one chess strategy is to get your opponent to surround their king with their own pieces
then your mild-mannered knight swoops in and attacks their king
and their king can’t move and your knight cannot be taken so checkmate they lose
and this is called a “smothered mate”
which is a good description of the cause of many divorces
so be kind to your mates mates
make sure they have breathing room and wiggle room
abide but do not abrade nor preside
and don’t play chess games to win love
As I type, it’s early Saturday morning, and third-round action of the 2013 Masters tournament has not yet begun. Presently, Tiger Woods is three under, tying him for 7th place. Everyone is focused on him for several reasons, among them 1) he’s been playing phenomenal golf lately, winning his most recent tournament, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, for which he (or, more accurately, his team) received more than a million dollars, plus a big emotional hug from Arnie (not his team–just him); 2) his recent reattainment of his #1 world ranking represents a years-long struggle in the wake of his marriage-ending contretemps with his now-former wife, Elin Nordegren, whose marriage settlement according to the New York Daily News was in excess of one hundred ten million dollars; 3) a shot to the green Mr. Woods made on the 15th hole yesterday was so good, it hit the flagstick, and then richocheted squarely backward, ending up in a pond and changing a probable birdie to a bogie–a bogie that could have been much worse but for incredible skill on the part of Mr. Woods.
If you’re not familiar with golf, much of the above is gibberish. Since Gibberish is the clandestine topic of this post, it’s appropriate that I dish out some.
Why Gibberish? Because Golf IS Gibberish, metaphorically speaking. It is a game in which a carefully-crafted ball is hammered repeatedly by carefully-crafted sticks wielded by imperfectly-crafted human beings, who strive, following rules that are convoluted beyond belief, to eventually roll the ball into eighteen different holes. A substantial portion of the world’s wealth is affected by this activity, directly or indirectly. Migration patterns and habitat changes are directly attributable to its environs. It is one awe-inspiring work of performance art that I would entitle THE ABSURDITY OF HUMAN BEINGS IN THE PERVERSION OF THEIR DRIVES, since even at my most serious I cannot resist a pun.
If there’s anyone still reading, thanks so much for your attention. Here are the words to the quadruple, two-pairs-of-allotropic-words acrostic:
Surf, silliness, & Realtors rake in the megabucks
To climb & claw atop a peak with Taurus near a cusp
Respondents take a helicopter canyon to arroyo
Or jet on to Hawaii for the LPBA tour
Persnickety flaccidity persists; now back to Curt
RIP Curt Gowdy, for whom I had both respect and (misplaced; I was young) amused contempt.
One with Clay, Image and Text 