<Jess> Hope you enjoy the Kurtz book ... did you reach "T.D.F." yet? I also remembered that a certain person who objects to the name 'Nosher' took some delight in referring to Gelfand as "Bob".

One might argue that "Bob" is in no way offensive. What about Silent Bob? Or Bob Hope? Or, um, Bob Fischer?

I'd pay to see that.

<More reasons for loving Tony Miles> dept: the following annotation, which combines several Frogspawn obsessions. The game was Miles-Ljubojevic, Tilburg 1985 -- won by Miles despite having to play lying horizontally on a table due to back problems [memo to self: try this sometime, maybe without the back pain]. Ljubo (and Korchnoi) objected to playing a prone opponent, saying it put them off. Korchnoi added some typically enlightened remarks about tournaments being for 'normal' people - others, like women, disabled folk, and grandmasters who lie on tables, should have their own sections.

Ljubo continued his protest by refusing to resign while he lost pawn after pawn after pawn, with zero counterplay. "Nought but a flesh wound", I hear you say? This is what Miles wrote:

"Did you ever see Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The scene with the man trying to continue a fight after his arms and legs have been chopped off. Ljubo fights on with his false teeth."

"If I lose badly I will feel like committing suicide."

Nothing there about actually doing the deed. Just a promise to feel like it. Which, for all we know, he keeps to this very day.

Strong Heil,

what's all this then??

jESS OF THE YARD

Watch it etc.

Everyone knows his LAST words, but only the bravest or most <apian>, in <MannBee's> case, will know the second to last words he said, which were:

"I am lying in the dark waiting for death."

Here is the Question: Factually (ha! it's fiction, not fact!), there are two incorrect statements in Kurtz's words. What are they? That is, two of the claims Kurtz makes in his penultimate words are factually incorrect within the novel's <diagesis>. Explain how and why Kurtz's words do not fit the narrative logic here.

For 15% of your grade, so don't Cock it up!!

FIVE MOLDY BURROS TO THE WINNER!!

no GOOOGLING EITHER!!!

You <Luster>!

(I've decided to be <Dilsey> from the <Sound and Fury>, just for a rest).

See you later, got to tote that fresh blanket upstairs to <Mrs. Compson>, the miserable old bag.

Where the heck is everyone!!

Whooooo

*Within the diagesis*, eh? This could be tricky. The critic is merely a science-fiction character who has been "beamed" into somebody else's universe. Or a worm with a wormhole.

You actually said 'diagesis' which presents me with an awkward choice. Typo, neologism, error, alternate spelling, or avant-Canadian lit-theoretical concept which the backwards Erse have yet to grasp? If an error, should it be 'corrected' to *diagenesis* (the conversion of sediment into rock) or *diegesis* (in rhetoric: the narration of the 'facts'; the 'world' of a given fiction)?

And who has ever truly *corrected* anyone else, apart from the grosser variety of Punishment Porn, or the more simplistic type of teacher/ professor?

So, 'diegesis' or 'diagenesis'? Hmm. Both, perhaps, to be on the safe side (Queenside, in the Spare Room).

Other tempting options such as *diabetic* (of diseases, marked by an excessive discharge of urine) and *diacatholicon* (purgative medicine mixed with honey and syrup) will be ignored for now -- the first because I'm not taking the piss, the second because the Pope says if you diacatholic you go to heaven, which ought to be enough narrative for anyone (excepting whiners and infinity-phobes like Jorge Luis Borges).

Returning to option (a): *diegenesis*, or the conversion of sediment into rock, is simply too large and complex a subject for Frogspawn to handle in its current tadpolish state.

Like Danzig (and unlike Gdansk), we're a tad Polish.

Sediment was first converted into rock by Elvis Presley (this is the familiar "Ohio" Theory of human development). Known as 'the pelvis' (like the ballroom in St Patrick's cathedral, there was none in those trousers) he revolutionized popular song.

Crooners who sang treacly lyrics like "Won't you please play a song, a sedimental long" were blown away by Elvis and 'rock' songs like 'Hardback Hotel' and 'Schiller, Rattle and Roll'.

And conversion is also a vast topic -- embracing religious faith, European and American voltages, road-to-Damascus syndrome, brainwashing, Tom Cruise and the missionary position. Though, fortunately, not the last two simultaneously, unless your name is Mrs Cruise and you just now remembered that you came to Earth five million years ago to steal a volcano.

That's the side issues dealt with, evaded or avoided. We shall return to the main theme, intra-diegetically.

Some players try a very early ...Nc6, with possible transpositions into a Chigorin, or a Nimzowitsch Defence 1.e4 Nc6, or even a Four Knights, Spanish, or other open game (if 1.Nf3 Nc6 2.e4 e5 etc).

This happened in one game in my recent tournament -- transposition heaven. It began:

1.Nf3 Nc6
Now 2.d4 or 2.c4 could become a Tchigorin, or a King's English (KID without d4), and 2.e4 could be any open game - so I played 2.a3

I call this the Munster Attack: 1.Nf3 followed by a3 -- then maybe a Reversed Pirc or anything else where a3 is useful. But this one continued

2 ... e5
3.d4 e4
4.d5 exf3
5.dxc6

Which is Alekhine's Defence (the 2.Nc3 line) Reversed. Usually thought good for Black, therefore good for White here. After a Queen exchange and Black's 0-0-0, a3 helped to launch b4 and a dangerous attack (although I had to take a draw in the end).

I deduced that there were many intradiegetic monstrosities, including "I am" (ontologically unsound) and "I am lying" (the Cretan, or Epimenides Paradox).

Conrad, or Marlow, writes ambiguously: "He cried out twice ... 'The horror, the horror'..."

Is <Frogspawn> terminally uncool, then, or is this just a fashion blip? Have you all gone somewhere else? Will I be left alone here, gradually sliding down the Forum charts because I can't make enough posts on my own?

First off, many thanks for the Tchigorin stuff. I looked at it all very closely--fascinating, is it not, how we can steer an opening toward a favorable position, or away from an unfavorable position, or, through subtle maneuvering, change it to another opening altogether (I seem to recall Fischer transforming somehow the final game in the title match into a favorable endgame deriving from a Scotch opening, which of course had not been what they had been playing--don't have the books here, so the facts may be a little loose there). And actually, what I wrote you about concerned the Tchigorin in the French (2.Qe2). I'm playing a Death Match with Little Chess Buddy (or whatever the hell the name of the thing is--too lazy to scroll down the page) and just had played a very interesting French Tchigorin from the white side (draw by perpetual was the outcome). Right now the score is WBP +3 -0 =4, Little Chess Buddy +0 -3 +4. (Note: the LCB page suggests that it may, with certain computers, have a rating in excess of 2,000. It's clearly not playing at that level in the match.) BTW, all four draws eneded in perpetuals (as would have to happen with a computer)--two inititiated by LCB, and two by yours truly.

Both <"The horror, the horror, the horror, the horror", said Kurtz. After the third one he claimed a draw by repetition. "Mistah Kurtz, he gets half a point", said the arbiter> and <So, I've finally got the place to myself, have I? Knew it was bound to happen someday... Is <Frogspawn> terminally uncool, then, or is this just a fashion blip? Have you all gone somewhere else? Will I be left alone here, gradually sliding down the Forum charts because I can't make enough posts on my own?

My fifteen minutes are up -- is that it?> were LOL.

I'll look in sometime later! Best, Bill

I've had odd experiences playing against 2.Qe2 (and its relative 2.d3 d5 3.Qe2 - which is currently fashionable and may actually be slightly better: the idea being to allow Black to play ...d5 rather than trying to prevent it, but then putting pressure on the e-file at once).

Years ago, I think I usually won against Qe2 -- but it tended to be played mainly by the kind of people who specialized in offbeat openings, or liked to try odd ideas. Lately, I've noticed it being used by stronger players, especially those who play the French themselves as Black and don't want to face the main lines.

I tend to adopt the standard old-fashioned formation with b6-c5-d5-e6 and pieces positioned behind the chain. The ideal for black is something like the Kholmov-Matulovic game that I left some kibitz comments on a few days ago -- it's still in my recent kibitz links on top. Admittedly it's a 'pure' King's Indian Attack rather than a Chigorin, but in my experience they tend to be very similar.

(Though I *did* also get a DVD of Clockwork Orange ... was that so wrong? It's Kubrick, after all ...)

I put this in the wrong forum by accident (man am I retarded)

<Conrad Trivia Contest> Yes, <Bill> of course you can cheat.

To win the prize, someone actually has to look in the book where Kurtz says his second to last words.

The answer is WAY easier than you think.

It has to do with simple, literal facts that Kurtz gets wrong in his penultimate utterance.

These mistakes, of course, are pregnant with a wider symbolic import to his utterance.

<Dom> Good work on the Kurtz angle, but you are focusing on the last words, not the penultimate.

BTW the book I got outta the liberry is NOT the Kurtz-Kasparov match. It's actually about Kirsan, Elista, and Kalmykia.

And boy is it great. What an excellent book. Did you know Kirsan is suspected in killing an oppostion jouranlist?

Here is a great quote from <Borges> from the book:

<God moves the player, he, in turn, the piece./But what god beyond God begins the round/Of dust and time and dreams and agonies?>

And, for good measure, the book quoted <Duchamp> as well:

<Also, the milieu of chess players is far more sympathetic than that of artists. These people are completely cloudy, completely blinkered... mademen of a certain quality, the way an artist is supposed to be and isn't, in general>

Not sure if this last quote is in support of <dom's> <Duchamp Decree> or in contradistinction to it.

And <Kubrik> rushed out his version of <2001- A Space Odyssey>-- while mine was still at the chemist's.

When reading the <Meditations>, it is necessary to imagine yourself fighting for 8 years on the Danube against the <Iazyge> and <Marcomanni>, never once seeing your family.

Bear in mind that both these groups were pretty much exterminated by <Aurelius> and his legions.

So maybe they shouldn't have been raiding and pillaging <Illyria> and <Greece>!!!

If you slap a Grizzly Bear in the face, no whining about what it does to you next.

I hope that clears up the 'moral dimension' to a Roman Emperor claiming to be a <stoic> philosoper--

Recall that according to <Epictetus> the <stoic> creed dictates that <the purpose of existence is to show kindness to others>... Unless, of course, they are pillaging Greece.

I mean, they have all those nice statues there and all except for some <marbles> <Lord Elgin> stole.

He needed them to play <marbles> at <Eton> in between sessions of academic buggery etc.