Where it all happens first

Howard Goldowsky has an amusing April Fool's Day piece up at ChessCafe in which he pokes good natured fun at many topics in Caissa's domain. While Howard doesn't mention the chess blogosphere specifically, it is quite clear that our bastion of the chess world serves as inspiration and source material for his article.

First, consider these lines in his comments about Susan Bipolar:

This needs to be said for her benefit -- Susan never steals content from other websites, and she never uses ghostwritten material from Paulways Wrong, her lover (I mean, friend) and PR man -- this just needs to be said for the record.

Next, he has some friendly jibes for all the MDLMers out there:

I've been following a training program invented by this fellow, Cant Make de la Masta....

He has this training program called the Satan Circles, where, on the last day of the program, you need to practice making both live animal sacrifices as well as sacrifices with chess pieces on a board. You need to sit for, like, ten straight hours, solving chess problems and slicing, at an average of one neck every 30 seconds, the heads off various rodents and squirrels. It's quite a tedious and emotionally painful process...

Finally, to demonstrate conclusively that the blogosphere served as his source, consider this comment which Howard left on a BCC Weblog post about competitive fashion...

The babes are the distraction, man. It's the babes.

I remember once, when I was 16 or 17, I was playing in the National HS Championships down in Knoxville, TN. There was a girl there -- her name was Mimi -- and she was from Sweden. She had the long, straight, deep blond hair and blue eyes that you think about when you think about 16 year old Swedish girls. And she came with her Mom, who was also blonde and beautiful. (I am not kidding.) I don't know why they were there. I think they were visiting family or friends, and their visit just happened to coincide with the tournament.

This girl was a serious player, too. She was rated over 1900. She destroyed all of us HS hacks, and it was embarrassing. She spoke English with an accent like a perfect melody. In the Skittles room, teenage boys were lined up four rows deep watching her play. Everybody wanted to be near her, to talk to her, to look at her. Every day I think she just wore jeans, sneaker, and a T. It didn't matter.

...and compare it to this passage from his piece:

The babes are the distraction. I remember once, when I was 16 or 17, I was playing in the National HS Championships down in Dallas, Texas. There was a girl there -- her name was Mia, Mia Crumbling, or something like that -- and she was from Sweden. She had the long, straight, blond hair and blue eyes that you think about when you think about 16-year-old Swedish girls. I don't know why she was there. I think she was visiting her family or something, and her visit just happened to coincide with the tournament.

This girl was a serious player. She was rated over 2200 while, you know, my friends and I were class-E hacks. She destroyed all of us, and it was embarrassing. Every day she just wore jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, but it didn't matter.

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