The tournament
Was only in his head.
On his memorial tree
Some joker wrote
'Keep violence in the mind
where it belongs'.

Maybe cooperation or collaboration or mimicry or copying or pastiche would be better ideas. Can I do nice and be believed? I doubt it somehow.

We've gone over this before and <Bill> was quite clear in his comment:

<Dom> - you are a big Kraaaaaaaai baby!!

Remember?

Might have been two years ago....

The man who detests <Lollery>, <emoticons>, <unnecessary exclams>!!

Course you hate being nice.

Glad the much needed nap did you some good, sleepyhead.

I hate to mention this but you used a <SMILEY> in my forum once, in the early days.

Just do not *try* to be nice.

We're Ok anyway. <Joe> would agree, I'm sure. I wonder how he is doing.

I have a precious book, co-authored by Euwe and Timman, in my possession, Timman at age 19, Euwe just having served as the Pres of FIDE, I think it is only ever in Dutch.

Just brilliant accounts of the Spassky-Fischer match, that took place before my time.

I wondered if any of you had read it in english - but either way it is top notch.

Besides my own sport I can not remember or imagine to ever have been enthused by- and in- a game as much as I have by Chess.

Just brilliant accounts of the Spassky-Fischer match, that took place before my time.>

This sounds like it:

<The acclaimed classic about the 1972 Fischer-Spassky World Championship Match finally available in English.

More details
Fischer World Champion!: Finally Available in English - The Acclaimed Classic About the 1972 Fischer-Spassky World Championship Match By Max Euwe, Jan Timman
Translated by Pieter C. Verhagen
Edition: illustrated
Published by New in Chess, 2002
ISBN 9056910957, 9789056910952
159 pages>

The lack of notes - I was a total beginner, yet fascinated - meant that I just couldn't follow the games at all. (I still have some sympathy for people here who express similar sentiments over today's live games - even though solutions, now, are more readily available).

I remember being totally mystified by a game (probably NN-Petrosian) that began 1.e4 c6 -- I had no idea why anyone would play such a move. Ditto, games starting with 1.Nf3 and 2.g3.

Anyway, much later I got Harry Golombek's book of the match -- excellent stuff, good mix of chess detail and inside stories - with a foreword by lit-crit guru George Steiner.

In addition, I think it was the first major match played using the rules that have now become the norm -- one (long) session only, no adjournments, digital clock with increment options,

Who of course also wrote a book about the Fischer-Spassky shenanigans all by himself, 'White Knights in Reykjavik'. More Steineralia here: Yates vs Lasker, 1924

Oh it's been a tiring and traumatic weekend, one of sex, drugs and rock and roll minus any sort of fornication and with only really a small amount of rock and roll, too. Plenty of extremes of emotion though, cultivated and magnified and partially cured by silly cigarettes and that weird-smelling talcum powder that decimates the septum. But if in the process of ransacking the self I stumble across the top chick's silver chord then, well, it'll have been worth it. Combinations and chemistry, innit.

'Imagine the emotional lift
Every pressing engagement cancelled
and suddenly it's real:
I'm going to write it down so I remember it
and then pound it out let it ring
The top chick's silver chord
Embraced, released and then ignored'

Obviously took THIRTY years for the honourable Pieter <C> Verhagen, to finally translate this Classic.

I am into three books at the same time at this moment:

Pal Benko: My Life, Games usw.; Garri's How life usw.; and mentioned gem by Euwe/Timman.

Highly unusual for me. Three "books" at a time.

<Dom> Thanks - another quality book-recommendation.

My personal favourite is by Hans Böhm/ Jan Mulder, on K-K II, 1985. Mulder's introductions, full of sharp observations, mixing outrageously funny fantasy, satire and wit. These Mulder miniatures are of such brille, that they are probably intranslatable.

I gave it a shot once, but soon realised ce n'etait PAS possible, also because of imaginative references from dutch sports culture that were intertwined.

Now I just need to find the time (raises arms up looking panicky towards the sky) in the remainder of my measly existence... But at least it will not be squandered by playing online Blitz every day, as Nigel pointed out at his page.

I'm sure I'll find a way, though.

First, I originally coined that line so long ago, in the 1970s, that I could still beat computers at chess.

Second, it's easy to fall into the trap - I do it all the time - of imagining that ratiocination is what brains are for.

It seems to hold some horrible fascination for you...

AND YOU MAKE ALL YOUR ANIMAL DEALL

EEE EEEE EEE EEELLS

... almost as if it intruded on your

TO BE THICK

...subconscious in a really irritating

AS A BRICK

dEEE deee dum deeeeeEEEEE DE ADEEEE

....fashion so as to drive you

AQUALUNG MY FRIEND!!!

heh....

Entropanto is the title of a very good short story <Dom> wrote.

We've a couple of copies of it floating around the EMU network somewheres...

It's "virtual" existence does virtue to the contents of the story. Not to mention it's virtue.

(1) The heat death of language

Three guesses what we were "taking" to augment the experience.

I fell in with the "wrong crowd" in High School.

Retro-Prog Rock Drug Nerds.

Remarkably peaceful lot, actually. Read books. Talked about movies. Got beat up at school.

Except me of course.

Heh.

Girls stopped beating on each other in Grade Six in my neighborhood.

I allus hung out with boys mainly anyway. I had a lot of girlfriends in Montreal-- remarkably non-sexist student culture there during my <"High-atus> In Frogville...

Remarkably civilised. One Dutchman lived there for about 40 years.

But you'd never recognize the old place now. They've put a motorway through.

Fatal love for American pop culture has turned this once enlightened place into a nightmare of Michael Jackson and Britney Spears impersonators.

Korean pop music is the worst on the planet--

Type "K-Pop is the Worst Music on the Planet" into Google and see for yourself.

A delirious, disengenuous, and blithely unaware embrace of full-on pedophilia and homosexuality-

Discussion of either of these as "subjects" is interdict in all discourse outside of the pop products themselves.

The Cartoons are delirious rape fantasy.

The absolute worst aspect of the dregs of American culture flourish here in 10th rate copies--

Arguably, the only authentic thing about it is that they do take the worst aspects to the absolute extreme and there it is for all to see.

You know I was just thinking when was the last time anyone talked about a "symbol" in a film?

When is the last time someone made a film that wasn't about a comic book or a video game, or about someone being tortured to death for 80 minutes?

There's no time to put symbols in movies any more. Everything has to be absolutely literal.

Which is fantastically absurd since the subjects of this "literalness" are fantasy characters to begin with.

Romance without romance. Fun without the fun.

You know I just saw <Greenaway's> film about <Rembrandt> last week and what sweet relief.

Strongly reminiscent of <Draughtsman's> and also <Architect>, in a way...

Mise en scene.... color-- symmetry-- allusion-- symbol---

actual music...

acting...

A story- rich and terrifying...

Made me want to see that other one you said was the best of the new lot.

What was it?

<Tallulah's Tupelo Bank Reebok>?

It had a really strange title.

Out here in the village the farmers are nut brown and wrinkled from the sun, stooped, and about four feet tall.

They don't speak English and they don't want to. Why on earth would they?

The temples are out here. Streams, a few monks, lots of birds and trees.

If I had to live in Daegu or Seoul I'd go mad probably.

Then I suggested that his series of films about Dutch Masters might be enhanced by a chess master like, oh, say, Max Euwe.

Laser beam look sweeps over me. "I deduce you play" he said.

He didn't have to explain, for instance, that a producer might conceivably raise money for a pic about a famous painter, but not for a chessplayer - not even the creator of the pearl of Zandvoort. He simply had to observe *why* I would make such a deranged suggestion.

That other film is called <The Tulse Luper Diaries: The Moab Story> ... an alternate biopic in which a young man searches for lost cities in Utah but runs afoul of the local Nazis.