Chess

[Keith E. Sullivan]

MASTERPIECE

It was the best piece he had ever written. His masterpiece. The story
of a classic chess match told from the point of view of the lest
significant piece, the black queen's knight's pawn. So he was
devastated to receive the letter of rejection from his publisher. "You
should have known better," it read, "Our firm will never publish
pawnography." ... I guess they would not publish this either as it is
punography. ... or cornography. ... or if written by hand, penography.

Stan Kegel <ke...@fia.net>
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP

When Deep Blue was asked what he intended to do now that he was chess
champion, he replied "I'm going to www.disney.com."

Frasier <Fra...@cybrwks.com>
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
A DEEP BLUE FUNK
By Tony Kornheiser, The Washington Post, Sunday, May 18 1997

My heart goes out to Garry Kasparov for suffering that humiliating loss
to the computer Deep Blue. It must be terrible for the chess champion
now, to walk down the street and have some punk kid hold up a Walkman
and taunt, "Hey, Garry, maybe you can beat this!" I imagine Kasparov
can't even pass a Radio Shack without breaking into hives.

I have some sense of how awful Kasparov must feel. I was a pretty fast
runner when I was a kid, and I lost a 100-yard dash to a machine. It's
called a car.

(On the night Kasparov lost the deciding game to the computer, the TV
anchors reported "the historic defeat" in hushed, somber tones like they
were talking about famine in Chechnya, or the death of Gandhi. I lose
to the video poker machine all the time, and Sam Donaldson doesn't come
over to interview me about it. Listen, machines are supposed to be
better than humans. An artillery cannon can pitch a ball faster than
Roger Clemens; professional baseball is not wringing its hands in
despair.)

Frankly, Kasparov disappointed me. He was a sore loser! He grumped and
groused and actually intimated that the computer cheated.

How can you cheat in chess? Everything is out in the open. Eighty
million people are watching from all over the globe. Experts with
goatees and bad teeth are analyzing every move seconds after it is
made. And even if it were possible to cheat, to furtively move a piece,
how would the machine do it? Have you seen this thing? It looks like
the World Trade Center. It doesn't even have an elbow or a pinkie.
(Actually, Kasparov said he was suspicious because he thought the
computer made erratic moves, some stunning, some dooflike. I think the
tip-off was when the computer followed a particularly brilliant move
that put Kasparov in check by shoving a pawn across the board and then
flashing its lights to spell out "King me!")

For the life of me, I do not know what the fuss is all about. Playing
chess is not like thinking. Yes, chess is strategic. But it is
robotic. There are only 64 squares. Every possible move has been made
before, a million times, by persons with surnames like Vrobichefsy.
Their strategies even have official names, like the Fortensky Gambit and
the Rosenblatt Conceit. You can just plug the whole history of chess
into a computer. It is not as though chess is a truly creative process,
like, say ... humor writing.

What if I kept using the same jokes all over again, time and again, week
after week? I mean, what kind of a pathetic hack would I be then? I
would be no better than the Washington Post cafeteria, which looks like
a bathroom at a bus station!

Still, the Kasparov-Deep Blue match has the world rattled. This is a
time when we, as humans, must band together. All of humankind is
waiting for someone to step forward for the species, and I think that
someone just might as well be ... Joey Buttafuoco, who will beat the
crap out of that machine with a tire iron.

No, just kidding. Fellow humans, I, Tony Kornheiser, will do it. I
have decided to offer a machine a chance to match me, joke for joke, in
my column.

I figure the risk is minimal. How could a bucket of electronic
components possibly match my legendary ability to weave subtlety and
nuance into carefully constructed humor, deftly employing literary
allusions and such?

Okay, let the joke-off begin.

Here is my opening gambit:

Your mother is so fat, they use her corset to snag planes on an aircraft
carrier.

(Oh, wait, I forgot to deftly employ a literary allusion. Try this:
Your mother, Clytemnestra, is so fat, they use her corset to snag planes
on an aircraft carrier.)

Okay, machine, now it is your turn:

What a dork! It couldn't come up with anything.

Excuse me, Tony, but that's because you asked a cappuccino machine.

Ah. Well, all right. Let's go to one of those word computers, the kind
that's programmed to write poetry, correct spelling, etc.

Okay, machine. You're on:

Good evening, esteemed human consumers of Tony Kornheiser's column. I
am VRB-23766, and I just got in from Silicon Valley, and boy are my
microprocessors tired. Ho-ho.

Beep.

Whew. This is a tough crowd. Is it hot in here or am I havin' a
mainframe meltdown? Where did they get this crowd? At a funeral?

Beep.

Good evening, esteemed human consumers of Tony Kornheiser's column. Why
did Garry Kasparov's wife leave him? Because he was a stale mate.
Ha-ha. I slay myself. Unrecoverable Disk Error. Abort? Retry?
Reboot?

Beep.

Hey, you've been a great audience. Thank you, and log off.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

Tony Kornheiser (Unofficial) Home Page
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1603/korn.html>
--
Keith's Mostly Clean Humor & Weird (McHaw) List

To subscribe or unsubscribe, write mai...@mail.otherwhen.com
and put "SUBSCRIBE McHawList" or "UNSUBSCRIBE McHawList" in the
message body. Send contributions to KSul...@worldnet.att.net