Is Blitz beneficial?

Wanted to take a quick poll. Do you play blitz? Do you think it helps your chess at all? Since joining ICC I haven't played a rated blitz game with my account. Lately I've been considering playing some blitz every day, especially when I don't have time to play a full 30 30 game.

Not another one?!

Because of some comments on Sancho's latest post I was forced, against my will, to buy yet another chess book. This one is called The Art of the Checkmate, which should compliment my other recent purchase, The Art of the Attack. Strangely they were written by different authors. Which brings me to a curious observation. Chess books tend to use the same words for their titles. Is it possible that chess players/authors aren't the creative types? Or is it that the people that read chess books need to see uncreative titles? The world may never know.....

You know it's time to write another post...

when DG takes you off of his list =( Again, appologies for being absent from the blogosphere. I'm still at Stanford with my Dad. We are scheduled to be here till some time in October. I try to get a game in at least once a day but you'd be surprised how busy it can get. I had more chess time when I was actually working!

My rating on ICC is hovering around 1450 right now. 1600 by end of October seems impossible right now but I'm still keeping it on there until I pass that date. We'll see how close I can get by then.

Bought a couple of new books too. Went crazy on Amazon since they gave me a trial membership with Amazon Prime. Got Simple Chess, Starting Out: The French, and Art of Attack in Chess so far. I'm going to read through those before getting back to Pawn Power. I think Pawn Power is just slightly out of reach for me right now. My Dad picked up all five seasons of the Dick Van Dyke show and the two seasons of The Rockford Files that were released. Keeps us busy after dinner.

In non-chess related news I visited New York and New Jersey for the first time. I really liked both places but the traffic was slightly unnerving, especially in NY. People would beep each other like they were saying "Hello". Like the cars were communicating in some strange animal language. Odd. Didn't get any fingers while I was there but some dude did come up to us at one of those Papaya hot dog places and did some kind of crazy dance while laughing in our faces. I considered going into zenkutsu dachi to say "Hi" back but figured that was too formal. Too bad I can't do crazy dances myself =P