Convergence

I originally wrote this a month ago near New Year's Eve.
Today I realize I've been living under a rock. Well, not so much realize, but had highlighted once again. My brother-in-law has been recommending for some time that I check out Firefly since I made the declaration that "the new Battlestar Galactica is the FINEST science fiction series ever aired on network television". I especially appreciate the contrast of man-made life form searching for the meaning of life partly through monotheistic litany and partly through tormenting its former creators, who have their own polytheistic mythology and search for meaning following the Judgement Day wrought by their own version of Skynet. I rented the first disc of the Firefly DVD series and then promptly purchased the whole boxed set. Listening to writer/director/songwriter Joss Whedon talk about his various arts simply provokes awe. For example, he described two of his main characters as coming from different genres, western and noir, so he consulted his professor who promptly recommended some examples of noir westerns to study. I didn't even know there were different brands of western. Because I fancy myself a purist of sorts, I had resisted looking into Firefly's mish-mash of dystopian sci-fi western, but I found it incredibly refreshing to the point that I joined the legion of fans who treated the cancellation like the accidental death of a family member: sudden and painful to accept.

At its heart, Malcolm Reynolds is the unconventional hero who doesn't so much triumph over unspeakable fears with bravado and resourcefulness, but has to summon the strength to overcome a universe that has killed his faith and hope as well.

Take my love.
Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me.

Take me out to the black.
Tell 'em I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land, boil the sea.
You can't take the sky from me.

There's no place I can be
since I've found serenity.
But you can't take the sky from me.

While I was catching up on Firefly, Law and Order had Katie Sackhoff (Starbuck on Battlestar) on one week and then two weeks later, it had a judge named Malcolm Reynolds.

A day after finishing Firefly, I had the chance to finally watch Children of Men which my sister had raved about. Amidst the backdrop of Bush bashing, the main character played a similar existential hero, one who by all rights should have lost all motivation, hope, and faith, but who soldiers on despite. However, I failed to appreciate Alfonso Cuaron's brilliance, even in the technically difficult, long single takes of cinema verite similar to Saving Private Ryan. I found a reviewer who eloquently expressed much of my own feeling, which is a little analogous to Wahrheit's reaction to my expressed affection for Starship Troopers. "Some piece of Eurotrash director took a work of serious ideas (agree with them or not) and deliberately twisted and distorted them in order to trash the very concepts that the original work embodied, THEN was allowed to use the original title and draw people to the theater in the belief they were seeing a movie that was actually 'based on' the book."

Besides the criss-crossing linkages with Law and Order, the main converging theme seems to be the existential noir character, the one living in quiet desperation. Even in a time of increased need for escapism, it's people's story of misery and how they deal with it that both entertains me and provokes me to think. In my pathetic way, I try to relate my own "suffering" to the movie. "Oh, woe is me. I can't figure out how to memorize the Najdorf/calculate open positions/maintain positional dynamism of my pieces."

I even had a two-week period where I began to watch all kinds of "Married...with Children" reruns. My friend ragged on my viewing choices for a while, but it was all in good fun because he admitted that he was not wholly unfamiliar with the Bundys. He steered me toward "The Big Bang Theory" which is my new favorite show. It's kinda like Frasier meets Bosom Buddies, only instead of two elitist psychiatrist brothers there are two geeky physicists. The opening of the pilot has the two roommates discussing the mysterious behavior of light in the double-slit experiment while they're going to a sperm bank. Before "Big Bang" he recommended "Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog" which is yet another example of Whedon's brilliance. I think Whedon not only wrote the story and characters, but also the music that the characters sing, sometimes in interlacing melodies.

Seeing Whedon' brilliance, I have the same reaction that I had when I was about 11 and listened to 8-year old Tammy Huang play virtuoso piano. I want to give up writing since I really got nothin' to say. The noir character would have soldiered on through the crushing oppression of it all. At least I'll have a little more time for chess.

Flash

Flash Gordon was a very mediocre movie blending bad 70s with bad 80s. This title prompted my memory of the sound of Queen singing in high falsetto chorus "Flash! Fla-ash!"

A while back, I tried to emulate Rolf Wetzell's Chess Master At Any Age. I discussed it in this post. I even wrote a computer program in C# to help me make nice flashcards.



I've spent a couple days back at Chess Tempo. Since I've missed 20 of the last 50 problems (and my rating has plummeted), I decided to try to solidify the learning by making a flashcard of each missed problem.

Here is a pdf file of my efforts to date, generated by my chess flashcard program. Going over some of the older flashcards, I remembered a Python-inspired title that could lead to another Python-themed post. See if you can spot it.

Activation Energy

There's a perfectionist self-disciplinarian that has been slowing down my rate of posting even though the ideas are starting to crop up. I have two master games, four endings, and a TPS report to blog about, but I have to psych myself up for the task of writing. Perhaps I'm making too big a deal about topical sentences, unifying themes, witty references, and kernels of utility for the reader. I've never been particularly prolific; this blog is the only writing I do. My recollection of essay tests in high school were that I would write as many words as other students. But I'd be unhappy with half the things I wrote, so that my pithy essays were covered in scratchouts. Thank goodness for today's backspace key.

One of my favorite books in senior English was James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. I hardly remember why, so I guess I'd better go back and read it. The nice thing about getting old is that stuff you enjoyed before can be novel again thanks to the wonders of memory loss. I think that what stood out about Portrait at the time was the free form. It was probably my introduction to stream of consciousness. Before that, my reading tastes were almost entirely Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators, a formulaic mystery series.

So in order to produce more quantity, I'm going to try for less quality (or what I thought was quality). Apologies in advance if it takes a while to find the right balance.

The Legendary Black Beast Of Aargh

Many openings are named invoking animistic spirits: dragon, hippopotamus, elephant, polar bear, rat, etc. My second tournament game back from my six-month break was against ChargingKing. I decided to try to revive parts of my Sicilian repertoire and went for the Dragon despite knowing that his book knowledge might be as great as mine. Because of my opponent's theme of Python's knights, I decided to channel the Legendary Black Beast of Aaargh who shares many features of a dragon.



Unfortunately, my assessment of our book knowledge was about right. Fortunately, I was able to eke out a victory by swindling him out of a favorable middlegame and putting together an ending that wasn't really winning in all lines, but tricky enough to snooker the win.

So the game started off as a Classical Dragon but with White castling queenside. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.Be2 O-O 8.Qd2 Nc6 9.O-O-O


Here endeth my book and probably his too. I began by considering Ng4 trying to win the two bishops which is in my style and what my opponent expected from some blitz games we had played. But I decided against that here since my Nf6 is one of my best defenders, while Be2 is often a nonparticipatory piece for White. I knew that one of the lines in the 9.O-O-O Dragon with 7.f3 instead of 7.Be2 was 9...d5, but I didn't know and couldn't figure out if Be2 made it worse or better. Finally, I settled on a seemingly innocuous plan to exchange on d4 and put my bishop on e6.

9...Nxd4 The ill-tempered Killer Rabbit takes out the first of Arthur's knights at the entrance to the Cave of Caerbannog. 10.Bxd4 The knights avenge their comrades with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Afterwards, my coach recommended 9...d5 10.exd5 Nxd5 11.Nxc6 bxc6 12.Nxd5 cxd5 13.Qxd5 Qc7, a standard idea in the regular 7.f3 dragon. 10...Be6 11.Kb1.

Here began some major floundering which demonstrates my ignorance of the Way of the Dragon. I came up with the lamo 11...a6. Hardly a pawn storm, more like a drifting fog. Without a weakness in White's king position, I had very little idea how to attack. My coach afterward recommended the plan of Qc7-Rfc8-Qa5. 12.h4 b5 13.f3 A moral victory in that I got my opponent to play this move after all. 13...b4 14.Nd5 Bxd5 15.exd5 a5.


I began to notice that my attack was going to fizzle. My main hope shifted toward confusing my opponent in his kingside attack. 16.g4 Having dispatched the Rabbit, the knights cautiously enter the Cave where they argue over the carved words of Joseph of Arimathea.

16...Nd7? Better was 16...a4 17.h5 b3 18.hxg6 bxa2+ 19.Kxa2 hxg6 +/-. Suddenly, the Legendary Black Beast of Aaargh appears 17.Bxg7 Kxg7 and eats Brother Maynard.

Some confused chasing around ensues.



18.Qd4+?! (Best was direct and effective 18.h5! Rh8 19.hxg6 hxg6 20.Qd4+ f6 21.Qe3!+- with a winning attack.) 18...f6?! 19.f4 Qb6 I sought refuge in the endgame. 20.Qe4


20...Rfe8 (I never considered 20...Nc5!? 21.Qxe7+ Kg8 22.Qe3 Rfe8 23.Qf2 b3! 24.cxb3 a4! 25.bxa4 Rxa4 +=) 21.h5 Nc5 More chasing around.


22.h6+? I told my opponent afterward that you never want to close lines of your attack. Here the Rh1 is now blocked out of the attack. He said he thought he could muster some kind of a checkmate with the pawn on h6. 22...Kf8 23.Qd4 Na5 Finally, I conjured up the transparent threat of Nc3+, so my opponent finally agreed to the trade of queens. 24.Qxb6 Nxb6


25.f5?! I mainly feared a quick Bb5-Bc6 cramping my pieces. Instead, my opponent obliged by making his bishop even worse and isolating his advanced h-pawn, soon to become a tasty snack for the Beast. 25...g5 26.Rhe1 Rec8 27.Rd4?! (last chance for Bb5) 27...Rc5! 28.Bf3= Now White's bishop is simply awful.


My plan was to post my knight on e5 and try to take control of c4 to exchange both rooks and win the good knight versus bad bishop endgame. By no means was my plan as inexorable as I had hoped. 28...Rac8 29.Re2 Nd7 30.Red2 Ne5


31.Bc1?! 31.Be2 stymies Black's plans. 31...Rc4 32.Be2 Rxd4 33.Rxd4 Nf7 White can't protect h6.

34.Rc4? Rxc4 35.Bxc4 Nxh6 36.Be2


I think I'll stop for now and discuss the endgame under a separate post. Stay tuned.

Once More Unto The Breach

It's been 171 days since my last tournament game and 52 days since my last post. Suddenly the Reno chess blogosphere has become a ghost town. Chess Boozer and Wahrheit have left town. Man of the West has deleted his blog and has also talked of riding into the sunset. Charging King and DrunknKnite have been rather inactive lately.

I spent mid-October weekend watching others do battle in the 26th Western States Open while keeping a safe distance. I bumped into and compared notes with another expert who pretty much retired from tournament chess because chess gives him a “stomachache”. I have been keeping busy with StarCraft, Facebook’s Word Twist, Sudoku, Scrabble, Fantasy Football, swimming, and piano. Yet, as I watched some games and saw many more in scoresheet form, I was yet again drawn by the sirens’ song from the 64-square island. The courage of stalwart warriors, the delicate plans dreamed and discarded, and the many plot twists before games get distilled into the three results reminded me of the good in chess.

On the plus side, Blue Devil Knight seems to have returned in limited fashion. And Dana Mackenzie highlighted this blog when he wrote of an endgame miracle in the Western States Open. Endgame Obsessions might actually be useful.

The title originates from a soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Henry the V in which the titular character rallies the English army to keep up its siege of the city of Hafleur. With trite sayings, I try to rally my war-weary bones to rejoin the endless siege in conquering chess.

Conflict and Being Conflicted

I wandered around the chess blogosphere this morning and found myself at Liquid Egg Product’s post entitled “The demise of chess blogging”. Blue Devil Knight gave a Brief History of Chess Blogging in a brilliant distillation. He added an afterthought that brought on a brainstorm in my conflicted mind:

“On what generates the most interest: controversy, always controversy. Almost without exception, those posts with the most comments involve someone getting pissed off at someone.”

I had aspired to inspire mucho comments on my blog’s own merits like chessloser does rather than serve as a flaming forum like lizzie’s very active blog does. But perhaps my nature of avoiding conflict leads me to say things that are too bland to be interesting, just as BDK’s comment would predict. Proof of the antithesis that a gutless, risk-free blog is also insubstantial and uninspiring.

It occurs to me that perhaps I have an unhealthy understanding of conflict. Sure, I’ll recite Nietzsche’s “That which does not kill me makes me stronger” but do I really understand it? In certain ways, conflict is essential to life. If there is only one resource, I’d better damn well get it ahead of that other guy. Survival of the fittest, right? I guess it’s inevitable that Creationism evolved into Intelligent Design while Darwinism evolved into Evolution.

There is no good story without conflict. My favorite authors of late, Roger Zelazny, William Gibson, and Philip K. Dick almost always write of a distinct warrior or assassin class of character whose sole job it seems is to rub out problems in old fashioned mob style. Once on the series, Fox Mulder came across a genie who perversely answered his wish for "Peace on Earth" by giving him an uninhabited Earth, implying that war and its lesser shades are unavoidable portions of life.

Today is the seventh anniversary of 9/11, that day when Americans’ peace was shattered an the Global War on Terrorism started. The factions of Team McCain and Team Obama are deep in the middlegame vying for the trophy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Even the USCF is fighting for its own survival as a house divided against itself these days with the lawyer/vultures circling its carcass.

Yet, when I encounter conflict in real life, I cannot help but think there are less wasteful ways of spending time on earth, so I avoid it. If I were to run for political office, my touchy feely platform would be “Peace, participation, and poetry.”

Today also happens to be the annual meeting of our chess club in which we exercise our democratic principles and elect members to govern. I have served as secretary, webmaster, and most frequent TD for five years, but this year really took a toll on me. Besides the usual getting in between players as TD for individual games, the conflicts between players about how the club and its tournaments should be run really grated on me. I believe the negatives began to creep into my chess playing. Who needs it? I've been a Peacemaker, where is my inheritance? In this respect, my reaction has become rejection of my own platform: Not finding peace, I shy away from participation and feel like I’m giving up on the poetry that is to be found on the 8x8 board.

Ennui

Let's start with the title. I was going to call this energy crisis, but then I decided to take it pedantic and introduce some SAT vocabulary. The other day someone even used this word, but I can't remember where. I think the proper pronunciation comes out sounding like "on-we". It sums up my feelings lately about chess. Listlessness, like the River Lethe overflowed its banks and filled up my house, including this small pocket of the universe that encloses my brain. I suppose this will go down as yet another conceit that I'm essentially writing about writer's block.

While watching such revered personae as Blue Devil Knight and Temposchlucker make their untimely exits, I watched only half forlornly, as these forefathers I never knew left without really imprinting upon me the dearthy future I would now face in their absence. I only knew that there were chess muses inside me that strained against my typing fingers for an expression. But it's time for me to face it. There was little here that hadn't seen the sun before. See, I just did it again with my penchant to cite and plagiarize without a personality of my own. I'm like Shang Tsung, the absorber of souls, ultimately without my own voice. And now the internal voices are suddenly hushed as if their owners were silently appraising a new predator in the jungle. Seeing other people's freeway accidents is a kind of visceral vicarious thrill until it's your own crumpled wreck that you're gazing dazedly out of.

It's rather ironic that I have been afflicted so. Apologies to those who I've left hanging with my nonresponsivenes. This goes especially for J.C. Hallman, whose work I panned in my last post, some forty-odd days and nights ago. I guess I came with some preconceived notions about how a book entitled The Chess Artist should go and cried false advertising when my expectations missed the mark. It's true that my feelings about the book were of disappointment. But the author seems to hint that he intended for us to feel the disillusionment that a chess player feels when he realizes that his performance will inevitably betray his lofty dreams. I am reminded of the moment in Ratatouille when Anton Ego reviews the restaurant run by the rat chef and realizes he's been wrong about the world for much of his life. And now I'm living proof of Mr. Hallman's thesis. Well played, sir.

When I was in grad school, my friends got to talking among themselves. There was one guy who I always thought was a blowhard. The question came up whether I would ever get tired of chess. Well, the B.S.er said emphatically that no I would never get tired of chess, as if he had peered into my soul and seen the hole that would ever remain chess dependent. I guess I resented being so predictable, but I continued feeding the monster nevertheless. Then in 1998, for a four and a half year period, I proved him wrong, but at the end of 2002, I fell off the wagon.

I have been strong in my chess enthusiasm for about five years now with a few sine waves along the way, but this feels like a flatline that may last a bit longer. It took the leap toward chess lessons for me to see it more clearly: how much I suck at this game and how faulty my memory seems to get with the passage of years. Opening lines and problem concepts fade so fast on this dull tablet, as if written in distilled water on the cement driveway under a blazing sun. And me and my TD hat always had a tense relationship. I hope my hankering for chess playing returns, but I doubt I'll ever miss chess TDing.

I met ChargingKing yesterday. I had thought about his ideals of the Cobra Kai dojo with respect to chess and found my own cyberphilic paragon. A usual, my homages went haywire and I went for a conglomerate of major screenplay themes. The ruthless efficiency of machines relative to we frail and imperfect humans seems to get lots of traction in cinema. With regard to this particular post, their tirelessness is the antithesis. The arc I'm thinking of begins with HAL9000, continues with Cyberdyne Systems T-850, and on through Data and Six. At least in science FICTION, a machine's logic is impeccable, its memory banks perfect, and its battery life unflagging.

HAL 9000: I'm sorry Frank, I think you missed it. Queen to bishop three, bishop takes queen, knight takes bishop, mate.

Kyle Reese: Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Data: I am an android, I do not require rest.

Six: All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. (Another way to say "There is nothing new under the sun.")

Speaking of new, I recently read Neuromancer by William Gibson. Wow, I am in awe of this man's writing ability and clairvoyance. While there's perhaps only one chess sentence in the whole thing, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It was an education in one of the seminal works of cyberpunk, which I recently learned is the combination of high tech and low life. As far as I'm concerned, the Wachowski brothers owe Gibson some royalties for The Matrix. Someone told me that Neuromancer was the birth of the word "cyberspace" in 1984. If the father of the internet is ever up for a popular vote, I nominate Gibson.

When ChargingKing asked of my preparations for the Western States, my enthusiasm buzzed slightly above baseline noise. It's still a possibility I'll get back into the game, but the drought seems to have a momentum that I am unwilling to check. Chess Karma once remarked that chess might be a little narrow to spend an eternity on. Like Phil Connors, I'm going to try a few new things, perhaps even piano lessons. Caissa is going to have to content herself with forgotten concubine for a while. I should be back; I just can't say when.

I'm going to close with two more quotes.

Alfred Lanning: When does a difference engine become the search for truth? When does a personality simulation become the bitter mote of a soul?

Terminator: Hasta la vista, baby.