"I believe there are three kinds of people. The first are the rich club members. The second are my European friends. The third kind are Chinese people like you." -- Racist club member in Mafia vs Ninja
They and their blogs carry colorful handles like Liquid Egg Product, blunderprone, Wahrheit, and even Man de la Maza….Less politely, they could be described as a “cult”…
Fellow bloggers, including BDK, Wahrheit, and chessloser went to bat for me, indicating that I am not part of the de la Maza cult.
Unfortunately, Mr. Jacobs is closer to the mark than I’ve been letting on.
You see, last December the Mascot converted to Mazaism, and we helped him build a dark temple in his basement so he could worship the requisite three times a day. (Worship sessions consist of constant repetition of the phrase “de la Maza is teh bomb” while moving around in circles. It’s not my cup of tea, but whatever.)
A couple months ago, FM Jon Jacobs snuck into the Mascot’s basement, snapped some photographs, and threatened to release them to the world if we at Liquid Egg Product didn’t pay up. Even though we’ve been FAITHFULLY paying the hush money every week, he went ahead and PUBLICLY outed this site yesterday.
We’ve stopped the payments, and are looking into ways we can legally recover the blackmail money.
No, the Mascot’s Dark Temple is not available for tours. Sorry.
Yes, there will be a second one. Consider this a place to sign-up. If you didn’t participate last time, let me know your FICS handle as well.
Depending on how many people participate, the format may change. Last time was a round-robin, but there weren’t that many people involved. If participation warrants, there may be a couple sections based on strength. Perhaps even West and East circuits, if there are enough interested Eastern hemisphere residents (or Western hemisphere residents running on East time). But we’ll see about that.
EDIT: Expected start date week of May 18.
Quick FAQ for those few of you who have no clue what’s going on:
What’s this about?
The Tournament of Lepers is an on-line chess tournament played via FICS, primarily involving those in the chess blogging world. It’s very casual, with one game a week and a time control of 15/30. It’s more an excuse to “meet” your fellow chess bloggers.
Also, there are no set times for the games–the participants are responsible for setting up a convenient time each week. Most players are from the US, so keep that in mind if you’re not living in the Western hemisphere.
I’m flexible about games being played late as long as I’m kept in the loop.
How much dough does the winner get?
Nothing promised. Allen does offer a $5 McDonald’s gift card for anyone with either an unblemished or completely blemished record. I’ll come up with some sort of prize for the winner. Last winner, drunknknite, received a USCF gift certificate and a chance to cameo in a movie with the Mascot. (He didn’t seem to enthusiastic about the movie, though, probably because it will never get done.)
“Pressed to name an economist who supports her plan to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said today that commuters, truck drivers and other gas customers know it would make a difference.”
First of all, thank you for your contributions yesterday on how to handle unwanted suitors and stories of unrequited gay love.
Catching up on other chess blogs, I was struck by an observation: most of them are trying to get better at chess.
Yes, I enjoy the game and want to be good. I have a (fairly) competitive spirit. But the amount of time I dedicate to chess improvement has been close to nil for a long time.
I started competitive chess in 1998, playing until 2000, when I took 5 years off before jumping back in. Several months were (relatively) hardcore, actually playing 40 or so rated games before tapering off again. Even then, almost all my time was spent playing; studying was relegated to when I was taking a dump in the lavatory.
Right now, I’m 1600-ish, the same as 10 years ago without putting effort into improvement. What would happen if I tried? Does the thought of “maybe there’s an Expert somewhere in here” motivate me enough to work?
More likely, the “I’m sufficiently skilled so most people can’t dismiss me; that’s good enough” win out (again).
For lunch break on Thursday, I ambulated along Griffin Road to pretend I occasionally exercise. (Kinda like drinking V8, so you can fake getting enough vegetables. It’s probably beneficial and better than nothing, but if it’s the only thing it probably won’t matter much in the long run.)
A young man of about 18 years, possibly East Indian with a hairstyle vaguely like mine, bicycled past me. It sounded like he said something to me, and I briefly considered ignoring it. Griffin Road has a fair amount of traffic, making hearing difficult, so it would have been easy to pretend not to hear him. But I decided to turn around.
He stopped, and asked me what I was doing (”Not much, just walking down the street during lunch break.”). Then he inquired if I worked, as if the shirt and tie weren’t a giveaway, and had any kids. (”Yes and no.”) He talked about how he worked, but needed a bit of cash until payday Friday. I gave him 3 bucks, and then he asked if I liked DVD’s.
I don’t remember the exact diction he used, but he implied it was smut. Besides the obvious retort (”You can get that stuff free on the Internet”), I merely declared a lack of interest. After his brief, poor sales pitch, we parted ways.
At least for a few minutes. He came back and stopped me again. He asked rhetorically whether I know that other men would have been mean, and mumbled a couple other things. Then he asked “Can I see your dick?”
I froze and wondered whether the traffic caused me to mishear. Then I asked him to make it clear. He stammered and went on for a little while until I just laughed and said “No! Sorry, that’s not me.” Then he said, “Well, I mean, it can’t hurt to ask,” to which I replied affirmatively although I know full well there are people who would have hurt him for asking.
Even ignoring the fact that I’m not gay and he’s possibly underage…the line “Can I see your dick?” doesn’t exactly crack the top 5 in best ways to start a relationship.
“Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem. Whether Al Gore has caught up with that, somebody ought to ask him.” –Food Crisis Eclipsing Climate Change
“Everyone knows the president’s poll numbers are at historic lows, but if he is over in Lubbock, there is no place in this country that likes him.” –The View From Gate 14
“At first the guy was blocking. But we kept on kicking and assaulting him. After he started bleeding, we stopped. They said: ‘Why are you stopping?’ So we had to keep on beating him. Then they gave us some pills - I’m not sure what they were, but after I took them I had this rage.” –Confessions of a Zimbabwe torturer
“Israel has dismissed a conditional six-month truce proposed by Hamas, saying that it was a ruse to allow the Palestininan group to recover from losses after recent clashes with the Israeli military.” –Israel rejects Hamas truce offer
“Dr Giles said fewer ejaculations may mean the carcinogens build up.” –Masturbation ‘cuts cancer risk’ (So I had to throw a curveball in there somewhere, OK?)
As we gaze through the mists of history, we see the hand of inevitability as the course of weeks marched on.* Other bloggers met. Victorious victories. Embarrassing losses. Vanishing tournament participants.
Nine of us slugged it out, and four of us poseurs demonstrated a semblence of strength in our four-way tie for second (placed in no particular order, BTW; I did no tie-breaks).
But drunknknite stands alone as the victor of the very first Tournament of Lepers in history. His name will now be known world-wide as a champion (technically, anyway–LEP has a single reader in countries like Australia and the Netherlands). Even the jokers of Wikipedia will not defame his name, when (if) the Tournament becomes significant enough for its own Wikipedia entry.
Only the heroics of l3rucewayne prevented him from earning the right to a McDonald’s Gift Card of Perfection.
And, drunknknite, as for your prize…due to the mysterious and abrupt departure of gorckat, the original prize–some random item that had a connection to Seirawan–is no longer in play. So you will be the proud recipient of a gift certificate for the USCF store. Valued at whatever’s left in my checking account (not that much). It’ll be arriving via e-mail.
The Mascot has also offered you one of his T-shirts or mugs (with the ability to customize), so I guess you can e-mail about that. He also left you this message of congratulations:
Hey, drunk! You weren’t perfect, but that’s OK. You know the old saying: “To err is human; perfection is eggish.” Anyway, you probably didn’t know this but I’m making a movie. Your victory in the Tournament of Lepers has earned you a great cameo spot! Check out this trailer, and let me know if you want me to stick your mug in there. Although there’s a chance you may be a dashing blonde already, so you won’t need to come in for filming.
….
Anyway, thanks to everyone who made this possible and helped out!
Wahrheit: For convincing me to go through with this and coming up with the time control.
gorckat: Offering what was going to be the main prize.
Allen: Offering a McDonald’s gift card for perfection.
WordPress users: Anyone else encountering a different type of spam recently? What they’re doing is putting garbage on line 1, a legit link on line 2, and a spam link on line 3, and it’s slipping by Akismet. They look something like this:
It should be noted that LEP is a relative lightweight when it comes to getting spammed, because I’m not using a WordPress server–almost a year and “only” 790 spam comments. So maybe this has been going on for a while and I’m just out of the loop.
