Miscellany

Those of you who follow the chess world will know that Bobby Fischer has long since disappeared up his own demented genius and pronounced reality a fictitious concoction of Jewish Matrix-machines. Or something like that. Garry Kasparov has an article for the WSJ on the sad decline of this once brilliant player. And by the way, isn't it so bloody typical of Kasparov to be writing for the guard dog of capitalism? Anyway, here's an excerpt :

Despite his short stay at the top there is little to debate about the chess of Bobby Fischer. He changed the game in a way that hadn't been seen since the late 19th century. The gap between Mr. Fischer and his contemporaries was the largest ever. He singlehandedly revitalized a game that had been stagnating under the control of the Communists of the Soviet sports hierarchy.

When Bobby Fischer rocketed to the top of the chess world in the early 1970s he was a fine wine in a flawed vessel. His contributions to the game, both at the board and from a commercial perspective, were nothing short of a revolution in the chess world. At the same time, his brittle and abusive character showed cracks that deepened with his every step toward the highest title.

Today, it is hard to imagine the sensation of Mr. Fischer's success when he wrested the world championship away from Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972. In the middle of the Cold War, the Brooklyn-raised iconoclast took the crown from the well-oiled Soviet machine that had dominated the chess world for decades. And this after he barely showed up for the match at all, and then lost the first game and forfeited the second!

Please go read the rest...

Take it from me. If you feel like wasting your money during a holiday period, you'd be better pissing it into the wind than wasting your time visiting a shit-stack like Warwick. I don't know if its because the people are pig-snouted halfwits with Brummie accents. Or if its because its a depressing suburb with a few preserved tudor houses on the far edge of town near the castle. But I can safely say that this place is probably responsible for more teen suicides than anywhere else in the country.
First of all. Warwick Castle is beautiful on the outside and from afar. Sitting majestically over Avon River and a sloping land mass of fields and forestry, it is reminiscent of all those Robin Hood episodes I used to watch when Baywatch was over. However. Soon as you step inside the motherfucker it becomes the most Disneyfied touristy piece of dried up rat's cum you'll ever set eyes on. Apart from swarms of bratty kids charging about with plastic swords thinking they're Arthur the Great (or more likely, Luke Skywalker, the little chugnut pigheaded fucks), and quite apart from the Legions of Grey, the milk-sop grannies pointing a shaky finger at the Mound and saying 'that's where my house is'... apart from all that, they've turned it into a theme park of Olde England, a saleable commodity to con fuck-ignorant toursits like... oooh... me?
The Coca-Cola carts don't really convince and the young girls with Brummie accents dressed up as medieval damsels are somewhat over-dressed. The 'Twister Fries' are definitely an anachronism, and those fencing tough guys were pulling em more than your average pro-wrestler. As for the Ghost Tower, I can only say that it left me with a soulful longing for the Spectre of Communism to sweep in and blow this Big Mac Sanctuary of pseudo-History into the river, brick by stinking brick.
Now. Let's take a walk to the town centre. Shall we? Great. There doesn't appear to be a super-market there, and the market stalls could easily be outmatched by the Sunday car-boot sale in Woolwich in terms of both range and quality. Never mind. There are one or two shops which seem to be of this century, or at least the last. Woolworths, for example, offers local customers a spectacular "3 Easter Eggs for the Price of 2". Good offer, I think. Except that upon entering, you scan the racks in vain for a single chocolating buggery egg. Up and down the aisles you may search, but to no avail. You might, however, notice a small dingy rack on the way out. On it are a few things which may appear to resemble Easter Eggs, but which on closer exception turn out to be "Kinder Chocolate Christmas Balls". CHRISTMAS BALLS!! That's how often they update their fucking supplies round here, the no good backwater hillbilly fucking bullshit merchants!! What can I expect come Christmas time? Seasonal pumpkins, scary masks and toffee apples?
I've had enough of this. Fuck shopping, I just want to get a drink and get the fuck out of this miserable conurbation of clapped out warehouses. You'll find, next to the 'market' (which is a glorified second-hand jumble sale), a pub belonging to the venerable JD Wetherspoon's dynasty. It's the only faintly enjoyable place in the whole putrescent trough. Drinks, at least, are cheaper than London even if the clientelle look like they could use a kick up the arse to remove the sullen inbred look from their faces.
And then there's the joy of local ceremonies. This is the sort of small town community where everyone knows everyone else, bear in mind. The sort of place where everyone can hear you scream, but only the priest pays any mind as he stuffs his cock up your pre-teen backside and demands silence. The sort of place where a couple of children might be discovered by a riverside collecting horseflies and maggots, and suddenly the media swoop in like vultures looking for carrion. So, what do you think a wedding ceremony looks like?
Try, two young slappers in home-made dresses standing outside the church sharing a fag. I know the dresses are home-made because they look exactly like the curtains someone's house had on the way here. Then add, the groom charging down to the ceremony, pissed, flanked on both sides by a couple of 'hos in their Sunday bests, tucking an unironed shirt into a pair of unwashed blue jeans. Either this guy had a wild stag night or he's the most untidy fucking groom in the whole of Europe. And given the odds of having a wild time of anything in this shit-hole, I'm guessing he was just a slovenly, lazy, unshaven little slut.
Unfortunately, although they patronise tourists with simple maps all over the joint, they never seem to put them in the right place. So, having had a few pints just to stop yourself from lapsing into a coma, you may find your sense of direction fails you, and the road you thought led to the station in fact leads to a shitty little park and thence into a dark and scary woods where you could swear you've seen something like a Jason Mask flitting about between the trees. Some helpful soul has spray-painted a pentacle on the pavement - apparently it's what they do round here for kicks. That ain't a barbecue you're smelling, that's a baby sacrifice.
Suffice to say, I got out in one piece. Not before stopping in at a pub near the station and leaving a top-loader. That is, I opened the upper chamber of the toilet and took a crap in it. It'll stink the place out, and they won't find it for some time. Unfortunately, when they do find it I just know it's going to end up in someone's beef stroganoff.
Warwick's just that kind of town.

The pub isn't all its cracked up to be. But it says something about the way booze and social company loosens the spinchter when beggars find it vital to come in and ask for some change. Last night, I was at a boozer in Central London and a bloke comes in with a tattered copy of the Big Issue which he pretended to be selling, and asked each table if they had change. By day, I'm tight as a duck's butthole, but in the pub I was feeling kind of loose about it. So I gave him two quid. Strange to relate, my drinking companions thought that this was an appropriate occasion to commend my virtue and deliver a polite round of applause.

"Fuck off!" I snarled. "I don't want yer fucking moral approbation."

I'm kind of anal about my probity that way.

Anyway, we talked about work, politics, the war. Yeah, if you want a good night's entertainment, round up your drunk friends and get them chatting about the war. You're about to par-tay down.

One of the wierdest thing people say to me about this is: "So, okay, I know you think it's all bullshit, just for the Americans to get the oil and that, but you support the troops don't you?"

"Sure. Sure I do. Is that the bus?"

Support the troops? As a certain someone once said "like a rope supports a hanging man". Maybe I'm way out of line here, but last time I checked these guys were armed to the teeth, blasting the fuck out of anything that got in the way and they weren't taking opinion polls on the matter. These guys are trained killers, since when were they worthy of public deification? Can you imagine them in their B-52 planes, hovering over the desert, enemy city in sight, bombs ready to fall? The finger's on the fucking button, and someone says "wait! I get the feeling some London voter isn't entirely behind our venture... I dunno if I can go through with this, what with my morale being so wounded."

And these fucking media mongrel brats suck up to the Golden Retard and his simpering care assistant, Reverend Blair and expect us to become sheep because "our boys" are out there risking their lives. Pity that during the war it was mainly because the US is employing National Security guards on their weekends off to conduct the bombing raids, and these crackers can't tell shit from shoeshine. Allied vehicles have big 'V's on them, and they still manage to mistake them for Iraqi convoys... Jesus fucking Christ.

I swear to God, I woke up in the best mood.

Well, that is roughly the quality and content of my drunken rant. Fist-fights ensued.