Eating my liver

To mangle the infamous phrase of Catch-22, last night at the JHB Go Club I was handed my liver and told to eat it, three times. And it sure did taste vile.

There is a slight problem in my quest to obtain a 1-Dan rating; I have to win a bunch of games. Losing games is movement in the opposite direction.

I really shouldn't be too focused on rank. Getting slightly obsessed about a ranking does nothing for me, and, when you get down on it, is meaningless (much more rewarding to get obsessed about minor celebes and to stalk them straight into a diazepam, prozac, and vodka addiction). Go should be all about enjoyment, playing a game just for the fun of it, and not about the bloody-minded achievement of a goal.

Yet, despite knowing that this is a craven, snivelling prostration to the goddess of petty awards, I still want that dan rating. I must resist, I cannot and should not allow go to be all about becoming a dan.

And, anyway, it's not like the national go association will give me a dan certificate when I achieve the vaunted status of 1-Dan, like other national organisations do (fools that they are for recognising the achievements of their members), despite having been handed a series of designed rank certificates and a methodology for production and distribution of said certificates.

But that's okay. I may want the rating for a series of irrational and infantile reasons, but I sure as hell don't need no fucking piece of non-recycled paper to make me feel better about my motherfucking self (there's tree-hugs for that), and that, by the goddamned way, is why I'm shelling out the few products of my slave wages for an Mphil.