The nemesis of Dr. BurgerWe all know the healing powers of Doctor Burger. The wonderful Doctor Burger makes everything better. But for every Yin there is a Yang, and for every Starsky there is a Hutch. What if there was an anti-Doctor Burger, an evil burger that would make you feel worse instead of better?
There is. I’ve found it. I don’t want it.
You have it if you want. I’m fine without.
Chess for beginnersI learned how to play chess when I was about ten.
Wait. That might be overstating things a bit. What happened was that one of the other kids at my childminder’s house could play it a bit, and they showed me, and we had about three games that lasted about five minutes, and then I didn’t play it again until last week.
Last week I was reintroduced to chess, and found I had forgotten almost everything. If you have also forgotten everything about chess, either because you haven’t played it in a long time, or because nobody told you anything about it in the first place (sometimes referred to as “pre-forgetting” or “not knowing things”), then allow me to help.
You need a big square made of other squares. They should be chequered. You also need lots of playing pieces. If you don’t have a chess set, you could borrow the pieces from a Monopoly set instead, but you will need five Monopoly sets because chess uses a lot of pieces. Put the pieces in lines.
Every piece has rules about how it moves.
White always goes first. However, the ideal way to start the game is to steal some of your opponent’s pieces before the game has started. This early pre-game attack can offer many advantages in the later stages.
Attempt to gauge your opponent’s skill level at the beginning of the game by sliding all your pawns forward two spaces in a single move. If they are inexperienced enough to let you get away with this, you can claim a great deal of territory this way.
Spend lots of time taking your turn so it looks like you’re thinking really hard. This will make your opponent nervous.
Win the game by taking your opponent’s King. You can do this either by moving one of your pieces into a position where the King will be taken on its next move no matter where it goes, which is called “checkmate”, or by picking it up and refusing to give it back when you’ve had enough, which makes it impossible for the other person to win, meaning you have won by default.
If you have any chess questions (“chesstions”) please post them below and I will do my best to help you become a Chess Grand Master just like me.
Words of adviceWilliam Cobbett knows more than you do. It’s a fact and there’s no getting round it. Lucky for you, though, he has written down what he knows so that you can benefit from it. He wrote it down in 1829 but I don’t see why that makes it any less relevant.
You’re still young, aren’t you? Good. Let’s see what advice he has for young men. I have divided the advice into five logical categories to keep things simple. Simply direct your attention to the heading that most closely relates to the area in which you need advice.
In all situations of life, avoid the trammels of the law. Man’s nature must be changed before law-suits will cease… One good rule is to have as little as possible to do with any man who is fond of law-suits, and who, upon every slight occasion, talks of an appeal to the law. Such persons… are, therefore, companions peculiarly disgusting to men of sense.
Nothing is much more discreditable than what is called hard dealing. They say of the Turks, that they know nothing of two prices for the same article; and that to ask an abatement of the lowest shopkeeper is to insult him.
There is such a thing as your quiet ‘pipe-and-pot-companions,’ which are, perhaps, the most fatal of all. Nothing can be conceived more dull, more stupid, more the contrary of edification and rational amusement, than sitting, sotting, over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things.
By reading the single Act of the 23rd year of EDWARD the THIRD, specifying the price of labour at that time; by reading an Act of Parliament passed in the 24th year of HENRY the EIGHTH; by reading these two Acts, and then reading the CHRONICON PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, which shows the price of food in the former reign, you come into full possession of the knowledge of what England was in former times. Divers books teach how the divisions of the country arose, and how its great institutions were established; and the result of this reading is a store of knowledge, which will afford you pleasure for the whole of your life.
I hope that your taste would keep you aloof from the writings of those detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in debauching the minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present their poison in such captivating forms, that it requires great virtue and resolution to withstand their temptations; and, they have, perhaps, done a thousand times as much mischief in the world as all the infidels and atheists put together. These men ought to be called literary pimps: they ought to be held in universal abhorrence, and never spoken of but with execration.
Puffins? Half way through 2021It’s been doing its best to match the appalling failure that was 2020, but we’re not letting it. No, 2021 will be the year things got better, not the year things got worse.
Still – it’s been a bit of a slog so far. Now, to celebrate the fact that half of it has gone and the other half is probably going to be a bit more enjoyable than the first one was, let’s all sit down and have a slice of cake.
SALE: Non-Holiday PackagesThe Beans Home Shopping Network is delighted to announce a summer sale featuring MASSIVE REDUCTIONS on our innovative Non-Holiday Packages.
Introduced in 2020, when it became clear that nobody would be going on holiday ever again, our Non-Holiday Packages have been figuratively flying off the entirely metaphorical shelves. Read on to find out how it works.
InterSportball Euroleague 2020At long last, football fever is here again! Come and join us on the Beans for the lowdown on this year’s best new last year’s footsporting tournament, the InterSportball Euroleague 2020!
All the countries in Europe, excluding some obviously European countries like Ireland and Luxembourg but inexplicably including several countries that are mostly in Asia like Russia and Turkey, are sending teams of footballists to a range of places in Europe and also some places outside Europe to go play footballs at each other.
Every single team of footballsters has about eleven men, and no women at all. The men are all good at kicking, running along doing little kicks to move the ball around without anyone else getting it, running at other men and doing kicks at just the right time to get the ball off them, and sliding along the grass on their knees. The point of the InterSportball Euroleague 2020 is to find out which team of footbollogists are the best ones.
All 24 teams are playing sportball according to the Queensbury Rules, which are:
At the start of the game both teams bring their favourite football to the sports arena and the referee chooses the one they like most to be used for the match. Most teams are bringing circular footballs with a black and white design on them, but England have chosen an orange one that reminds them of 1966, Wales are bringing an oval rugby egg and Germany have opted for a nice stripey beach ball.
Every team is playing every other team, making a total of 276 matches in the initial stage of the tournament. Three matches are played every day so this will go on until mid-September.
At the end, there will be the Grand Final, where all 24 teams play each other all at once, with 24 footballs on the pitch, at a specially built ground in Belgium that has 24 sides, 24 goals and a pitch that covers eight floors with escalators between them. The match will continue until one of the teams has scored a hundred goals.
The winners of the Grand Final will be declared the Best at Football and will pick up the Ian Botham Trophy for Best International Kicking.
Time to get out there and enjoy all the football! You can watch the football in every pub in the UK, all the time, or at home on the TV, and if you’re watching a game that’s being shown live from a hot country, don’t forget to wear sunscreen.
This will never workI don’t know what they were thinking when they made this. I only know that they are overestimating how much dogs pay attention to small signs.
