Yet one can get away with this in chess. I have 'The Complete French' (1994) by Psakhis -- plus four later books on different aspects of the formerly complete.

This is just like the old days, eh. A tiny bit more free time on my hands, allowing me once again to get completely, hopelessly lost in the bowels of Frogspawn.

I invented a party game. It's called "Creamo," and is best played in "mixed company."

You just sit in a circle, turn off the lights, and the first one to yell CREAMO! wins.

<Jess> *Mixed* company? Is that, like, boys and girls, or Mormons and Presbyterians? Or Earthlings and Others.

Another thing. Do you sit in silence while waiting for the first "Creamo" yell - or is it cool to yell other things like "marmalade!" and "corrugated iron"? What happens if somebody *whispers* "CREAMO!"?

Although, yes, caps'n'exclams are difficult to whisper. But it's vital to get the rules sorted.

I'm thinking of maybe combining all our options ... a hexagonal version of Creamo! given away free with a dope-addled nihilistic comicbook. There should be a market of, oh, tens, easy. Perhaps twenties if we put it on the Knitterweb as well.

<mack> Dublin, as you may have heard, is awash with suburbs with funny names: Ballsbridge, Stillorgan, Glasthule [a theme there?], Dolphin's Barn, Drumcondra ... and, my personal fave, Sallynoggin.

Hence the Dylan epic, "Mishter"

"Hey mishter, are yeh joggin'
All the way to Sallynoggin
Are yeh passin' by Glasthule?

Hey, mishter, in Stillorgan
It makes no sense to Morgan
But, hey, he spent too long at skool.
Hey mishter, d'yeh take me for a fool?"

Cue whirring chip-chop noises ... it's the <Helicopters of the Holy Ghost> coming in to land. Cathal Coughlan showed me the landing site.

... and it's a hard rain ...?

But, gawd, you were lucky. I was 'exposed' to Gilbert & Sullivan, Jim Reeves, and BBC-style comedy shows that nobody but me remembers having heard, ever. So maybe they were only in my head. No wonder I wound up as a radio critic of a sort.

"Broadcasting 24 hours a day on faith alone ..."

ties down mating cone

Conical chess? Now that's on-topic.

'Born Again -- Return to the Start' was another penalty square.

What are you doing up in the middle of the night again?

Heh I posted "Kokomo" to copy <Deffi> and I didn't necessarily think leaving the word "creamo" up in my "recent kibbutzing" header was a great idea, given the past "climate" if you catch my drift.

Did you know KOKO THE GORILLA is suposdly the first Ape to learn sign language?

Apparently he could "talk" in sign language, BUT ALL HE EVER WANTED TO TALK ABOUT WAS BANANAS.

In Korea, we can only dream about Dutch subtitles.

Dutch people aren't allowed here. No Jews or Black people either, as far as I can tell.

Could be boring, though. I guess this is what paradise must be like after a while.

Is 'Creamo', y'know, *rude*? I thought it was milky stuff ... like "the cream of the country - rich and thick". And then there's face-cream, as lathered on by farmers and such ...

We've come a long way from the days when reverend clergy wrote books with names like "Pious Ejaculation".

NO QUOTING BOB DYLAN "in an offhand way"

Get it?

HAHAHAAHAHAHA

wheeze

Speaking of infinite loops, they can be terrifying as well.

As a fan of the "unheimlich" in art- I love <Crying of Lot 49>...

I also love Lynch's <Lost Highway>.

Do you like it?

When the protagonist realizes he is talking to <Joe Pesci> in person, and ALSO talking to him at home on the phone AT THE SAME TIME, I almost had a heart attack.

and when the final scene is actually the first scene, and IT MAKES SENSE, I almost died.

I don't know why I like the feeling of overwhelming dread.

Do you think I'm going crazy?

I'll see a psychiatrist if you want.

I'd prefer one from TV though, like <Oprah> or <Father Ted>.

OK my POS "replacement mouse" just stopped working so of course I didnt realize this-- I thought my PC was on Perma Freeze and was broken.

then I tested he "magic square thingy" after rebooting 10 times-- and realized whew! Its the mouse.

OK- so then I dug through my crap and found the old mouse I had replaced with the POS mouse that just broke--

I had spilled coffee on the old mouse and I thought I killed it.

BUT IT'S WORKING DOCTOR, IT'S ALIVE

heh

It really upset me because I don't even drink let alone take drugs.

Plus half the teachers in the school sleep on couches all day long with bi-weekly hangovers from special "Korean teacher's meetings".

anyhoo I just laughed and said "No, no, I'm just tired, thanks very much for your concern."

But secretly I felt like kicking him in the nuts.

"in an offhand way" is not Dylan it's a Roger Waters lyric and to boot its from that record you said you avoided cuz everyone else liked it and wasn't that shallow.

No, it wasn't shallow at all.

But it is a good record.

Well, I do wish that. So we could hug each other and such.

It's my experience that when people say "are you on drugs?" they really mean it as a joke - "a clearly ridiculous suggestion, heh heh". Because if they think that narco-intoxicity is really in play, they don't dare mention it.

For instance nobody *ever* says "are you on drugs?" to me -- thereby proving that they're sure I am. As it happens, these days they're usually wrong about this -- not 'street drugs' anyhow, as I avoid streets on principle and have no wish to be ripped off, or worse, by bald adolescents ...

You know this John Cooper Clarke verse?

"Outside the take-away on Saturday night
A bald adolescent asked me for a fight
He was no bigger than a twopenny fart
He was a deft exponent of the martial arts."

Budapest would be nice. We could yodel back and forth between Buda and Pest, until the Magyars had us deported. Although I've got a Hungarian brother-in-law and in Mitteleuropa that counts as family.

I also have *one* Hungarian book ... JG Ballard's 'Drowned World' in translation. Something like Vizbe Fult Vulag?

How the Magyars will laugh at that attempt. But, hey -- it's the middle of the night, it's not even noon yet, and I'm not on drugs yet either.

I found a pile of my old games from the 1980s and they strike me as universally awful. No positional sense, pathetic opening play, weak tactics. And yet I was rated about 150 points higher than today. I can't explain this. Maybe *everyone* was on drugs.

Or part of a post-count partitition experiment?

I like it... makes me speak more freely, in a way.