I remember causing a minor kerfuffle when I ordered the latter through the university inter-library loan system, around 1980. Playboy was actually still banned in Ireland at the time, an accidental relic of a vanishing censorship system - but they still weren't used to getting academic requests for it.

I got a photocopy in due course, however. No grainy xeroxes of scantily clad females, though.

< ("'Cocaine—or cards?' (an old movie line the gunsels loved to use that summer)" — "Cocaine—or cards?" is an intertitle card from Fritz Lang's 1922 film "Mabuse, der Spieler". The question was posed to Wenk (in disguise) as he enters a secret nightclub to face "the great Unknown" in a showdown across a poker table.)>

... as some Pynchon wiki puts it.

Could it be...

So we are obviously talking about Saturday (the sabbath) Jan 1st, triple 0 7.

With Herod being Dismissed by Augustus I am guessing the previous incarnation of the Lifemaster is Herod as nuanced by the choice of saturday for the clue.

Being that he is indirectly responsible for the jabbing of christ, one could say that although his opening was weak and his middle game ok, it was the endgame that really went badly.

Sounds like a Russian oligarch with more money than taste. Blingski. With a dash of English Retro and a nod to the Arab Spring.

I'm fond of leather m'self - you need to be, in this weather - but it should be combined with something conservative, like tweed.

Leather trousers, grey silk shirt, tweed jacket -- the Sado-Squireen look. It helps if you own a castle, though.

I really found this hilarious. As a piece of wit, it's nowhere near DanielPi's anagram "Die, old man". But, considering the source, it's a hoot.

I enjoy the way he blunders into things beyond his comprehension. A recent exchange with CG included this:

<LMAJ> -- <Now here is a serious question, and I am NOT trying to be a smart guy.>

If he was, how could anyone tell? And...

<I am no math expert, but if there are 52 weeks in a year, then that is about <175,000 to 200,000> (or more!) games per year.

A.) Does this change your assessment of the number of games?

B.) How many games does CG currently have?

C.) Do you use TWIC as regular resource, and if so, why not? >

The answer to B is permanently visible on both the homepage and the stats page. Can he really not know? Does it not occur to him to *look*? Could he possibly be so egotistically self-centred as to think CG weren't aware of TWIC?

<and if so, why not? >

Indeed.

Funniest thing since a house fell on Buster Keaton.

Sorry, folks, but he's just irresistible. But I'll try not to tell him how much I love him. He might get ideas.

I had a vague impression that it was more Kerouac-ish than Pynchonesque, though they seem to have shared a goofy sense of humour. The kind of sensa yuma you really shouldn't ride a motorbike under the influence of. But, hey, it was the 1960s. The nanny state was still at nanny state school, and Reagan was a failed actor.

We should factor in that any former friend revealing personal info becomes, almost by definition, an ex-friend. And as such might be a tad bitchy.

Gravity's Rainbow has: the beautiful bass voice of a black American GI singing at a service in an English church; the birth of Christ as seen from the POV of cockroaches in the hay; a Bishop running, vestments flying (a pun on German 'Laufer', or chess ♗, literally 'runner') and, um, some *transectites*, who dress up as members of other religions.

There's also a brief mention of teenage boys who get obsessed with Catholic priests, and hang around them, inhaling incense, looking longingly at their vestments and ... I suppose we'd call it 'grooming' now.

I suppose I could live there if this place got too stupid, but we're not there yet.

As you know, there are three types of mathematician: those who can do arithmetic and those who can't.

I'm increasingly led to see a fundamental divide - here on CG - between those who *know stuff* unrelated to chess, or know how to find it, or who have good vocabularies and broad interests ... actually there are no fixed rules. But you know who you are. And thanks.

Just old, like me.

As Mr Burroughs wrote somewhere, "America is not a new land. The evil was there waiting."

BTW, if Beauregard is your fave character, you might be innarested in an old John Prine song, "Come Back to us, Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard".

Heh, it's not exactly that Beauregard is my fave character - nor would it be exactly correct to say that "Nobody", the other leading character in the movie is, either - it's the <duo>, the interaction between them, that I really like.