<<Dom> has abandoned his forum to the jackals> Speak for yourself!

A Weasel (in <Dom's> forum)

<Eyal> -- <That kind of makes all the other items on the list redundant, doesn't it? > Yes, well, true, mostly. For fiction, anyhow. But it teacheth us not chess and mathematics, so there's still room for Nimzo and Courant...

The context: Lupescu 'explains' why he is leaving his own party and handing it over to Siegel. This is the full paragraph:

"Only a matter of time," he said. "Tonight. Of course. Why. Why not. Pig foetus. Symbol. God, what a symbol. And now. Freedom- Deliverance," he screamed. "Genie. Bottle. Century after century, until Siegel, fisher of souls, pulls the cork." He began running around the room. "Raincoat," he said, picking a raincoat up off the sofa, "shaving gear." He disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, came out with an overnight kit in his hands wearing the raincoat. He paused at the door. "It's all yours," he said. "You are now the host. As host you are a trinity: (a) receiver of guests--" ticking them off on his fingers--"(b) an enemy and (c) an outward manifestation, for them, of the divine body and blood." "Wait a minute," Siegel said, "where the hell are you going?" "The outside," Lupescu said, "out of the jungle."

Full text at http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncol...

Noting your return I wish to take this opportunity to welcome you back and also relieve several overwhelming urges that have cropped up. In your forum I notice a distinct lack of:

1) Giggly and excited sentences with trailing exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It isn't good enough!!!!!!!!!! God save the Queen and all who sail in her!!!!!!!!!!!

2) CAPITAL LETTERS REPLETE WITH THE AFOREMENTIONED EXCLAMATIONAGE!!!!!!

3) Seemingly passive sentences with an IN MY HUMBLE OPINION embedded to hit you over the head like the frying-pan in Tom & Jerry (which isn't very humble at all really).

4) Cryptic end of message periods that trail off in an Agatha Christie I hereby almost name my murderer in blood fashion......

I have a <Pynchon> trivia question for you to mark the occasion.

The character <Lupescu> is, among other things, an allusion to a very famous and very good short horror story called "Mr. Lupescu."

Name the author and title
AND NO GOOGLING!!

Heh

It is reprinted often in Horror Anthologies, along with other timeless greats as Collier's <Thus I Refute Beelzy> and Sturgeon's <Shottlebop>.

The story is terrifying.

And it's in lots of anthologies of ghost stories and horror fic. I didn't *exactly* google this info -- okay, I did, but only to discover other amazing factoids, eg:

One Magda Lupescu, mistress of the Romanian King, was a serious player in 1930s European politics. Hitler was enchanted, apparently.

Did you know there's a journal called CANCON: the Journal of Canadian Content in Speculative Fiction?

Or that there's a story called Naked Came the Sasquatch?

... it all connects ...

On the other hand, I'll have a much more powerful computer soon. Might even give RV a run for his money.

Remember, this so-called <Timmerman> guy is actually a sock puppet Correspondence moniker for the great <Jan Timman>, so be sure to bone up on <Jan's> games.

We should also try to persuade <tomlinsky> and <monad> to come to our game. I haven't forgotten how they convinced us to make the moves <18.Qd2!?> and <19.Bb3!!> in the GMAN. They were a real help. Its a pity they didn't participate in the GMYS game. We should get them back on the team.

There is also an innovation in the forum system in the GMYS game: there is a pool of 8 <!!> people hosting forums on specific moves, and the forum manager would ASSIGN them to moves. That way, all that is needed is a post on the main page and posts in the forums of those 8 people. This allows another side-effect: the forum manager's forum would be less cluttered with management related posts, and thus, the forum manager HIMSELF can host a forum on the move, allowing for more efficient use of limited forum space.

An <entomorph> is a tree with morphine instead of sap. They can be identified by the cloud of addicts sucking their branches and stinging passers-by.

An <enantiomorph>, on the other hand, (sic) is ... on the other hand.

Anent nothing much, <anent> is also a cool word. ee cummings used it somewhere.

And then there's <tenant> as in The French Left Tenant's Woman... published in the USA as The French Loo Tenant's Woman ... (a lieu with a tenant? Mon dieu... is it a Waterloo?)

E Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire
A Cobban, A History of Modern France
H Ree, The Human Comedy of Chess

(empty tin of John Smith's)

J Swift, Gulliver's Travels
H Young, One of Us
Columbo: The Complete First Season
R Galton & A Simpson, The Best of Hancock
A Horne, Seven Ages of Paris
J Locke, Two Treatises of Government
J Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
M Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal
N Machiaevelli, The Prince and the Discourses
R Protz, Good Beer Guide 2002
H Carpenter, That Was Satire That Was
Writers' and Artists Handbook 2007
A Moorehead, The Russian Revolution
T Hunt, Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City

(empty bottle of Italia Pinot Grigio 2005)
(ibid.)

W Cook, Tragically I Was an Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook

(empty bottle of The Riddle, Shibaz Cabernet 2004)

B Jones and MN Dixon, Macmillan Dictionary of Biography

(empty tin of Red Stripe)

R Reti, Modern Ideas in Chess
D Lawson, End Game
A Nimzowitsch, My System
G Lawton, Tony Miles: It's Only Me
A Martin, The Hippopotamus Rises*
J Paxman, The English
D Sanders, Losing an Empire, Finding a Role
S Lee, Gladstone and Disraeli**
D Bronstein, Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953

(broken CD case of unknown origin)

S Lalic, Your Chess Questions Answered***
P McCarthy, McCarthy's Bar
A Ginsberg, Howl
H Brogan, Longman History of the United States
C Booker, The Neophiliacs
AJP Taylor, English History 1914-1945
T More, Utopia
R Ingrams, The Life and Times of Private Eye 1961-1971

(empty bottle of Hardy's Chardonnay, 2005)

R McGough, Watchwords
A Howard, The Crossman Diaries 1964-1970
P Hennessy, The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders since 1945

* A present, and a not particularly good one at that. Believe it or not, I have never *bought* an opening book.

** Reviewer's copy. Pure tripe.

Some items I may have overlooked in my previous list (one-per-author rule, non-bookitude, squeamishness, etc):

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Extraterrestrial Intelligence The Mammoth Book of Chess
[piles of unidentified CDs]
Irish Cinema: an Illustrated History
Encyclopedia Britannica VI Lalo-Montpar
[identified CDs: Laibach, Scott Walker, Kasparov Chessmate (empty)] Coffee Mug
Nicorette
Collins Russian Dictionary
Creative Poker
Nature's Building Blocks
The Letters of William S Burroughs
Idoru, William Gibson
*diet coke* [an unopened gift]
Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
Indecent Exposure, David McClintick
Collected Works Vol 2, Antonin Artaud
Beyond the Mexique Bay, Aldous Huxley
Last Words, William Burroughs
Generation of Swine, Hunter S Thompson
To the Hermitage, Malcolm Bradbury
The Deceivers, Alfred Bester
[pile of John Cale CDs]
Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon