Thanks, and I totally agree. And many of your own contributions were very important. But persuading people to cite whole lines is really hard.

Several people, including me, asked people to do it. Some did, but it never became standard. In fact, that was one reason for the forums - simply to clarify which line was being discussed.

Dedicated forum hosts - Ohio really stands out here - tried to track down and re-post all relevant analysis of the line under discussion. Sometimes they were very hard to find, precisely because of this problem.

I'm getting silly. I think, in Mr Dylan's words, it's time to get back to from where I came. As in bed.

Interesting cross current, post-wise as well: I'm sure you're aware of <John Cale's> fantastic rendition of <Leonard Cohen's> immortal <Hallelujah>. Rufus has also recorded a version of this song, employing the same phrasing and tempo as does Cale.

Rufus' version is available on Limewire and other file sharing programs i'm sure. That's where I found it.

"I remember when I moved in you, and the Holy Dove, was moving too, and every breath we drew was Hallelujah"

Now that's a <God song> that sends chills up the spine. Mine anyway.

Have a great sleep, <Dominator>

eh?

<the one about haddocks. Or was it herrings> I think you're mixing up the animals. It begins with an Elephant:

He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
'At length I realise,' he said,
The bitterness of Life!'

<He said, I hunt for haddocks eyes...>

The song's name is called Haddocks' Eyes
The song's name really is The Aged Aged Man
The song is called Ways and Means
The song really is A-sitting On a Gate

I'll tell thee everything I can:
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.

[...]

He said "I hunt for haddocks' eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine."

[...]

And now, if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
<Here's emotion recollected in tranquility for you>

Of that old man I used to know--
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo--
That summer evening long ago,
A-sitting on a gate.

I try never to delete, except sometimes to correct an error I've made. And early in the Nickel game, when we were trying to get the forum system running, I removed extraneous posts to try to keep things orderly -- but that was months ago.

Now, it's no zapping, no Iggy list. Let it come down. I'm sure a dedicated spammer could find a way of testing my patience, but it hasn't happened yet.

As for the extended Wainwright clan - no, I've never met any of them, or even had the chance to see them in concert, but I like their music.

Hallelujah - Cohen and Cale versions - is among my favorite songs (I'm going to sound like a deranged fan-geek now, but bare with me... or even bear with me...)

The last 3 or 4 times I saw Cale play (out of an obsessive total of maybe ten times, going back to 1981) it was his special encore song. Big audience favorite, too.

I'm always having this argument with people who know only the Jeff Buckley version. Or one of the others - it's become almost a standard. I recently heard a radio show play a different version every day for two weeks.

Cohen's original, on the album Various Positions, was good - but didn't quite exploit its potential. Cale rearranged it, with slightly different lyrics provided by Cohen. And Cale - with classical music training as well as the famous Velvet Underground stint - is brilliant at reworking songs. He also has an amazing slowed-down version of Heartbreak Hotel. He even deconstructed Beethoven's Ode to Joy and turned it into a piece named Damn Life.

Essentially that's where the rearranged (now standard) Hallelujah comes from. I think its first outing was the Cohen tribute album I'm Your Fan, followed by Cale's live-in-Paris version on Fragments of a Rainy Season.

Jeff Buckley brought it to a wider audience, and Rufus Wainwright and others added something extra -- but Cale's version is their template.

"You say I took the name in vain/ I don't even know the name/ And if I did, well, really, what's it to ya?"

Like Celine, Juvenal began to write in middle-age after he'd been around the block a few times.

Hmm. All this variation analysis here makes me feel almost scholarly. A substitute for variation analysis in the Nickelodeon, presumably.

<They can close the doors, but they can never demolish the memories...>

- Really, sir? What a quaint idea... *[inserts electrode, adjusts dial, checks monitor]* ... now, you were telling us about your life as the 57th Franz Kafka? A hairdresser in Saskatchewan, wasn't it? Remember?

<Ehh, no. Well, dimly. Something about perms and prairies? Or permafrost? It's coming back...>

Reminds me of the time I set fire to a hard drive with three-quarters of an unbacked-up novel on it.

It's more release than tragedy, in a sense. Nothing like a fresh start.

<I considered a new opening repertoire, then reasoned that would take a lot of work> It's not as hard as you might think. You'll find yourelf grasping ideas quicker, maybe forgetting variations but retaining central ideas because of your deeper understanding of them. I've been working at a whole new repertoire for a year now. Imagine a Fischer era e4-addict swithching to 1.d4. It's intoxicating! I sit there looking at my pawn on d4 in sheer wonder.

Of course I got thrashed a few times <get the stink of death in your boots and your chaps and your spurs> but then it happened. I won. It felt good. It felt good to be winning in strange new ways. Plus I could put my losses down to experience.

What's more, you don't lose the old stuff -the accumulated knowledge- Those are your auxilliary weapons now. Imagine the feeling of sitting down at the board with a choice. You examine your mood, your opponent and decide that today it's going to be different.

I used to follow a narrow path in chess, always trying to steer the game into my kind of position. Now every position is my kind of position. If I could just learn to play endgames...

Have you ever wished you could reinvent yourself? Go to some unknown city where no one knows your name? Change your name even, kill off the old guy - shed your skin - emerge gleaming. But you're not dead. On the inside, it's still you peering out in fascination.

On the other hand, I've read "The Maltese Falcon" and know what really happens.

But I'm off topic. I've been meaning to ask you <Domdaniel> - what in the world is Beefheart (yeah, the beef of my heart) talking about in "Sue Egypt?" Because you see I've been wondering about "all of those people who write on my bones.."

<OK, folks, it's time to start a new religion [...] How about this: the deliberate destruction of a chess engine, except in case of upgrade (please provide serial number and proof of purchase), shall be regarded as murder. <Other types of computer are fair game.>>

So, now I understand. I was wondering about this last article of faith.

I'm very sorry for the loss of your profile.

I've really enjoy reading everything you write or kibitz about.

I was a district sales manager for Simon and Schuster for a decade --1990ish -- when they were the largest publisher in the world.

I even enjoy reading your most far reaching literary stretches!

Here's why I reeeally wrote to you today.

I cannot play in the Shulman game. Conflict of interest...

You impressed Yury with your thoughtfulness in your questions and writing style. You showed great passion and heart for your game, the team's game.

Though you have said that you will not play in the Shulman game, I hope you will reconsider.

The R e4 line was one of those interesting points in the game among many.

I think it interesting that Arno was as aware of R f1-f2 as we were.

A pivot time with tied voting 206 to 206 with a minute or so to go.

I remember posting several times that Arno Nickel was still playing for a win when others had already moved on to suspecting a draw.

I also remember posting a couple of times that if anything -- as time went -- that Arno was looking for a fighting draw.

Now we have GMAN's own words saying exactly that.

I wish that I had become more active in the game earlier rather than being a lurker, but my wife's surgery brought our lives to standstill for a long time this fall.

Dom... please reconsider.

You were a key organizer / player.

Would the world team have had the cohesiveness as a unit without you?

RV, Thorsson, Rookfile, Artar1 and 20 to 30 others were critical to the game as engine technicians or analysts along with the 400 or so of us that voted for the moves, but you were the voice of reason that everyone would ultimately respect.

Even if you are in the Shulman game as a sideline referee, with only limited time available to your game effort, your standing in our chessgames.com chess community would add to the team.

Maybe... just be along for the ride this time and don't do any engine work.

But please, think about being on the team.

Thanks for letting me go on and on about this.

Your friend in chess,

My favourite was always "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers".

The routine in question is <Billy Connelly's> satirical stand-up routine about the Pope, about how he rose through the ranks...

<Then, I became assistant Pope>

Which concludes with an altercation between <Billy> as the Pope and some Pillock in a bar... Involving the <verboten> word...

Glad you love <Cale> and the <Wainwright-McGarrigle complex> as much as I do... and that there is such a thing as a <sublime> "God song" as well as ironic kinds.

Ok so glad to hear your reference to <Errol Morris'> latest film. I'm a fanatic and have seen all of his films many times, (also a Philip Glass and Michael Nyman fanatic), and <fog of War> is an amazing deparature for him-- he doesn't use the indirect photographic technique of the <Interrotron>, he uses a direct shot of <McNamara's> face instead. The <Interrotron> was a perfect tool for interviewing the <Hawking> clan, due to their (British?) shyness and reserve...

But <Morris> succeeded in laying <McNamara> bare-- a tortured man, a brilliant man, a complex man who clearly feels very, very guilty about his life-- unlike <Kissinger>...

A very spooky film (get it? Spook-spy-CIA) ahhahahahahahah

Also, loved your explication of why expanding opening repetoire is a good idea...

<Boz> I haven't spoken to you in awhile, but I read your posts avidly.

Thanks for all of them,

Cheers, luck and love to you, esteemed Kibbutzing collieague

Read it three years ago and it blew me away. Savage, savage sarcasm, yet ringing all too true. A dystopian masterpiece of <Swiftian> proportion and accuracy...

<Celine Dion> is our national embarrassment. Please accept apologies from me and all the other Canadians who somehow let her out of her <Pandora's box> in frosty rural Quebec.