I am your host, the self-proclaimed Bishop of Blunder.

For those of you looking for my rough essay, "How I Became a Chessplayer", it has been moved to my not so recently opened MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/bishopofblun... .

However, I have given up on MySpace. For 'tis a silly place. Therefore, I have moved on to Twitter (BishopofBlunder) and Facebook (Mark Burns). Feel free to join me in either place.

I also have a blog (who doesn't) of little consequence. See it (or not) here: http://robotrhetoric.blogspot.com

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Some of my favorite chess quotes:

<"If it were just a question of winning or losing, if it were not possible to play a brilliant game, to make an incredible queen sacrifice, to play the occasional shocking or outrageous move, then I suspect many people would not play chess. It simply would not be worth it; such a difficult game and with so few rewards."> --- Jonathan Levitt

<"One of the biggest misconceptions about chess is it requires a lot of memorization. In reality, while some memorization is required, pattern recognition plays a crucial part in chess mastery."> -- Susan Polgar

After we have paid our dutiful respects to such frigid virtues as calculation, foresight, self-control and the like, we always come back to the thought that speculative attack is the lifeblood of chess. --- Fred Reinfeld

<"I am NOT a NUMBER! I am a FREE MAN!>

-- No. 6

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I would like to also add a special "howdy" to my favorite kibitzer, and adopted love child, jessicafischerqueen chessforum , whom I care for so much that I can even forgive her for being Canadian.

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My favorite chess masters are:

Paul Morphy

Robert James Fischer

Mikhail Tal

All my favorite players are dead. That should tell you something about my game.

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I am an infrequent visitor to FICS ( http://www.freechess.org/ ) to play chess online. My moniker there is <DissidentAggresor>.

I am now also a basic member at http://www.chess.com/ . My name there is also <DissidentAggressor>.

I prefer over the board (OTB) chess to the internet version. As I put it once, "Internet chess is to OTB chess what cybersex is to real sex. It's still fun, but is decidedly less satisfying."