2003-02-07 - 12:03 p.m.

the snow is falling in thick flakes now. i can actually hear it falling on the glass of the skylight. its in huge flakes now that look exactly like the soap flakes they use to fake snow on LA television sets.

i'm playing online chess. i really go through phases with it. sometimes i'm fucking fascinated. other times i can hardly be bothered. right now i'm in a slow game, which i can easily win, but its not really holding my attention. sometimes if there's too much allotted time it gets sort of boring. but too little time means sometimes losing on time with a good position. and that's obviously not satisfying. playing lesser players is easy and usually a guaranteed win if i manage to avoid glaring errors (i.e.; losing my queen for a knight, which i just now did. it won't affect my outcome here though). yet playing against a much better player can be very frustrating, since even in the case of a win, i know i'm not seeing all that i should be seeing.

there's some delicate balance that needs to occur between a game being too challenging and too simple. is that true of all activities? or just webgames? or just obsessive, repetitive activities?

i've been thinking so much about computers and chess. since kramnik and kasparov are both pulling draws against different chess computers, does that mean the end of over the board chess? is there any point in playing anymore? i guess if i really think about it, photography didn't kill painting, computer imagery didn't kill photography. we humans plod along in our favorite activities. there is joy in repetition.

i know i'm not the same as a computer. i'm not hot-swappable. music can be programmed on a computer by non-musicians. but it doesn't sound the same as my jazz instructor soloing over summertime. i guess drummers are the most fucked in that regard. i have no problem whatsoever replacing the aggro drummers in my life with docile, responsive machines! (kidding!)

the terror alert has been raised to orange today! what excitement. i'm so numb from being a new yorker that i can't even bring myself to care. but in honor of this momentuous occasion, i have retooled my template to a lovely deep tangerine. cosmokane, if you're out there, thanks a million for your lovely, spare pagecode. i owe you one.