Greetings from the Rhineland

Today 4/20/16 is a special day.

Those of you with legitimate medical conditions requiring a California state issued card for the purchase and use of medicinal "herbal" remedies know exactly what I'm talking about. And even though I'm 44 years old, I'm hip to your jive.

But, and many of you probably did not know this, today is also Adolf Hitler's Birthday. The world's number one smiter of Jews would have been 127 years old, you know had he not mistakenly launched Operation Barbarossa and awakened the large Russian Grizzly bear who was sleeping off another night of vodka-infused sweet potatoes.

I take no small amount of pride in my steeped knowledge of Nazis, Aryan culture and the Holocaust.

"I'll take Concentration Camps Beginning with the letter B for 800, Alex."

To celebrate this perverse obsession, I'm going to share some screen grabs with you.

You see I am currently locked in an online chess battle with a gentlemen from der Fatherland. This is not to suggest he is a Nazi. Or is in any way antisemitic. I hope he is not.

But just a few moves into our game my German opponent came at me with a full blitzkrieg of unprovoked attacks.

First, you should know that most online chess games are played in silence. I have rarely chatted with any of my competitors. It's just not done.  More, importantly, I love how he refers to himself in the third person as a "world ranked chess player". For the record he does have about 100 more points than my respectable 1427.

I'm sure somebody has given the Big Mac a rating, but that doesn't make it a "world ranked" burger.

Then, my friend from Munich goes on to accuse me of cheating!

I have no idea what a cheater ticket is. Nor would I know how to cheat at online chess. Also, this chat exchange happened in the very early stages of the game. He had a few pawns on me. That's all. I'm not giving up. Particularly when he is going to grace me with all this comedy gold.

Now he is cursing at me in his mother language. I'm sensing his frustration. And so I reply with a favorite Yiddish expression that my father used on a daily basis, "gyn drew in deyn hut." Or, Go Shit in Your Hat.

We are now in the endgame. And much the way the Soviets surrounded Berlin in May of 1945, the outcome has been decided. But the slog is slow. And I intend to make it even slower.

He will win the chess game but he will do it on my terms. With some purposeful procrastination carefully seasoned with ample taunting and some well-chosen passive/aggressive verbal maneuvers.

Consider it one last personal payment in the reparations package, Heinrich.