Interviewer: Good evening. Tonight we're going to take a hard tough abrasive look at camel spotting. Hello.

Spotter: Hello Peter.

Interviewer: Now tell me, what exactly are you doing?

Spotter: Er well, I'm camel spotting. I'm spotting to see if there are any camels that I can spot, and put them down in my camel spotting book.

Interviewer: Good. And how many camels have you spotted so far?

Spotter: Oh, well so far Peter, up to the present moment, I've spotted nearly, ooh, nearly one.

Interviewer: Nearly one?

Spotter: Er, call it none.

Interviewer: Fine. And er how long have you been here?

Spotter: Three years.

Interviewer: So, in, er, three years you've spotted no camels?

Spotter: Yes in only three years. Er, I tell a lie, four, be fair, five. I've been camel spotting for just the seven years. Before that of course I was a Yeti Spotter.

Interviewer: A Yeti Spotter, that must have been extremely interesting.

Spotter: Oh, it was extremely interesting, very, very - quite... it was dull; dull, dull, dull, oh God it was dull. Sitting in the Waterloo waiting room. Course once you've seen one Yeti you've seen them all.

Interviewer: And have you seen them all?

Spotter: Well I've seen one. Well a little one... a picture of a... I've heard about them.

Interviewer: Well, now tell me, what do you do when you spot a camel?

Spotter: Er, I take its number.

Interviewer: Camels don't have numbers.

Spotter: Ah, well you've got to know where to look. Er, they're on the side of the engine above the piston box.

Interviewer: What?

Spotter: Ah - of course you've got to make sure it's not a dromedary. 'Cos if it's a dromedary it goes in the dromedary book.

Interviewer: Well how do you tell if it's a dromedary?

Spotter: Ah well, a dromedary has one hump and a camel has a refreshment car, buffet, and ticket collector.

Interviewer: Mr Sopwith, aren't you in fact a train Spotter?

Spotter: What?

Interviewer: Don't you in fact spot trains?

Sorry, <noty>, that wasn't <NICE>. Here's Whiteshark:

<L'Amibal: <First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?>> Clarice: He plays chess...

<L'Amibal: <No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by playing chess?>>

Clarice: Anger, um, social acceptance, and, huh, sexual frustrations, sir...

<L'Amibal: <No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.>>

Clarice: No. We just...

I couldn't agree more. To employ the vernacular of this milieu, actual actuality is a patzer with a 2800 rating.

Hmm, I'm not sure I care for that word 'patzer'. Apart altogether from the way it gets flung around online -- often by, um, weak players with strong computers who've discovered an error in a grandmaster game -- there's the whole question of its *shape*. Shape is to morphology as poetry is to prose.

On the whole, I like English words derived from Yiddish -- 'schlemiel' is wonderful -- but 'patzer' is an agent-noun without a verb. How does one patz? How is patzing accomplished?

When I returned to tournament chess after a 17-year gap I idiotically thought I might be rusty at first, but would then improve. In fact the opposite has happened: I played to my old 1900 rating for about 18 months, then got worse. I'm still getting worse. Verbosity and other bad habits play a part, but hey -- it's only chess.

Call me Lazarus. Lazarus said to his buddy, the Lord, "Lordy, I'm gonna play in a chess tournament". And the Lord said "Lazarus, come 4th".

Turning and turning in the opening file
The attacker cannot see the attack to be;
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the board
The pawn-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The calculation of innocence is drowned
The best lack all combination, while the worst
Are full of passionate analysis.

I wrote my own version of this particular verse once, but I lost it. All I can remember is a reference to Sigue Sigue Sputnik, which would probably allow it to be carbon dated.

I also lost my 'updated' version of <Leda and the Swan>, which had a line about "Hercules the Wonder Willie/ Dead, or dying".

I know, I know. Some things are better off lost. And forgotten.

So the Astronomy page is held over due to lack of space. And the Readers' Letters and Readers' Wives are now on the same page -- but they've been renamed as *Reader Twitters* and *Reader Spice*. Ist Klar?

Spice, of course, is the plural of 'spouse'. Which is why the wealth of old Europe was founded on the spice trade, and spice are still banned in 49 of the US states.

For a few seconds I thought you were describing your aura. Or something really exotic, like Kirlian Xerography. Or cuticles.

Coincidentally (ha!) some scientist Johnnies in Japan have inserted jellyfish genes into monkeys and made them glow green under UV light.

That sentence brings back a lot of fond memories.

I'm easily satisfied. Still working on the Dylan thing.

heh

Good to see you kicking, <Dom>, and still a force OTB, as well.

Respect.

As for the temptation to make ridiculous statements, I find it simpler just to go with the flow. Let 'em go free. They'll thank you some day.

Anyhow, apart from *ridiculous* ... what other kinds of statements are there?

Hypotheses will need to be supported by a rigorous proof of existence.

No, basically. Here are some reasons:

(i) I treated undergraditude as a period for avoiding lectures, evading reading lists, eschewing anything 'on the course', and generally running off to do other stuff -- bring out dope-saturated nihilist 'zines called Alice and Zilch, usw. (Despite all this, I do actually have a couple of degrees -- but standards were lower back then -- if you knew the alphabet they gave you an M.A.)

A *cool course*, if one existed, would have undermined all this. One reason I never lectured on <Faminism, Gutenberg Ghetto, Barrio Mercator, and the filling in the History Sandwich>. 101.

I *did* attend two cool lectures in a period of four years. Not actually a bad batting average, given that, in one of those years, I actually attended a total of twelve lectures. Dunno how many I *should* have been at, but it's safe to assume that 12 is on the low side.

(ii) I *would* like to have *given* courses that cool. Nuff said.

(iii) I once considered writing a PhD on science fiction and the cold war ... images of the other in Russian and American sci-fi. In American SF, bad aliens were often collectivist super-soviets, and in Russian SF (which was surprisingly ggod, especially the Strugatsky brothers) the evil aliens were individualistic capitalist-roaders.

Latterly, in this brave new post-bipolar world, I've found some interesting variants. Like neo-Celtic-racist SF -- "They fought for racial purity in Phadraig".

Which I assume is the Harrington immune system fighting off bad germs ...

I like to exploit -- in chess as in life -- whatever minimal edge is available if one notices a particular trope two minutes earlier than the other guy. It's admittedly precarious, but I suppose you could call it living.

Same thing happened last year around this time. You kindly informed me that opiates don't negatively affect chess but I couldn't lift a single piece for months when this happened last year.

I sure hope that doesn't happen again.

This isn't much of a hello- I'm waiting for the doctor to open.

thanks for lemur reminders= you can't really say enough about them.

I am so behind in my "cg.com" mail that it might take me a year to reply.

I must have been, as they say, *on* something at the time.

In any case, since my own play is objectively getting worse, it follows that I know nothing at all about the subject of things that don't negatively affect chess. Anything I've ever done could be to blame.

March 18, 2008: Domdaniel: <Opiates are far from being the worst drugs where chess is concerned. They mess with your time-sense but the basic mental functions still operate. Unlike certain other substances I could name, notably alcohol.

Even Tal got into that territory for a while, but I guess he had a lot of pain to kill.>

<Niels> I'm sorry you have the flu- be sure to rest up as much as you can.

Looks like you're rivalling <Eyal> on the search expertise---

<Dom> possibly you meant that cough syrup was OK, but only if taken with a "high end" brand of biscuit.

I have a bone spur digging in to my hip tendon.

It's too small to justify surgery, although I was in so much pain yesterday I started telling the doctor to 'CUT THE LEG OFF MAN'

Apparently this only hurts when the little spur grows.

If it grows big enough they go in to cut it out-

But Doctor says they wouldn't do that unless it was bigger and the pain was so bad I couldn't walk.

But what if the pain is bad but I can still walk?

I'm not doping myself up the rest of my life.

OFF WITH THE LEG first I say.

Stupid genetics.

Calcium- friend or enemy?

Well I suppose your heart stops without calcium so it's a good thing.

Doctor says the spur could keep growing stop growing or start shrinking.