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Chess Players 'Are Paranoid Thrillseekers'
Tardigrade submitted a brief little article that claims that chess players are paranoid thrillseekers. It's a fairly amusing little piece and definitely
makes me wish that my high-school chess club would have got into epic
battles with the groups that were capable of stretching us into pretzel
shapes, if only for the thrill. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
Chess players are paranoid because they are chess players, not vice versa. Five years of swirlys and locker room beatings in high school while a member of the Chess Club usually causes that.
That demonstrating intelligence and creativity in proximity to Football (american) players is tempting death and mutilation.
chess is all about testosterone, arousal (Article).
[Transcription of 1-900-CHESSXX.]
"...Dial 512 to accept these charges and continue"
[Beat. Beep-boop-bop.]
[Ring. Ring.]
<deep husky voice> "Hi there. I'm Edith."
<heavy breathing. audible swallow.>"...I'm Paul."
E. Mmmmm, Paul. I like that name. Wasn't Morphy's first name Paul.
P. Oh YES.
E. Tell me...how long have you played chess?
P. S-since I was eleven.
E. Want to tell me about your first time.
P. W-well, I don't know. It was with my father. He didn't play all that well. I started beating him not long after that.
E. Want to hear about my first time?
P. Oh yeah, tell me about your first time, Edith. How old were you?
E. My first time was at the tender age of fourteen.
P. Really?
E. Yessss. Before then, I hardly knew the names of the pieces.
P. How well do you play now?
E. Oh, better than you, probably.
P, excited. Really?
E. Yes, I'm a genius you know. Want to hear about my first time?
P. Yes, tell me about it.
E. My sister's friend was over. He was a Geek. Are you a geek, Paul?
P. Yes, yes, I am.
E. I love geeks. They excite me. My sister's friend was the first geek I met. He introduced me to Linux. He also taught me chess.
P. You use Linux?
E. Well, technically it's not Linux, I use my own kernel.
P. You kernel-hack?
E. I guess you could call it that...
P. What do you mean?
E. Well I don't bother with Torvaldis's source-tree.
P. Oh, Edith. Tell me what you do.
E. I mess with kernel directly.
P. mmmm.
E. Oh, it gets very messy. Straight assembly. Pur hex.
P. Oh-ooh. Tell me about your sister's friend.
E. He taught me chess. By the end of the first hour I was seeing three, four moves ahead of him. By the time I was seventeen, four years ago, I was placing in the nationals.
P. Oh, man. Are you really that good?
E. Want to try me?
P. <inhales deeply> e2?
E. e3 Paul.
[rest censored]
My boss is a chess player. He likes to win, but the thrill of winning is second only to the thrill of completely unnerving his opponent. I would never play chess with him, mainly because he is a poor winner and a poor loser. I think that this kind of attitude is pretty common in the chess world. Just look at the famous people who were good at it, like Bobby Fischer. You couldn't ask for a bigger Grade A asshole than him.
The middle mind speaks!
You can get hurt through playing a game of chess. But you've got to be ridiculously out of shape to do so.
You're right... in fact, they would make a fine pair for a new biathlon sport in the Olympics... the two competitors box for 9 rounds, then sit down for a chess match. I know I'd watch.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
... resturant had a checkered tablecloth - he took 2 hours to pass the salt.
All women want is honesty, if you can fake that, you're in.