Monday, July 24, 2017

The Blatant Discrimination Displayed Against the Noble Sport of Kings

                                       



CITATION
Rasheed, Muhammad. "Your Move!" Cartoon. The Official Website of Cartoonist M. Rasheed 24 Jul 2017. Brush & ink w/Adobe Photoshop color.


Muhammad Rasheed - Should chess be an Olympic sport? I think it should, but I doubt the world chess accrediting bureaucrats would be enthusiastic over sharing their power and influence with the Olympic Games bureaucrats.

Perhaps in a compromise, Olympics-level chess can be confined to the intermediate levels, with the gold medal representing the stage just before 'master.'

Stephen Wilkinson - lol no

Muhammad Rasheed - You're very negative. I've been noticing that about you. lol

Crystal Hubbard - Absolutely NOT. Figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics, horse dancing, and ice dancing especially shouldn't be in the Olympics, either! There should be a separate Olympics for artistic athletics, and one for board games. I'd love to compete for a gold medal in Scrabble, Stratego, or Candyland! I'd be the fuggin' Michael Phelps of Candyland...

Muhammad Rasheed - et tu, Crystal? smh @ the negativity

I'll find a way to get you your damn MIA Starship Troopers idol. jesus...

Crystal Hubbard - If it requires a uniform, it's a sport, and it should be in the Olympics. If it requires a costume, it's an art, and it should go in a high school gym. If you sit while you do it, it should go in a rec room, a bench in a public park, or a cafeteria during indoor recess...

Muhammad Rasheed - Bah! Those teams only use uniforms because its required in the sponsorship branding SOP. That has nothing to do with the actual sport of chess, nor the topic at hand.

High stakes chess is so intense that the players give up at LEAST half a cup of sweat every 10 minutes. Your over-meticulous restrictions are unreasonable. You must dial them back to normal human levels to be taken seriously.

Crystal Hubbard - @Muhammad... They do not! If they sweat, it's because the room is too hot. High stakes chess players sit in the same position, moving only their eyes, with their chins gripped in their thumbs and forefingers. Chess is not a sport. It's a game. No matter how much you sweat. If you can do it in a tweed blazer and argyle socks moving only your right or left hand, it's not a sport. Poker players sweat way more than chess players...

Muhammad Rasheed - Just because YOU like to play chess in hot rooms doesn't mean that's why everyone else sweats. Chess is INTENSE. It uses NZT-48 levels of the brain and it makes you sweat. It burns just as many calories as kick-boxing, pilates, and tank biting. (probably)

I don't know why you're faking like you've played chess before anyway, since it doesn't have enough knife fighting and skateboarding over broken bottles down a mountain for the likes of you.

Crystal Hubbard - @Muhammad... I play chess! I've been playing since I was 17, when I first lost to my genius younger sister. I belonged to a chess club in Boston, and I CLOSED down the chess club where I live now because the founder pitched a fit when she couldn't beat my 10-year-old son! I know the physiological toll chess takes on you. Any brain game can give you a workout every bit as taxing as a physical one. Even so, chess is a game. It is not a sport. Curling is more of a sport than chess, and it's only just a sport.

Muhammad Rasheed - Please note that "sports" and "games" are synonyms. When people watch sports they always say, "I'm going to watch the game."

Stop trying to downgrade chess just because you and your sister didn't fight with broken bottles as much as you did when you played Calvin-ball or whatever.

Crystal Hubbard - Toads are frogs, but frogs are not toads. Poetry is prose, but prose is not poetry. Sports are games, but games are not sports. How ya like me now, Mu! How ya like me NOW...!

Crystal Hubbard - I have a dance that goes with "How ya like me now," but you can't see it. Trust that I'm doing it, though! TRUST!!

Muhammad Rasheed - TOADS AND FROGS ARE 100% COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANIMALS!!!!!!

Muhammad Rasheed - Chess is a sport and a game just like baseball! Stop making fun of chess, you!

HOW DARE YOU!!!

Crystal Hubbard - I can't argue with you when you're hysterical like this. And wrong. Toads are frogs. Frogs are not toads. I have a herpetologist who could explain this to you.

Crystal Hubbard - Or else you could just read the book I wrote about frogs...

Muhammad Rasheed - It sounds like you listened to the same dirty fraggers that downgraded Pluto to "space rock-a-toid" to write your frog book. No wonder you are so disrespectful of chess and all other things good & noble.

Chess is both a sport and a game, and toads are by NO means frogs, just as frogs are by NO means toads. GET WITH IT!!!

Crystal Hubbard - Toads are frogs. It's a fact of science, whether you believe it or not. Chess is a game. Football is a game. Football is a sport. Chess is not a sport. Chess is not a sport. Chess is not a sport. No one ever says, "The sport of chess" because chess is not a sport. Toads are frogs that don't need water for reproduction. That's why they aren't classified as frogs. As for Pluto, Pluto is a damn planet and ain't nobody ever gonna convince me different! If I was on a Chess Team, I'd play the GAME as Planet Pluto...!

Muhammad Rasheed - This post just destroyed ALL of your science categorizing credibility. lol

I'll give you 2 minutes to clean it up.

Muhammad Rasheed - TOO LATE!!!

The 'sport of chess' WINS!!!! #checkmate

Crystal Hubbard - Also, chess is not a sport because there are no separate divisions for men and women, where men get paid a lot more than women for playing the same GAME. Love you, Mu...!

Muhammad Rasheed - Your fake rules as to why certain games shouldn't be allowed in the Olympics are so amazingly arbitrary, yet presented with such convincing liberal-intellectual-I-totally-know-what-I'm-talking-about-for-really-real, that I've nominated you as the first ever Director of the Olympic Games Sport of Chess Committee for 2020.

Congrats! I'm sure you'll be awesome. Try not to break your leg or whatever.

Crystal Hubbard - @Muhammad... Never in the history of the GAME of chess has anyone ever been in danger of breaking anything other than concentration. Chess is a GAME where the greatest physical danger is blood pooling in their asses, or spinal muscle atrophy since they don't even have to sit up straight. Staying awake is probably a challenge too...

Crystal Hubbard - Dear noble sport of kings,

It is your blatant elitism and unpredictable timing that not only discounts you as a sport, but also makes you just about the most annoying game known to humankind.

Like the NHL season, you take just too damn long! It's a misery, sitting in the audience, watching some pointy-headed chair strategist grip his chin between thumb and forefinger, contemplating not only his next move, but his opponent's next move, and his move in reply, on and on for an eternity plus nine hours.

That the combatants SIT in chairs, wearing the same clothes they would wear to a job interview, further indicates you are a GAME and not a SPORT.

Flop sweat produced by apocrine or eccrine glands as a response to mental exertion or the sudden realization that you've left your opponent an opening is not the same as the sweat of physical exertion -- the kind that comes from using your mind as well as your body to solve an opponent in water, or on grass, ice, clay, hardtop, or parquet.

You are classified as a board GAME. You will find yourself in the board game section at Toys R Us, not at a sporting goods store. And why is this? Because you are a GAME, not a SPORT.

So chess...please...get off your high knight and quit acting like you're more important than you are. You're not even the hardest board game out there. Ever played a mancala game? You wouldn't exist without mancala. Mancala is literally your daddy.

Players have died playing mancala! Their brains just explode within their skulls! How many have you killed, chess? You drove Bobby Fisher kooks, but he was halfway there to begin with, so you don't even get full credit for him.

You are a board game, chess. Like checkers. Like Life. Like Candyland.

The sooner you accept this, the sooner Muhammad Rasheed can let go of his misty-eyed dream of seeing you in the Olympics.

Love to all,
Crystal Hubbard
 


Muhammad Rasheed -

(this means war.)


Crystal Hubbard - BRING. IT.

Crystal Hubbard - Also, you should have capped your "t" in "this."

Muhammad Rasheed I DID THAT ON PURPOSE!!!!!

Crystal Hubbard - Did you? Did you, really... 

Muhammad Rasheed yesh.  

Crystal Hubbard - I think we were siblings in a past life. We just have to have been to enjoy this kind of rapport. I wish you lived closer to me. I'd quite like to punch you between your shoulder blades right now. (That's real love. If I hated you, I'd get you in the solar plexus...)

Muhammad Rasheed -

Muhammad Rasheed - Crystal wrote: "Never in the history of the GAME of chess has anyone ever been in danger of breaking anything other than concentration."

Of all those who have ever played the SPORT of chess, I'm positive you would be the one to figure out how to break your leg while doing it.

Crystal wrote: "Staying awake is probably a challenge too..."

Chess is the most intensive strategy game in the universe! It breaks spirits, hearts, and minds... routinely! NO ONE goes to sleep while playing it. EVER! That all by itself qualifies it as a SPORT. Hmph!

Crystal wrote: "Like the NHL season, you take just too damn long!"

First of all, stop comparing the noble sport of kings to that asinine hockey. ew.

Second, the matches only take long if you are in battle (sport!) with an equally skilled opponent.

Crystal wrote: "You're not even the hardest board game out there. Ever played a mancala game?"

Stop. Mancala is no more difficult than checkers (and is played by the low born, no less). Do your insults have no bounds?

I don't have a "misty-eyed dream" of seeing chess in the Olympic Games, I'm just pointing out that it 100% makes sense that it should be included from the perspective of an objective measure, as opposed to whatever you're using to measure it by (no doubt foolishness).


Crystal Hubbard - So let's assume, because I'm perfectly comfortable making an ass out of you, that chess is declared a game that is also a sport. How are you going to mete it out into the Olympics? Just as golf and tennis are sports for a lifetime, chess is a GAME for a lifetime. The youngest chess player I've ever seen compete was four years old. The oldest player I've ever seen was in his 80s.

Would chess have an amateur and open division? Would four-year-olds be able to compete with 80-year-olds? Would male and female players compete together?

Muhammad Rasheed - lol

*ahem*

The Olympic Games is traditionally an amateur level competition. As I mentioned in the beginning -- so that the two accrediting bodies can get pass their petty monopolies -- perhaps the Sport of Chess Olympic Competition can be used as a stepping stone before the 'master' level. Not dissimilar to boxing tradition, they can 'go pro' after a medal win, and go for the higher rankings in their strategic sport.


Crystal Hubbard - You're going to create an international incident when a 7-year-old Russian girl whips the silk/linen-blend pants off a 40-year-old American man in Olympic chess.

Olympic chess...HA!

Muhammad Rasheed - That's a risk I'm willing to take, Crystal, especially since it will more likely be a 7 yr old Kenyan girl's win able to generate that much international butthurt energy.

FOR FREEDOMMMM!!!!!


Crystal Hubbard - @Muhammad... I, for one, never bet against a Kenyan in almost any race. But chess isn't a race. Chess is a game. A game Russians have worked very hard to master for a very long time. Vladimir Putin will rig tourneys so his granddaughter can face America's best -- likely some white guy who's spent his life playing chess and eating paste -- and when Putin's kin loses, Putin will launch nuclear warheads and destroy the planet and everyone on it. All because YOU wanted chess to be a sport. It was a perfectly respected game until you messed it all up. Now, the few humanish creatures scavenging what's left of the world, create a new religion where your image represents the darkness that destroyed the world...

Muhammad Rasheed - Wait...

...what?

Muhammad Rasheed
- First of all, "timed speed chess?" HELLO!!!

Crystal Hubbard - You killed Earth and almost all of its inhabitants with this "Chess is a sport" crazy talk!

Muhammad Rasheed - Second (shush. i'm talking) Putin's evil cannot win. That's why the Kenyan girl's win will generate all that butthurt.

Relax, and just go with it.

Crystal Hubbard - So are you discounting the untimed version of the game for the speed version, just because players would have to move their hand a little faster? Come on, man!

Muhammad Rasheed - No. There will be both speed-timed chess tournaments AND the more deliberate kind. The athletes will have to do BOTH forms, like the runners who have to do relay, hurdles, etc.

Muhammad Rasheed - Plus, your 'uniforms' rant isn't a thing. They have those little sporty Olympic jackets with the logo on 'em they can wear. Too easy.

Crystal Hubbard - There is no comparison between moving just your arm while you sit in a chair and running a relay or jumping hurdles.

Muhammad Rasheed - You only think that because of your commitment to small-mindedness.

No doubt a symptom of all your diving off cliffs and such.

Muhammad Rasheed - Perhaps a rousing game of chess will fix you?

Muhammad Rasheed - Try it.

Crystal Hubbard - I have an enormous cavern of a mind! The Grand Canyon can fit in my mind without touching the sides! I am a pragmatist. And chess is a GAME.

Muhammad Rasheed - Clearly not.

But about 10,000 games of the Sport of Chess just might make this fantasy come true.

Muhammad Rasheed - I BELIEVE IN YOU!!!!

Muhammad Rasheed - Remember! It all starts with the move of but a single pawn!

Muhammad Rasheed - 10,000 pawn first moves later... you will have achieved this cavernous mind thingie!

Crystal Hubbard - @Muhammad... The Kardashians are famous and wealthy for doing nothing of substance. The president of the United States is a pure buffoon surrounded by evil flunkies who do his bidding with no regard for the well being of Americans. Fast food NEVER looks the way its advertised. Male fashion designers and chefs are held in higher esteem than female ones, even though women are the ones from whom men learn to do these things. 12-year-old football phenoms in Georgia are being signed to college scholarships, while academic phenoms have to fight like koi over pellets at 18. So yes. Given these facts, it's entirely likely that chess will be declared a sport worthy of the Olympics. The upside to this is that old people in horrible physical condition will be able to win a gold medal...

Muhammad Rasheed - I disagree. Given these listed facts, it is far more likely that FIDE and the Olympic Games institutions will continue their stalemated squabbles, and the noble Sport of Chess will remain snubbed from its true recognized potential.

A pity. :(

Crystal Hubbard - Chess is fer squares...

Muhammad Rasheed
- Stop pretending you're not a square, please.

Thanks, buddy.

Crystal Hubbard - I'm not a square. I'm a hip cat...

Muhammad Rasheed
- Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...


See Also:

The Confessions of Esmerelda: An Account of the Slave Cat Revolt

The Craziest Eyes of All

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A special thank you for the participation of Ms Hubbard in this playful thread discussion! 

Crystal Hubbard - Author Bio
"I am a mother of four who writes full-time from a suburb outside St. Louis, Missouri. I began my writing career as a newspaper reporter in Boston, but after the birth of my first child, I took a desk job as a sports copy editor at the Boston Herald where I was the only female 'rimmie' on the night desk. The men I worked with were incredible and, unbeknownst to most of them, have served as the real-life examples for several of the heroes in my romance novels.

"Primarily, I write romance novels and picture books, but I've written educational text and young adult novels as well.

"I'm often asked which I prefer writing, romance novels for adults or picture books for children. The question is rather like being asked which of your children you prefer."





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MEDIUM: Scanned pen & ink cartoon drawing w/Adobe Photoshop color.

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4 comments:

  1. I cannot believe that you posted our very personal, very private discussion about chess not being a sport on your blog! How dare you share with the world that you are dead flat stinking wrong about chess being a sport! If I was chess, I'd be really mad at you for humiliating me this way...

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  2. Obviously chess would be very pleased that -- between the two of us, Crystal -- I was the only one that believed in it and saw it for the star it really is, as opposed to your professional haterade.

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    Replies
    1. I don't hate chess. Nothing in my arguments indicates that I hate chess. I love chess. I play chess. I bang at chess! It's one of my favorite games. Tennis is my sport. Chess is my game.

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    2. Hating chess, and hating *ON* chess, are two different items.

      You'd know that if you weren't a square. :P

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