Still shaking. Good grief, that second "he man" is priceless.

Re: Pollard squared.

Isn't <le Figaro> EyeTalian?

I can read French, but I can't play the French opening from either side worth a crap.

I hope we don't give <Dom> a heart attack upon his return.

1 e4 e6 2 Qe2!?,

Enjoying the article <Mack> just reviewed, goes very well with coffee and a smoke. Just saying.

Enjoying the article <Mack> just reviewed, goes very well with coffee and a smoke.>

<Quinquepuerility Test>: Calling five-year-old boys -- the kind who are 'advanced' for their age in some ways and 'backward' in others... what Vivian Stanshall called "that awkward age... where they start asking questions... and wanking."

Count Zero: the eponymous antihero of William Gibson's second novel.

Count Basie: the guy with the eponymous orchestra.

Kant: the eponymous philosopher who strolled around Konigsberg, crossing its mathematical bridges according to a strict inner timetable derived from graph theory and Asperger's syndrome.

Koontz, Dean R., contemporary writer of horror and sci-fi, not eponymous with anything, one hopes.

<will somebody explain> ... why a mainstream US comedy TV series -- the names escapes me -- was able to get away with naming three characters (Minnesota-Scandinavian stereotypes, female, blonde, enthusiastic but dumb) as "The Wanker Triplets".

Maybe I misheard and this is all one big Mondegreen.

Speaking of which. Did you hear that the sealed cans of <merde d'artiste> -- supposedly defecated, produced, tinned, sealed, signed and sold for big bucks by a 1960s conceptual artist, have turned out NOT to contain *exactly what it says on the tin*...?

Tarnations. I forgot about inflation. Two nights in a fine Renaissance Inn, one Italian ass ride, six bottles of sack: that'll be one groat sir, plus a farthing for the ass...

Speaking of disgust, Brig Pudding was also a coprophile. As a veteran of the First World War trenches, this -- the fetishistic ingestion of, ah, certain bodily products -- was the only thing that could return him to the smell and ordurous taste of the trenches while partly expiating his survivor's guilt.

A lesser man might have opted for Trench Foot or even Athlete's Foot, but the Brigadier needed to savour the full disgust and humiliation of the old copra.

Which, on a lighter note, reminds me of the Flann O'Brien novel -- The Dalkey Archive, I think, one of his later and lesser fictions -- in which somebody mentions Colza Oil and a yarn is then spun about the blessed Saint Colza, from whom the said oil originates.

Colza and copra -- this is like scanning the internal obscure lexicon for something to fit a cryptic crossword slot: CO--A.

<Cobra> would do it, the snake (and a few other things, including a weapon). As would <Cocoa>, a popular beverage, source of the addictive drug chocolate which makes vast profits for the choc barons, importing their vegetal brown powder from poorer countries, processing it into brown slabs and concentrated 'rocks', and selling it to wealthy addicts in Europe and the US.

A well-known film, The Ambassador's Party, shows these chocolate 'rocks' being openly distributed at a diplomatic function. The variety shown is believed to be cut with that deadly white powder, sugar. This is thought to speed up the effect of cocoa's active ingredients, the thiobromides, by imparting a 'sugar rush'.

One other word that nearly fits is 'Coney', as in Coney Island. Originally pronounced 'cunny', it was a common word for 'rabbit' -- until the 18th century rabbit meant only the baby animal, while the coney was the adult. The main reason that 'coney' dropped out of polite usage: it (also spelled cunny) was a popular slang term for something we're not going to mention, at all, at all.

But that queynte old twat Kant would know what we're talking about.

Pudding is a top-grade British shibboleth. Among the upper classes, anything vaguely sweet eaten after a main savory course is called 'pudding'. Even -- and especially -- something like ice cream.

Other words for the sugary course, like 'sweet' and 'dessert', are looked upon with loathing and class hatred. It's considered the acme of nouveau vulgarity to have a big neo-Georgian house and serve 'dessert': like being Mrs Beckham on stilts. As soon as the word is spoken, a true-blue Windsor will knot himself and walk out.

But the language is quite different in Ireland. 'Pudding' originally meant simply something that had been boiled. This mutated in England into sweet/dessert via those very English sweet things, like bread crusts boiled in milk and sugar for a week or until the milk curdles.

There's also 'Queen of Puddings' -- much the same, with a corgi and strawberry jam on top. Pynchon, oddly enough, has an excellent section of Gravity's Rainbow on English 'sweets' (or candies) as seen by an American.

Ireland has stayed with the older 'boiled' notion of pudding, using it for vile substances known as 'black pudding' and 'white pudding'. The German word 'blutwurst' describes the same kind of thing: animal blood mixed with oats and boiled in a kind of condom until it hardens.

As things do under such circumstances.

Basically -- never eat *anything* described as 'pudding' anywhere in Britain or Ireland. You will either suffer total social ostracisation or die an agonizing death, or both, not necessarily in that order.

There'll be more. I may even have some <Frogsdick> chess data before the day ends.

Deffi, Deffi ...

Are you senile?
No, absolutely not.

Am I senile?
It is indeed probable, though most folk are too nice to say.

Do I play chess?
Uh ... hold on, these are tricky questions. I'd better consult my Frogsdikipedia ...