how gas affects my rating and other random crap
fucking government is run by clueless incompetent monkeys who, armed with a thousand typewriters and 5 bazillion years couldn’t bang out one line from cat in the hat much less shakespear. these fucktards are spending the Gross Domestic Product of fucking myanmar (Burma) trying to convince people to vote for them instead of spending the cash on, say, curing malaria or putting the cash back into the economy so people have houses and water and food and shit.
thing is, they are fucking shit up and the gas prices rise and the economy is tanking and it all affects my chess, and now i’m pissed off.
high gas prices mean airlines go out of business, so i can’t get to tournaments too far away. also driving is getting to expensive, so i can’t get to tournaments too short to fly but too far to ride a bike. i found out today that my man wang can’t make it to vegas and i doubt i’ll make it to tucson.
goddammit, how is my rating supposed to go up (even though it would most likely make like the lusatania and go down) if i don’t play in tournaments? how am i supposed to meet other chess bloggers and get drunk and party like a fucking rockstar if i and others can’t get to tournaments? what happens to the tournaments themselves? soon, people will stop showing up, too damn expensive with the gas, the hotel, food, entry fee, buying books, renting hookers, booze, drugs, bribing police and hotel managers, etc etc, all the regular things that go into a good tournament.
still, i’m going to chicago in a few weeks and i’m excited. my main concern is, how am i gonna pull of a huge party in my room? i want to invite the chessplayers and a bunch of chicks and have booze and music and rip it up. but from what i’ve seen, most players at tournaments are too busy studying in their rooms, or their moms won’t let them drink.
i can’t be the only chess player who also likes to party. i’m thinking of making up flyers and passing them out.
super interesting discussion over at elizabeth vicary’s, but it all takes place in the comments. some dude, who i think is an IM, has a thing against the knight errants and the de la maza school of chess. no big deal, but he came off as an assclown when he said liquid egg product and wahrheit were part of it. the guy was claiming chessbloggers as cultist and such. i think he is just jealous. *note: i realize now as i type this both LEP and wahrheit already posted about this. as with everything in my life, i’m a day late and a dollar short
it’s friday, pizza and beer night. i just got back from a bike ride, i’m gonna study a bunch of alekhine, and then ride my bike down to hot tomato and get me some pizza and beer. anyone reading this, have a great weekend, i wish you all good bishops, strong knights, and open files. chess it up!
BudMan said,
May 9, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Gee, if it weren’t for my g.d. work schedule I’d be tempted to go to Chicago just to go to your party, man! Take a swig for me while your out there!
I’ve always wondered - how do you get a name like “Myanmar” out of “Burma”? Did someone have a total brainfart and mispronounce it to the master cartographer? It would be kinda cool for a person to have new and an old name that would never be completely old, since they have to add it parenthetically for the people who used to know him before: for example, be known as “Bob Green (Antonio Mendoza)”. Or a plausible corporate example: “Starbucks (American Airlines).”
This takes nothing away from the incompetence in DC, but my understanding is the price of oil is being driven up primarily by rapid economic growth in places like China. Increasing our domestic oil supply, while reducing our overall dependence, night be the only long term solution. Biking would help. BTW, I am much impressed with your biking. You must have the arteries of a teenager.
Antonio Mendoza said,
May 9, 2008 at 5:03 pm
CL,
I wonder if I could ask you to post a photo of yourself, just so that I can have a mental image of you when I read your posts. For some strange reason, I always picture you as a tall slender guy with long hair and a beard, sorta like Jesus - except for your cool shades, the keg and the dancing girls.
Thanks!
Tony
Blunderprone said,
May 9, 2008 at 10:02 pm
SO… Since I am now a Cult hero thanks to Jon Jacobs, I now present : Rocky Errant Picture show at my blog.
I hope you all enjoy my madness!
Wahrheit said,
May 10, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Tony, dude, chessloser can’t post a photo because he’s one of those guys that kinda needs to remain in the background, for now. He does a delicate job for the Illuminati Primi from time to time, though he’s theoretically retired.
However, I can assure you that your “tall slender guy with long hair and a beard, sorta like Jesus” is very, very close, well even taller, and he’s some kind of Danish-Italian-Thai-Zulu mix, so I guess, hmm, imagine if Tiger Woods had married Barack Obama’s white mommy and their kid was 6′ 6″, 245 and had a black goatee and usually wore a nehru jacket, Arctic camo pants and GSG tactical boots,
Yeah, I think that will help with the picture. If you see a guy like that at a chess tourney you’ll know you’ve found your man.
chessloser said,
May 11, 2008 at 5:10 am
budman - i might have the arteries of a teen, but i make up for it with the liver of a 90 year old and the brain of a 3 year old…
antonio mendoza - sorry, no pics of me. i hate to ruin the image, but i’m short, clean shaven and wear glasses. lets say, i have a great face for radio….
blunderprone - nice cult video…the madness took control….
wahrheit - and i have a big blue ox….
Liquid Egg Product said,
May 12, 2008 at 6:38 am
The weird part about airfares is that it might be cheaper for you to go the distance sometimes. (Well, it’s not weird to me anymore, having worked in airline pricing for a while now, but that’s beside the point.)
A Tampa to Tallahassee ticket is minimum $187 plus taxes…plus $35 fuel surcharge. Tampa to New York? $112 plus taxes, NO fuel surcharge.
The flyers for partying is a great idea…you know there’s gotta be other players who aren’t worrying about how they’re going to do the next day.
Re: government It may not be very good…but at least they can say high oil isn’t completely their fault.
Chris Harrington said,
May 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Nice post CL. Interesting ideas….the government has actually been keeping gas prices artificially low in the United States since the 1980’s. After the OPEC fiasco the government has subsidized U.S. oil and incessently prodded OPEC nations to keep the price low for us. Unfortunately the demand is too high at this point and the dollar doesn’t go as far with these nations as it used to. The days of ridiculously low priced oil are over. unless we want to use the abundance of oil we have in our own nation. But unfortunately Americans tend to have paranoia about drilling….a real pity.
chessloser said,
May 12, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Liquid egg product - my flight to chicago is thanks to frequent flyer miles. i think the flyer idea is gonna happen. i know the government isn’t totally to blame, but they make a great scapegoat….
chris - damn good points, i know, but i take swipes at the government whenever i can. we do have a large amount of oil up there in alaska, and i don’t think we’d be killing off the caribou and other animals if we tapped into it. that said, americans are ADDICTED to driving cars and using gas and oil, and that hurts us. america is so damn huge, so large, it’s to our detriment. getting around requires planes and cars, we can’t do it all on trains and busses and bicycles. but that is another rant entirely…