Feel free to EMU me, you'll always have a friendly ear to listen with me.

<motorcycle accident>

Time for a re-birth? Never too late for that.

Who cares about the old farts? The young farts listen to you even if you don't want to be a "role model."

I'm thinking of becoming a "spokesmodel", but what for, exactly, I couldn't say...

See? That vaguely whiny tone creeps in no matter what I try to say ...

It's nothing much, really. Thanks for holding my hand, though.

I've got two chess matches tomorrow which should sort me out. Ta.

Now a jolly pirate song to get the blood flowing ... somebody else's, ideally ...

I'll hoist the <Jolly Roger> here in support.

This is the kind of fighting spirit that got us through the Blitz.

<mack> Ah, they're all emerging from the woodwork now ... a must indeed.

God, I'm knackered. Two club games today. Two draws. The mighty Frog held up against yet another 2130 guy playing 3.e5 ... has the Advance become the mainline of the French all of a sudden?

Talk of synchronicity or coincidence or maybe just plain bad memory, but after I left that little Irish benediction for you at Joe's place, I was left gasting some flabber when I discovered a recently released film at the local cinema called, you guessed Before The Devil Knows You're Dead.

It is a grim but pointed little ditty that was directed by Sidney Lumet whose come up with something interesting after an off thirty years or so, and it's not set in Ireland.

I'm rapt in the expression. As the resident Hibernian sage, can you advise this equatorially challenged muttley why an Irishman would want to be in heaven for half an hour before Old Nick takes up the scent, rather than say 2 minutes or a fortnight?

Doesn't heaven have Beelzebub repellant or Piss Off signs in case of visiting demons? Or does heaven feed newly arrived Irish fong to stray mephistophelian moppets that may turn up at the gates within the requisite 30 minutes?

Somewhere deep in the vowels of my memory is the notion that you were born in Denmark, or somesuch hamlet.

Is so? Is not so?

I'd never really thought about the semiotics of satanic ontology before. My guess is that the devil (a) is waiting for you/one/whoever, (b) has good sources and is normally well informed, but (c) can't touch you once you're in the good place. Those seem like reasonable rules.

So the devil is mightily piffed off when his sources fail him, and you/one/whoever gets to heaven a full 30 mins before he gets as much as a text message. Cue one very annoyed devil - a traditional source of amusement.

Is my guess. Personally, if I was in the devil's cloven shoes I'd shrug and say "plenty more fish in the sea" and go back to turning Nixon on a spit. But maybe you don't get to be top demon without being extremely competitive over every last soul.

<Dom, Joe, Doggimus>

Heh- <Lumet> = genius on a bad day or a thirty year hiatus.

Fact is he's come back with TWO (count e'm- two) very strong films both released within a year of each other--

<Before the Devil> (brilliant film) and <Find me Guilty> (also brilliant).

The dialogue from the latter film is culled almost entirely from verbatim court testimony of the "Mobster who became a TV star" during the longest trial in American criminal jurisprudence.

I rank <Lumet> up there with <Kubrik or Altman>--

Well maybe he's more akin to <Altman> in that he's hit and miss unlike <Kubed Brik>.

But let's not forget <Pawnbroker, Serpico, Frog Day Afternoon, and Prince of Darkness of the City>...

HOw exciting that he's suddenly back in fine form!!

And filming in New Jersey, of all places.

<Dom>, aren't you a stone's throw from the <Old Jersey>?

<Jess> Well, that'd be quite a throw. Although by Canadian standards it's only something like one twentieth of a Saskatchewan.

Is that ZERO Canadian or ZERO $US? The Euro ZERO notes - known as ZEUROS - are really cool. And worth nothing whatsoever, although you could try selling them on ebay. This probably underpins the global economy, or something - Zeuro Futures.

See Bareev vs Kramnik, 2004, par exemple.

I wonder if there's a <Battle of the Boyne Defence> ... loads of French and Dutch mercenaries pretending to be English so that they could fight in Ireland. Considerable historical misunderstanding ensued.

This is the metaphysical Hibernian crux, I suppose. Why such precise timing in things eternal?

I've no idea. But two minutes seems like cutting it rather fine - a touch of posthumous Zeitnot there, if you ask me. While a few weeks just assumes too much laxity on the mephistophelian side ... not even Old Nick's Satanic broadband could be down for *that* long, could it?

Then again. These sayings are the superstitious remnants of a Romano-Celtic religion that actually constructed equations relating time spent in purgatory to relics purchased by relicts -- a fine blend of simony and calculus.

But what do I know? One of my favourite sayings is "Actually, I'm a second cousin of the Devil".

Connoting depravity and hinting at Darkness ... but in a diluted form.

"If you can't make any cents,
Eurovercentsless or Eurovercentsitive."...vizier:

"If you don't have enough cents for an Austen
Then you'll be lacking cents and centsibility".

We only use "pee."

<Dom> BTW, <David Byrne> called. He wants his lyrics back.

HAHAHA

HAAWHEEE

heh

Thanks for the <Agincourt> update and link. Are we winning? <Niels> left me a link also so I'll likely have those for "breakfast" since I have a day off tomorrow, and will be playing "chess" all afternoon, oddly enough.

Tonight I'm watching mynew hero (Vulgar Gash in the Face>-- And the posting record will confirm I started supporting him before he won as well. I liked his dashing "take my h-pawn with check buster".

You have to respect a man who plays white and allows <Bxh2+> as part of his "secret plan."

Plus he's a home town hero!

Do you think <Kasparov> wishes he was in form and ready to go? He just published an article on Politics around the time <Bok Choi> started-- suspicious if you ask me.

<Roland Barthes> (or Freud) might suggest that there's a semiosis in play here in which <Kasparov> is actually connoting: "I'm still happy I quit chess and became a political writer even though no one seems to pay any attention to me any more except, perversely, chess fans".

I bet he wishes he was mixing it up with young countrymen like <Vulgar Gash in the Face>...

Here are two interesting analyses of the <French defence> by <Kingscrusher>.

1. Basic overview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAsd...

2 Tarrasch variation with <3...c5>

choke, sputter,,,

<roll model>

HAHA