Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind is a gem -- Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are truly amazing in their roles!

Another week for me of school (exams) so just call me "the whiner" since nobody else is complaining in public.

How embarrassing!

The question..the question could be:

"Is The Jack of Hearts in <Lily.Rosemary,and The Jack of Hearts> the,er, Jack of Hearts?"

(1) There was no actor anywhere better than the Jack of Hearts

(2) "I know I've seen that face somewhere", Big Jim was thinking to himself, "Maybe down in Mexico, or a picture upon somebody's shelf."

This seems to support the thesis that the Jack of Hearts was actually a Mexican-American movie star. Anthony Quinn, maybe? (cf 'The Mighty Quinn' by B. Dylan).

Or Ramon Estevez? ("Ramon, ah, come closer, shut softly your watery eyes/ Change your name, Martin Sheen, and watch as your star it does rise..." - anon.)

As for the other thing, "White to play and win" won't suffice, because there's at least one mate in one available on every single turn. Like Bc6#, for example. Sometimes White has a choice of five mates, but no, he has to go and build a Kafkaesque cage instead.

"White to play and deliver smothered mate with the Black King in the centre of the board", perhaps?

Maybe the two themes are linked?

Rosemary started thinkin' hard
She knew she had to sacrifice her Queen
She was tired of easy traps and mates
And of every routine move she'd ever seen
Then the crowd began to stamp their feet and focus on the stage She sacrificed her pieces and she built an iron cage
She'd played the Turk in Paris and she knew some fancy tricks...

Poe had his raven. This lot, whoever they were, had the line "Last night I heard my baby singing this song, ooh eeh, chirpy chirpy cheep cheep".

So, um, 'baby' is a bird. Aren't they the eternal enemies of all frogs? Is this chess or all-out thermonuclear interspecies heck?

"Ladies and others sometimes say to me at dinner parties, 'Do tell me what to think about the Post-Impressionists, or Cubists, or Futurists', and the only possible answer is, 'Don't think about them at all,' not because they are contemptible, but because, unless you are enough interested in them to acquire an opinion for yourself, there is no need to have one.

There is, for instance, Einstein's theory, or discovery, or fallacy, or whatever it may be: what are we to think about that? The obvious answer, for most of us, is -- Nothing. Whatever opinions we may construct about it will make no difference to the theory or to Einstein or to the universe or to ourselves."

<In future the new code <F00-F49> will be reserved for the

___ <FROGSPAWN-Opening>

and the classification <F50-F99> should be used for the

___ <FROGSPAWN-Defense>.

D Loda vs H U Kock, 2005

I believe the players names here poetically describe the overall strategy of trying for an Advance setup whilst keeping your bishop outside of the pawn chain but refusing to change plans to suit the position.

You know the old story about Popper and Wittgenstein supposedly fighting with iron pokers over some philosophical point in 1940s England? There's a book about it, Wittgenstein's Poker, written by two guys who also cobbled together a book on Bobby Fischer.

I've seen this book in the 'Games - Poker' section of bookshops, where presumably it gets bought by people who think they're getting a Tractatus about Texas Hold'em.

We're supposed to be in cryptic mode, remember? Can't go making it *too* easy for 'em...

"I cant' hammer a nail in with your Hamster!"

"Well, I could try, but..."

AGAIN

Think the "fix" is in?

(reformed sports betting addict)

I won silver in the YOuRang betting contest with fake money!!

Did Gump get a medal? Huh? huh?

Bind torture kill indeed. That's not chess. that's just sad.

Just an easy one..

"No man can stand so tall as when he stoops down to teach a little boy."

You like to make connections, but I never imagined Karl Popper in Africa and fencing..

Been thinking a lot of the chess stuff of late. As I get older, I find that I recoil at the thought of memorizing long lines in openings. It's almost as though I prefer playing totally intuitively--at least I know why a piece has been placed in a certain position. In my utterly disastrous "return" to OTB chess five years ago (very unprepared--played over no games, studied nothing beforehand, etc.), I found myself in one game on the black side of a sicilian against a young 1750 player. He had me throughly crushed after about 15 moves, and I was even prepared to resign. But then I launched a big counter attack which almost succeeded, and the game ended in a draw. Afterward, he told me that his troubles began where his book knowledge ended (which seemed apparent to me). Of course, the 2100 player wouldn't have that problem, one suspects!

A freemanson! What's the secret handshake?

no, no, I'm a "Free MANSON"
It's quite different.