Then I thought: "No, better not confuse folks *too* much..."

And I cut the last bit.

But your suggestion -- <Let alone a fourth...> -- proves that I had it right the first time (ahh, the sonorous clang of great minds thinking alike, even if you've got perfect pitch and I'm almost tone deaf...)

Plus, I suspect that *confusing folks too much* may be what I do best. When it works, it works. And chaos rules in the end anyhow...

Confusion worse confounded...

PS <Niels>. Your annotations to The Immoral Zug's Wang Game, Kiss vs Titz, were brilliant. I found a game in the recent European Individual Championships (in Germany) which seemed to demonstrate that chess was a fistfight or maybe a boxing match: Socko vs Dinger. But it doesn't seem to be in the CG database yet. At least, I couldn't find Dinger.

Well, quite. But it was a warts-and-all list, after all. And now you know the truth: I sometimes have to bulk buy piss-in-a-can to see myself through the night. I'm amongst fiends here, right?

Yes. Yes, of course, post your <Stonking Great Jessican Bibliography & Rules for Correct Living> here, if that is your wish.

Have I *ever* said "no" to you??

Stephen King short story <the mangler>

Heh. Thanks <dom>. Just don't like to be left out, as you know.

I'll have to collect the books nearest to my bed as the selection, since

MY ROOM IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE!!

Au contraire, mon ami. I was so impressed that I moved in with her.

Some while later, however, I learned that her nickname was The Black Widow. I may be an Arachnophile, but there's a point where self-preservation kicks in. I was the next fly outta town.

Like most so-called relationships, it can be set to music and sung. The country classic by Jack D. Reader "The Sign is an Ill-Named Thang", perhaps, or even 'The Fly' by U2. (U2 are actually a tribute band who play covers of songs by the original group, The Joshua Trio).

Or, if you like to invent improbably happy endings while crying into your beer (I don't, as a rule), there's this:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
'Let us fly' said the flea,
Said the fly 'Let us flee',
So they flew thru a flaw in the flue.

Translate this sentence, for example:

BTW, FYI, IMO my PC is a POS.

KK now in English, please.

Also, I've read The Book of Mormon, in which these great events were predicted in cunningly ersatz biblicalese.

I even know that Donny's favorite color was purple, and that he and Marie would enthusiastically [*passage deleted*] while their tiny father, Jimmy, would [*passage _very_ deleted*] with a [*boom! bang-a-bang! deletion machine explodes violently*]...

That's quite enough of that. These were good people with harmonious voices, and all they desired was wealth, fame, and the adoption of a ludicrous belief system by everyone on the planet. That's not asking too much, is it?

A terrifying thought struck me the other day whilst I was making a risotto - in a few years time, will there not be a whole wave of net-savvy kids who have *grown up* with these dumb little anagrams, and, more importantly, with the smiley? Furthermore, will there not come a point where one's first instinct is to actually *say* 'lol' rather laughing, or 'btb' before going to the shops, or...

No. It can't happen. Can it?

You can advertise them in medical journals, zines for doctors and Big Pharma -- but not somewhere that might be read by civilians.

Or you can advertise placebo-based 'drugs' as long as there's no intent to defraud. You don't actually have to say "contains 0% active ingredients" -- a new-agey name like 'Saint Phocas's Gargle (sans antitussifs)' will suffice.

But I'm pretty sure you can't buy a page in a newspaper to say "Jessop's Cough Syrup: contains industrial-strength cough-killers, makes you high as a kite, makes opiates seem puny, and is on special offer all this week, or until your habit is established, whichever comes first..."

I could be wrong, but that does not strike me as a medically kosher ad.

<the freezing person naked inside a sleeping bag with a non-freezing person>

I'm guessing that a 'sleeping' bag (as opposed to any other kind of bag) is used in order to ensure that the subjects snooze quietly while the transfer of heat is effected.

"A handbag??!"

I mean, what would happen if it was a <garbage bag>? Or a <shopping bag>?

Good thing I'm not corruptible by mere money. Good thing I'm corrupt already.

<BTW, FYI, IMO my PC is a POS. >

Zinger has the curious distinction of being the only chess master to impact on popular culture (20th century rock music) twice over.

His 18-year London match with Elijah Williams was massively popular, taking up part of the 1880s and all of the infamous <lost decade of the 19th century> -- the ten years between '1879' and '1880' which were so boring that Queen Victoria had them struck from the official record.

Also, she had a Jubilee coming up, and didn't want them changing the 'head' on British coins from a <slender Gothic maiden> (eg, 'gothic florins' of 1873 with the legend 'one tenth of a pound') to the dumpy, squat portrait used in her latter years.

The match between Rev Zebedee and Elijah, played with 'Fischer Sand Glasses' rather than clocks, was notorious for the slow pace of play. After Williams opened 1.c4 in game three, Zinger thought for seventeen months, then cunningly reset the hourglass while his opponent was unavoidably absent from the room.

"Nature called", said Williams, "and I couldn't pretend to be out." A zinger, in cockney slang, meant a shocking but possibly illegal move. It was also rhyming slang for 'finger' (which, as the name of part of the human body, could obviously not be spoken aloud by respectable persons, or even parsons.)

Finally, the following November, Zinger played 1...c5 and offered a draw, which was accepted with alacrity during the next summer but three.

The deciding fifth and final game of the match was hotly disputed. Williams claimed that it was not, in fact, a real game, but part of the post-mortem analysis of game four. He was entertaining a lady friend from Arminia, a Miss P.R. Carroll, he said, and desired only to show her how Fool's Mate worked.

Wits and wags at the time jested that Miss Carroll had been lured from Arminia by Zinger, who persuaded her that Fool's Mate was a position of eminence and distinction in British society, equivalent to Bishop's Wife. This was to have tragic consequences for this blameless, if somewhat naive, lady.

Ignoring Williams' explanation, the less scrupulous Zinger claimed the game, and the match -- along with the stake: the souls of everyone resident in the home counties, plus Gibraltar and British Honduras.

Zebedee Zinger's dubious win led to the Victorian catchphrase 'ZZ Top'. Later, after Miss Carroll's unfortunate 'accident' with a White Bishop, Bob Dylan penned one of his finest protest songs:

FYI: Five Years Inside
PC: Please, Constable
POS: Postpone One's Suicide
IMO: Indigenous Molluscs Only

LENDL: Low Expectations, No Driving Licence

Many people -- tourists, Joyceans, map-freaks, and traditional versifiers looking for a rhyme for 'stiffy' among them -- may know that the river flowing through the middle of Dublin, Ireland is the River Liffey -- characterized by Joyce as Anna Livia.

But there are also many smaller rivers and streams converging at this point. The main ones are the Dargle, the Dodder, and the Tolka. Others include the Swan, the Poddle, and the one that used to keep the Vikings and the Wild Irish apart, but now lives in a pipe under a railway station.

There's also an old Dublinese folk song <Come to the Waxie's Dargle> but it probably has no connection to the river. In fact, if anyone can explain what either a Waxie or a Dargle is, or why the former would have a latter, and invite observers ... they're a better Dubliner and/or googleur than I am, Gunga Din.

I have, in fact, been talking to myself for some time. The French, and especially Les Onanistes, have a word for this condition.

Sigh.

A further booklist is now called for. Since my last in-house librarian moved out, I don't adhere to a cataloguing system... but these are all vaguely practical, or utilitarian, or useful, or how-to, or guides, or scouts, or that class of entity:

Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million
Bente Elsworth, Teach Yourself Danish
Jean Baudrillard, Seduced and Abandoned
Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book
Norman Mailer, Why Are We in Vietnam?
Hunter S Thompson, Better Than Sex
Max Euwe, The Development of Chess Style
Rosen & Widgery, The Chatto Book of Dissent
JF Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition
Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics
D. McClintick, Indecent Exposure
J. Higgs, I Have America Surrounded
Keres & Kotov, The Art of the Middle Game
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
B. Watson, The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play
A. Holden, All In
E. Carpenter, Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me

(this last one, btw, is a proto-Zapkinder exploration of electronic media in the Oral Zone... practical McLuhanism for Gonzo Anthropologists... it is *not* a comic strip about the ghost-who-walks-and-sucks, okay?)

Unfortunately, <Eyal> beat you to the punch and, perhaps perversely, won an all expense paid weekend at his OWN house!!

<Domdaniel: <Jess> -- <half the people don't know what the hell you're talking about.>>

Did I really say that? Doesn't sound like me...

I've been giggling about it all day.

(Still giggling)

Heh well done, well done.

Although I know you are already <immortal>, having published, now you are even MORE <immortal!!>

Are there degrees of Immortality?

Can I go back to being unfunny now?

We wouldn't want your valuable guts bust, after all, would we?

"And stitches don't mean a thing..."

Yeah, I pulled the plug last night after the <hypothermia> flourish.. No offence meant to <Jess> of course, she's our 'golden girl' after all.. My intention was to be out by the river at daybreak this Sunday morn' - it relaxes me. Should do it every day.

<You may choose not to believe this (I can't say I'd blame you) but I originally typed "They were all lined up waiting for the Second Coming: nobody anticipated a third, or a fourth". Then I thought: "No, better not confuse folks *too* much...">

Somehow I should say that you are lying about the 'not confuse folks too much' part - but knowing you a bit better I actually do believe you. (Dates back to a thread we had when good old <Dakkie> was around to keep us sharp..)

<But your suggestion -- <Let alone a fourth...> -- proves that I had it right the first time (ahh, the sonorous clang of great minds thinking alike, even if you've got perfect pitch and I'm almost tone deaf...)>

Uhmm most of the time I'm stretching to keep up with the likes of you, but occasionally I grab hold of a branch. In this case you might even go so far as a fifth or a sixth coming, cause we earthlings seem to not get the general idea right, for some reason.. (I know, I might be on thin ice here)

<Perfect Pitch> There is a funny anecdote about my idol, Oscar Peterson, riding on a bus and going over to the bus driver to tell him to either speed up or slow down, cause he couldn't sleep with the engine purring in B-flat! It's been rumoured that ART TATUM could hear the root-tone of a flushing toilet..

<Kiss'n Titz> The phrase Immoral game of the sensualry was already there, on that page, so I made a slight adjustment re the rythm. No heroics there. I actually wanted to take it a lot further, more kinky, (to the max, really), but decided not to offend folks too much, heh. The most fun, when writing that post, was to end it with: RIGHT! WATCH IT!! (Which is also not an original of mine - but I've come clean now on Kiss'n Titz..)

See!? I've got a long way to go..

<Dublin Water Trivia> A masterpiece!!

And I put <Jess>'s Mtel/Karjakin post in my funny kibitz section - Masterful, again. Talk about perfect pitch..

<LENDL> Hey, you put that one in your very first post at my forum, remember? God, a lot has happened since then..

Suth'n hemisfear sux rite now. Hope to be here for pert gert, but i fear that eye may have to wait till we can tickle some more nickel.

Hey Jess...yer looking a piksha these daze.

<joewms> say something for krisake, yer givin' me hives.

caio

yrs trewly