True, it wasn’t Bush-Kerry 2004, but…the results for the US Chess Federation executive board voting are in.

I did not bother to vote, and I wasn’t alone. Only two good things happened here:

1. If I were forced to vote for one person, it would have been Randy Bauer, and he did get elected.
2. Sam Sloan did not get re-elected. (Here’s my short blurb on him.)

It was difficult to know who to vote for because, well, of politics. Not knowing which rumors and accusations are right and wrong, and who has hidden agendas.

Susan Polgar easily led all candidates in the voting, and any other result would have been a surprise. It’s like an Arnold Schwarznegger running for office: when you’re famous, you get more votes. (The Polgar sisters are very famous in the world of chess.) To me, this is not a problem; it’s not like she can help being well-known, it’s good to have a female presence on the board, and she’ll likely do a decent job.

I was disappointed, however, to see that both Polgar and Truong were elected, and to four-year terms at that. They had a recent, low-key marriage which should have been better publicized, and they will essentially be voting as a block for four years. It’s not too hard to see a link between limited publicizing of the marriage and making sure both of them get elected.

When you were a kid did you ever…

1. Try to figure out how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?
2. Get a “kick me” sign stuck on your back? And actually get kicked?
3. Get confused because you associated “grimace” with happiness because of the McDonald’s character, just to find out something different from a vocab list?
4. Try to build an igloo in winter?
5. Get a guilt-trip from your parents about not eating awful food because of starving kids in Ethiopia?
6. Have an irrational fear of Mr. Glitch from Mathman?
7. Have other kids try to convince you there’s a ring around the Earth because the equator’s a yellow line on the globe? (I didn’t fall for it.)
8. Think Duck Tales was a good show?
9. Think America’s Funniest Home Videos was a good show?
10. Discover that…oh, I don’t have the guts to say this one.
11. Get a fingernail ripped off by performing a foolishly risky biking maneuver?
12. Have teenagers pretend to offer you cocaine when it’s really just a handful of snow?
13. Think you would ever get to be as old as you are now?

He said it was “too frightening” to try. So, unable to resist the siren call of representing all my e-mail as bikini-clad babes, I’ve downloaded it to see if it’s worth using.