Coach Sheldon Cooper Gives the Chess Team a Pep Talk - weekly column 8.15.19

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Coach Sheldon Cooper Gives the Chess Team a Pep Talk

“Now guys, today’s the big game against M.I.T., and before we thunder out to the table I want to review with you the new rules of the league.

“Before the match I don’t want to see any of you taking a knee when the band plays the theme to Big Bang Theory. We stand in unity, okay? When that song is played we are ONE team, the mighty, mighty SACRIFICIAL PAWNS! We are no longer divided by our Star Trek backgrounds or our Star Wars backgrounds. When our sacred Big Bang Theory song is played WE BEAM DOWN AS ONE and we STAND AWKWARDLY AS ONE like the all-American nerds we are. No one is either Captain Kirk or Han Solo; we are all SACRIFICIAL PAWNS! OOOOH-RAH! Gimme an OOOH-RAH!”

“…um…oooh-rah?”

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

“(squeak) ooh-rah?”

“Okay, fine, fine. Now, then, if the other team offers a prayer, just go with that, okay?”

“But Coach,” said Trevor, “we’re chess players. We see existential reality only in the Spanish Opening, El Ruy Lopez, and nothing more.”

“Au contraire,” replied Neville. “Who can consider the symmetry, the logic, the elegance of the Giuoco Piano and fail to understand that only the Creator of the universe could make that opening?”

“But then how do you explain the Pirc Defense, which is obviously from the Dark Side?” asked Ponsonby.

“Focus, men. If we get into all that theology stuff someone will think we’re…ugh…liberal arts students.”

Team: “EEEEyewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

“Now, when you make a capture, remember that under the new rules we’ll be penalized two pawns and a cheerleader if you spike a rook, knight, or bishop.”

“Okay, coach, but can we spike the punch, haha?”

“You’re getting a penalty for that bad pun, Vladislav. One more thing, men. You’re going to have to clean up your language around the cheerleaders.”

“Awwwwwwwwww, mannnnnnnnnnn,” whined Clive. “Whenever I’m around Chloe Zoe, well, she just makes my Rubik’s Cube whirrrr out of sync. She makes me want to whisper a Shakespearean sonnet to her.”

“Now THAT is just the kind of language we just DON’T need, not even in our manly-man locker room. Shakespeare! If I had said “Shakespeare” or “Keats” my old physics instructor would have washed my mouth out with H202.”

“Yessss, Coach.”

“Now then,” concluded Coach Sheldon, holding up a regulation chess clock: “Out there on the field of mental battle you’ll have only two friends, your superior left-brained intellect (dramatic pause) and this. Now let’s go out there and kick some serious quantum entanglement and non-locality! Yeahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

-30-

Chess - the Most Dangerous Game

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Just Pass Some More Laws

Last week, two players died during a world championship chess match in Norway.

Given the documented dangers of chess, how much longer will we continue to sacrifice human lives to this mediaeval sport?

Where is the world’s outrage? Why hasn’t the President spoken up? Where is Westboro Not-Really-Baptist? Where is Al Sharpton – still on the line with his FBI controllers?

Chess is clearly a killer. If two lives are lost during only one chess competition in one day, how many precious humans die in a year, sacrificed on the pagan altar of checkmate?

Not only is this game physically dangerous, it is both sexist and anti-democratic.

Those lost souls addicted to this degenerate pastime assure us that there is no sexism in chess because the queen most powerful piece. But, aha! Notice that they refer to her as a piece. Is that not objectification? Further, the queen clearly has no power of her own. She is pushed about on the board by men, most of ‘em foreigners, who dominate the sport. Peer past the fog of sexist obfuscation and one can see that chess is just code for men continuing to dominate and use women.

Further, no American worthy of the name should ever play a game which glamourizes hereditary nobility. Did General Washington and the lads suffer through the winter at Valley Forge for kings and queens and knights? I think not.

As Benjamin Franklin said, here, sir, the people rule. And we the people rule through voting and through standing for public office. Not that we often do so. The polls are six miles away. And we need to watch that pretty girl with a new dress every day turning those letters. But, hey, we listen to the emo-boys on midday radio, and surely that counts as a vote.

And then some of the chessmen (never chesswomen, you will notice) are bishops. We just don’t need Christianity being smuggled into our board games. Children need to grow up playing good old fashioned games on their little Orwellian telescreens: Sullen Buzzards, Blandy Smash, Morbid Wombat, and Wannabes of Nerdcraft.

The American people, in order to be truly free, must be required to turn in their chessmen / chesswomen / chesspersons. For the first year under the proposed new laws citizens will be compensated for their chessmen if they report to police stations and turn them in voluntarily. After that, pursuivants will search out hidden chessmen from recusants, and special courts will be instituted to ensure that never again will anyone be permitted to roam the streets with unregistered chessboards.

Once this is accomplished, all problems will be solved, and all evil will be swept like chessmen from the board of life forever.

-30-