations from 1761 and 1770 are the most famous and the best of the lot. So here they are: