I'm more of a builder-up. Sac stuff by all means, but wait until you're in a middlegame.

Carlsen's sublime game today was played as Black against the dread Spanish. I had to create a new database in Chessbase for games starting 1.e4 e5. Don't think I ever saw one worth preserving before. (You don't want to know how many distinct databases I have for the French alone...)

Yes, of course I'm aware of classics such as Tal-Hjartarsson. I also know where to find 'em if I want 'em.

But this was different. And, bizarrely, I felt I understood what was going on. Obviously not all the positional and tactical ramifications of each move, but a general sense that White was spoiling for a fight and Black was patiently waiting for his chance.

I think Carlsen now does constructive waiting about as well as anyone ever has. He's on the same plane as the younger Karpov or Petrosian, but combined with Fischer's will to win.

I was also mildly surprised that one can play a good novelty on move 9 of the world's most Spanish opening. But, hey, I understand *opening drift*. It's like continental drift: mysterious tidal forces tug you away from home, and you become an *ummigrant*.

I plunged into the benthic depths,

To see what I could see,

And swam through miles of whale turds,

And pools of pale fish pee.

And in the depths, though no light there,

I managed yet to find,

A gammel line from way back when,

That refutes the Maroczy bind.

There, who says my posts don't concern chess.

As dogs were not legally able to own property in ancient Greece, Homer stood in as a beard for Argos, that being the pooch's name.

There's a Borges story in which a Roman soldier finds Homer and Argos in the Land of Immortals, but Homer has forgotten who he was. Would a writer do that?

Meanwhile I just found a 2005 commencement address from Cornell full of Pynchon allusions and warnings against the Windigo psychosis.

<"Fanaticism is anchored in the belief that one has discovered The Truth, a master key that explains the world. That same kind of belief can generate both tunnel vision and a rush to judgment."

"When you feel yourself developing that kind of certainty that you have access to a master key, push back. Use all of your intellectual and sympathetic powers to seek out multiple perspectives.">

I find multiple perspectives tend to seek *me* out, but there you go.

Critics in the media might seem a cruel and vindictive bunch at times, but we're not. Mostly we, or our editors, are afraid of being sued. Fear of giving offence hamstrings us.

All so unlike our Victorian forebears, who understood that weighty matters were at stake. A fellow who sinned against the English language might be capable of even viler acts.

When *She*, by Sir Henry Rider Haggard, was first reviewed in the 1880s, one critic wrote:

<"Mr Haggard cannot write English at all. I do not merely refer to his bad grammar, which a boy at a Boarding School would deserve to be birched for... It can only have been written by a man who not only knew nothing, but cared nothing for 'English undefiled'." >

Quite. Although "...for which a boy at a boarding school would deserve to be birched" might be a better illustration of the point. Still, the birching's the thing, eh?

I read most of Haggard's jolly imperialist adventure yarns when I was young (that's fairly verifiable) and impressionable (a tad less plausible, I know). But it didn't turn me into a bad writer. Pynchon and Burroughs are more to blame for that.

I can't blame him. But it's really too bad the man who made "Memento" had, apparently, to waste his time making two (count them, two) Batman films.

Both of which are abominations.

I use that word in the "Ignatius J. Reilly" sense.

At university I had quoted Ignatius in an essay on <A Confederacy of Dunces>,

Ignatius: "Canned food is an abomination"

as evidence that he had bona fide credentials to be considered an "intellectual."

Later, the Professor called me into his office and pointed to the canned food quote in my paper.

Professor: "You *do* realize that's insane, right?"

Did you see the same actor in <Sad Left Tenant>, a strange French film about a miserable man living alone in a rented apartment on the Left Bank, in which nobody has sex with anyone else.

Four draws in the Brits -- though Short's was ridiculously complex, against Howell -- plus Naka getting Naka'd.

It's funny how many players consume vast amounts of time early on -- admittedly seeing things I wouldn't see in a week -- and then make *bad* moves in the time scramble.

Did you know he lost more than 300 stone to play the emaciated protagonist in "The Machinist"?

And he only weighed 5 stone before that.

For eons in internets terms, meaning since <last Thursday>, it has actually meant something more like "heh"- a gentle, good natured, bemused chuckle.

Now *this* still means what it originally meant:

LMAO!!!!!

Yeah, "lol" is retro among Those Who Know. Some of them, Those Who Know Too Much For Their Own Good, may even prefer it to 'lulz', for the meta-retro-stone-bluff-irony thang.

But we mustn't forget the idiots. When an idiot types 'lol', it's 1988 or so, and Beavis & Butthead are slowly emerging from Satan's womb.

Don't asky why -- well, alright, *do* -- but I was just checking various weight conversion factors. The British championships have an "over 2350" section (for which Keene, Hartston, Mestel et al are still qualified) and I was wondering if '2350' referred to weight rather than ratings.

*I* am less than 2350 ounces (67 kilos, a bit over ten stone or 147 pounds) but not many adult male chessplayers are. Especially fiftysomething six-footers.

It all translates into theological terms, especially if you're a Calvinist. Those Who Know are the Elect (or the Saved), and the idiots are the Damned. But these two categories are a minority: most folk are in the middle, with the Preterite.

All men are drowning. God plucks the Elect from the water, and he holds the Damned under until they stop breathing. But he leaves the Preterite to their own devices.

A book on Nightmare Movies, a book on Quantum Theory, some (just about) legal cigarettes, and a spot of Pynchon.