There's rumored to be a subgenre - chopsocky German dogs in submarines - but I've never seen any. But there are *musicals* ...

It's good that we now understand a little of how your vast ignore list works.

Far too many people waste time studying the games of elite GMS, which are full of positional and tactical nuances they will never understand. Following the game with an engine is even worse -- unless you have <Eyal's> gift for querying the machine and forcing it to speak human rather than numbers.

I like to go down the other end, down where the iguana play. The Chessbase/Fritz databases are particularly useful in this regard, full of games from under-12 championships. I just spent an amusing hour deeply probing a game between players rated 792 and 841. I've never even played anyone under 1000.

Bill Hook's recent passing reminded me of your gushing reviews of his memoir back in 2008. I had always meant to pick up a copy as it sounded like precisely the sort of chess book I dig -- that is, not too much chess.

So I strolled down to Baker Street yesterday and got me some Hook. I don't regret it. Charming and quite engrossing thus far, with a death, seemingly, on every page. I enjoyed his spoonerising of 'Sunken Duttles', of course, but one detail really made my jaw drop: he notes that Norman Raeben would play at Fisher's! As in, that very same Norman Raeben who had some ultimately untold influence on the creatively stillborn Dylan (http://web.archive.org/web/20011007...).

Innaresting cast in general, no? One of those books that makes you want to contact the author and just thank them. Bit late for that now.

His paintings look good to me - just in the wrong style at the wrong time and place. They'll probably be hailed as neo-retro and become fashionable.

Someone is claiming that 64x64=164 and they won't budge off it either.

I'm now gonna give away for free a crucial piece of personal data: the PIN number on my bank debit card. When you get a new one, it has a random 4-digit code which, if you're an idiot, you can change to your birthday.

Anyho [sic], I was thinking about the late Bill Hook, and remembered the John Cale song <Captain Hook>: a uniquely Calesque blend of geopolitics ("Tried to break India's back, but she broke the back of me") and personal mordancy ("By hook or by crook, I am the captain of this life"). Echoes of twilight empire, addictions, power, and a musical mix of noise and harmonies. Exquis.

Then I found this blog - http://blog.fragmentsofcale.net/200... - dedicated to Cale stuff, written by somebody using the name of a Pynchon character (Inverarity, from The Crying of Lot 49). Which was originally called "The World (this one), the Flesh (Mrs Oedipa Maas) and the Testament of Pierce Inverarity".

Clearly, Cale and Pynchon alone would keep me happy. But then I noticed something else about 'Inverarity' - who is more musically competent than me, despite a very American belief in 'rawk' (at least he never sez anything like "A rocks but B sucks"). Oh, and he grew up in Akron, Ohio, home of Pere Ubu, which would make anyone a bit strange.

At one point, discussing his own commentary on Cale's lyrics, he makes a point of the distinction between 'analysis' and 'annotation'.

Echoes of William Gibson's 'Sprawl', aka the Boston/New York/Washington metropolitan area, last seen encroaching on Atlanta and eyeing Chicago.

Let's see how it fits into Neuromancer, Chiba City Blues (adapted for Spawn):

<The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

'It's not like I'm using,' Case heard someone say ... 'it's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency.' It was a Spawn voice and a Spawn joke.>

Yep, that runs, ça marche, ça plane pour moi. The drug is the one that starts 1.Nf3, flexi-narcotic chess, now in your local 'head' shoppe. It's the authentic retro-2025 cyberpunque classique *ton*. In loco parentis: crazy like a parent.

Welcome to our new giant baby, <The Spawn>. A tad late, slightly pregnant, and kinda unique.

- Vot if Der Springer the s-pawn takes? When do I a Queen become?

And if the Channel Islands get two teams -- and the British Isles have six or seven -- then the Philippines should get to enter 250 teams. That'd rock the chess world - and I bet team #250 wouldn't be a pushover...>

<Hi DomDaniel>

Thanks for visiting my page and for sharing your experience in playing a Filipino Master and an Olympian at that.

It's a subliminal lesson from that prince of journalists, Andy Soltis: passed pawns win games, and never mind the piece count.

"The passed is another country".

A tense, terse tease, this debut novel by I. Solani, *Levon, Tubed*, deals with TV addiction and tubal detox.

The scenes where the narrator puts a DVD into a slot in his stomach and his head explodes are stolen from David Cronenberg (with a frisson of Burroughs, and the Stargate series franchise). The 'truth' about the latter is that Jack, the lead character in Stargate SG-1 played by Richard Dean Anderson, downloaded Ancient tech in the first series and his head exploded.

Unfortunately, computer SFX weren't up to scratch at the time, so they packed Anderson's skull with small charges of nitroglycerine (stable at body temp) and hoped for the best. Sadly, Anderson had a fever and his head exploded.

This explains the realism of the 'CGI' FX in Stargate. In plot time, everything since the climax of series one, including Atlantis and the edgy new one, has been 'a dream'. Anderson's body double still makes guest appearences. Earth is ruled by Our Serene Lord, Apophis, who dicks with our memory to amuse himself.

But I still remember Anderson, and for me he'll always be MacGyver. ;)

Yay Frogspawn! =)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=749q...

<Whoops, sorry about butting in...>

Well, uh, okay, there <was> Vincent too... ;p