Oy, you lot. Did I *ever* say "dirty minds welcome here"? Did I?

Sigh. I suppose I must have done, if not in those exact words. Leading by example, and all that.

Brilliant!

"Ben je een meisje (better yet: meissie - sound-wise) of een jongen? "

indeed sounds almost identical...

I am AMAZED - and yet it probably isn't that much of a long shot, but this is one heck of a personal anecdote you pulled there...

< We're all going to be put in the Noughty Corner (h8) again, if this, ahem, keeps up.>

'The Night Spider' - (lousy title but the prison "behind" the Knight is good enough for the "Noughty Corner" for a while)

click for larger view

Seemingly it's rickety -- and so far out of tune (whatever that means) that John Cage could have used it as a prepared piano without hammering any nails in.

But it can be brought back to life. Amazing skills you expert types have.

- Be thee a piano or a synth?
- How the heck would I know?

This is what I have become. A scalp, albeit still just about an impressive one. A scalp.

I started to study for piano tuner a little over 4 years ago, and the process of selecting the right wood, and working it, all the way to the final product must be seen as a giant, fascinating journey, where it is almost impossible to familiarize oneself with all the trades and special qualities of different expertises that all add up to make that ONE piano...

It really is a world in itself, and a very noble way to spend your time in, get better, learn... It's a world within a world, in a way... (excuse me for a limited vocabulary)

The piano is an instrument that God wanted to be made, I guess, cuz the speed with which it has developed over the 17th century, to the perfect instrument that was available in 1910 or so, is still some sort of mystery to me... I bet Da Vinci knows more about all this...

The secrets of sound, strings, wavelenghths, overtones, shape, body, mathematics in tempering, is in fact beyond comprehension to many experts even...

A fine craftsman piano tuner indeed needs to be shown the respect of a brain surgeon, though the surgeon's work is far less complicated IMO -- a piano maker needs to make a soul and a body, and be able to fix it, to the surgeon the material is simply offered...

Well, you can "put-things-on-top-of" a piano too, you know...

I will trust your sister may handle it with respect.

PS. Do not forget to speak a few words, one on one, to that Ancestral Piano that belonged to your mother -- it having to travel and be handled by "transport-people", is enough of an ordeal...

And Sis is paying. Being (a) more musical, (b) with a coupla kids who might be more musical still, given piano access, and (c) caring about Things Ancestral in a way that I don't, much.

Plachetka vs Jan Sodoma, 2003

Errant Knight-- both Panza and Quixote--

"Playing the board- playing the position- that's for training against your engine:

PLAY THE MAN IN FRONT OF YOU.

To play over the board, agaisnt a human with a clock-- the board is Agincourt, not a bunch of virtual squares on a computer field.

Your chessmen are not "figurines" cluttering an old maid's armoire.

They are soldiers.

Your "king" is not a chess piece. It is you.

Tell your army: at some point in the early middle game--

I DON'T WANT YOU TO GIVE UP ONE MORE YARD.

I WANT THEM TO REMEMBER, FOREVER, THE DAY THEY FOUGHT YOU.

LEAVE NO DOUBT.

What are you???

MOBILE, AGILE, HOSTILE...

Leave no doubt.

The art of war. Nothing could be more magnificent.

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH!!!

Well I don't know how to put this exactly, but then I never do. I don't know how to end either. All I know is that I will end- perforce.

I considered sending this as a private email, but then I figured this is what <Frogspawn> is for- It's a <soap box in Jekyll and Hyde Park>.

And that's something very precious.

<Niels> and I have a lengthy ongoing dialogue on the psychology of winning and losing in chess, and we recently had a long conversation about "limits".

Well, the <Werner Herzogs> of this world ignore limits-- this is both the majesty and bathos of <German Romanticism>...

The flip side of <Romanticism>, as all savvy literary scholars know, is <Viktor Korchnoi, Anatoly Karpov and Nigel Short>.

These three have a different, less <hybristic> form of <ad astra>, one tempered with wisdom-- but no less courageous.

These three men, on the <north face of the Eiger>, with rotton ice sliding off and their pitons loose-- if asked the question "Do you think you will make it?"

Would without doubt reply "No, but we shall proceed with style."

Which brings us to this equation:

<S = k log W>

A dry, unimportant discovery about the behavior of ideal gas molecules? Well yes.

And no.

<Boltzmann's> formula did not "suggest" entropy is inevitable in all systems in all cases-- it proved it with ineluctuable force and precision.

These implications were not lost on his peers, who pilloried him for it.

Optimists, including <Stephen Hawking>, fancied for a bit that <Black Holes> were exempt from entropy, and from <Boltzmann's> deceptively "provincial" equation on the behavior of ideal gases.

Not so. Little bits of radiation were observed emanating from Black Holes and well nothing lasts, not even them.

"Is it not passing brave, to be a KING and ride in glory through Persepolis"?

Yes.

But how much braver to be a <broken, blinded, powerless KING>, a Lear or an Oedipus at Colonus, who understands nothing less than the meaning of the human condition.

It's not that there is no glory in having been a King- there is-- I, and so many like me, will never, ever approach the chess rating of a <DomDaniel>.

But the greatest glory of all is to enjoy life in ruins- and, in fact, to realize that the ruins are a gift.

"To lose is to win" Siddartha said.

Nobody understood this until <Korchnoi>.

NO, his rating will never be as high as it was.

YES, he could crush any of us here still, blindfold with knight odds.

And YES, he is more Lear than Henry V, but on any given day he is able to rear up and SPANK a strong Grandmaster.

Well I forgot what I was trying to say again.

Oh yes-- <Dom>, you are my hero.

<"Hmm, nice model, it looks like a <Symonds & Garfinkl 1930>?" > heh <And Sis is paying. Being (a) more musical, (b) with a coupla kids who might be more musical still, given piano access...> Of course there is one Golden Rule -- and that is an instrument (Piano) MUST BE PLAYED ON/USED in order to maintain a healthy state, only every 10-15 years, parts need replacement, and it's good for at least another decade, and so on usw...

So <Dom>, you did the best thing you could in having it taken to Sis and kids, ondoubtedly.

As your rating may go up, or down, or sideways, no matter, you are still creating in the OTB Arena, which is something to be proud of -- just like the toned up Piano, you're good for another decade, and another...