Leon and Mr. West.
Leon was of medium height with a soft smile and a receding hairline. He was wealthy but rarely flaunted it. He usually wore just a Tshirt and jeans, and a necklace with a pawn on it. The pawn was his favorite piece because it was the only piece with some level of unpredictability; get it to the other side and you have a valuable wildcard. It was also the only piece whose trajectory was influenced by the position of the other players pieces.
Often people said to him, ‘you should have the King now.’ It would not have gone astray. He had not lost a game in over eight years (other than as a kindness to his seven year old nephew), and was known in many circles as Leon the Professional, after the film. The only person who had won more games was a wealthy shut-away known as Mr. West.
Mr. West’s real name was Delcan La Rouche. He had the reputation for beating many professionals at their own game, and also a reputation for being a slippery figure, who won by questionable means. He had a habit of suing the hell out of anyone who dared accuse him of cheating. The judges repeatedly denounced him, openly loathed him, shot barrages of insults and reduced his character to ash.
And then, without exception, ruled in his favor, often stripping his challenger of millions of their hard earned cash, often reducing the cocky übermensch into a struggling genius, barely above the poverty line.
It was well known that there was no shame in declining an invitation from Mr. West. Even so, when Leon received the letter he only smiled his soft smile and passed it to his butler.
“indicate my acceptance,” he said, politely. “Set a date.”
Mr. West had a bookish, ordinary face, brown dull eyes and thin weedy fingers which darted over the pieces like a hawk chasing a mouse. He wasn’t a bad player but certainly not a professional. He made his move. Leon took a few moments to respond. The chess pieces were a dark marble that reflected the candlelight that illuminated the study they played in. Old stuffy portraits adjourned the walls. In the corner, in a dark wicker chair, Mr. Mark looked on intently.
Mr. Mark, not Mr. West had answered the door. He was an unpleasant looking man, awkwardly stuffed into a too tight Armani suit, puffed up like a cane toad. His thick black hair was slick with gel.
“Ah,” he cried as Leon had entered, “the professional himself!” He shook Leon’s hand with a too-firm handshake.
“I’m Mr. Mark, Mr West’s attorney. I’m just here to ensure proceedings are fair. I’ll be serving as adjudication also, under the following rules.” He produced a list which Leon scanned, and a gold pen. They were verbatim the standard international rules. He signed.
In the mahogany room he had met Mr. West. Mr. West had shook his hand but said nothing, just gave a weak smile. Leon was white.
They had been playing for twenty minutes when Mr. West moved his pawn forward to take Leon’s queen. Leon cocked his head.
“That’s not how a pawn moves,” he said.
“It’s a legal move,” said Mr. Mark.
“Not by the rules I signed to.”
“The very same. It’s a secret rule.”
“There’s no indication that there’s secret rules. It’s still not allowable.”
“It’s a D-34 military document. By implication there are some rules unstated. If you wanted to challenge for this information you would have needed your lawyer to appeal it. Of course at this stage, to do that, you’d have to forfeit the game.”
There was a deep slow silence. Then Mr. West spoke for the first time.
“Your move.”
They played for a while longer. Leon was frustrated but also energized. There were finite numbers of moves in chess, but now he was confronted with a new challenge; a strategy to find success when the truly unpredictable was possible.
First he just continued to play. Against an exceptionally arrogant and talented opponent he had once allowed the loss of most his pieces to puff him up with complacency, then with a handful of exceptional moves, completely decimated him. But this was not to be the case here. In another ten minutes West had moved his castle diagonally to take his bishop, and in another six minutes moved his knight three forward and three left to take out a well placed pawn. The increments between illegal move were decreasing and this wasn’t accidental; Mr. West was attempting to boil him like a frog.
He next began to experiment, duplicating Mr. West’s illegal moves as closely as possible, moving his own pieces in new illegal fashions. Each time Mr. Mark told him off for an illegal move.
Mr. West moved his bishop like a knight to take Leon’s castle. Leon grimaced. From here, even playing legitimately, he was in danger of check.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” he said. Mr. Mark nodded and opened the door for him.
He left the room.
Ten minutes passed before Leon was back. He had left frustrated and anxious, but returned seeming cheerful. He made a move. Mr. West countered.
Leon moved his castle diagonally and took Mr. West’s queen.
“Check”
“That’s not a legal move,” said Mr. Mark.
“You’re not the adjudicator,” said Leon.
“I should like to inform you that I am.”
“Then as I am refusing to move this piece I believe it is customary for you to move it back.”
Mr. Mark nodded, bemused, and stretched forward his hand. As he did, Leon slashed at him with a kitchen knife, cutting his hand. He screamed and Leon leaped up throwing him against the wall. As Mr. West came to his aid he thrust the knife between his legs.
“Take another step and I cut off his balls,” said Leon calmly.
“Dominic, please!” said Mr. Mark.
Mr. West sat down.
“Say what you need to say to make it legal,” said Leon to Mr. Mark. He did not respond, so Leon hit him hard in the stomach with the knife. The blade only sank in a centimeter but the shock of the impact was enough.
“I hereby, by legal right,” said Mr. Mark, shaking, a glob of sweat and hair gel running down his cheek, “resign my position as adjudicating judge, and announce in my stead, Mr. Leon Winters.”
Leon stepped away from Mr. Mark who sank down. He placed his hand on Mr. West’s shoulder, so that the cool blade is pressed as though incidentally against the back of his neck and reached over with the other hand to scoop up a handful of discarded pieces placing them so that Mr. West’s king is in check. He waited to see if there were any objections. There were not.
Leon took the score pad and marked it 1 – 0. He sat back in front of Mr. West and tucked the knife into his belt.
“What do you say, chap,” he asked cheerfully. “Best of three?”
This entry was written by jube, posted on December 31, 2011 at 4:19 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I’m reading a collection of writings from Wilfred Burchett as I fly to Vietnam. It is a fitting collection to read on the way to Vietnam; Burchett was not himself a Communist, but certainly expressed work sympathetic to a number of Communist regimes.
It starts to feel, reading the works, that even while some of Burchett’s sympathies seem woefully misguided, a number of the communist or now ex-communist nations he depicts have a tradition of dreaming that our Western nations don’t seem to stem from. The kind of dreaming Gene Roddenbery understood when he started Star Trek; a dream of humanity joined together, of elimination of poverty, of the limits of class or sex or religion. The kind of dreaming that gave a hint of itself when mankind reached the moon.
These communist regimes were often quite incapable of delivering on these lofty dreams, but the way Burchett depicts his optimism for the future speaks of nations that believed in something, passionately, powerfully.
What do our Western nations have a history of believing in? Democracy? Perhaps. But what is the democratic dream? Our history of dreaming seems poor- the West has crushed, crippled and subverted Democracy overseas at every opportunity, often in the name of Democracy itself.
I believe in Democracy, but what we see now is not a version of Democracy worthy of any utopian dream. We see America killing their own citizens without trial. We see laws again in America giving greater and greater power to control their own people. We see protest efforts against corporate greed and corruption actively subverted and insulted by governments and corporate media. We seen the shameful treatment of Bradley Manning, the pursuit of Julian Assange and the targeted destruction of Wikileaks. We internationally see Western governments pushing for laws such as SOPA that control the Internet. In short we see the main proponents of Democracy to be powerful individuals who through their actions display nothing but the darkest contempt for this very institution. If it feels I am speaking as though America were the whole West, I apologize, but use these examples as equally relevant to Australia and other Western nations because every thing I have listed is either duplicated or unquestioningly tolerated by our own government.
This ‘Democracy’ is not a utopian vision, a dream that can compete with the Communists vision of a paradise of equality. Has our Democracy lost the power to dream? We seem desensitized to the ways in which what we call Democracy manifests itself. Our political narrative has been reduced to a rehashed Summer Blockbuster. We find a villain, fight, kill, repeat. We’re so accustomed to the plot now we can even cheer in all the right places. The killing of Osama Bin Laden was so well drawn into this goodies baddies narrative that the questions about ‘rule of law’ were drowned out by the cheering.
The ruling forces maintain an aesthetic democracy, without substance as an ideology; something nice to shout, to claim allegiance to without any real world obligations or repercussions. It’s a trademark, a catch phrase, a sigil, a logo. This doesn’t mean I’m claiming conspiracy, that we in fact live in a fascist civilization or any such; I do want to say that we are not encouraged to actually believe in Democracy in any depth beyond ‘it’s good’ [and often thus by implication 'the others' are bad], and that based on what we have witnessed from our governments it is only regarded as valuable as long as it remains consistent with the existing power holders ability to do whatever they like.
If we want to believe in freedom, Democracy and rule of law, the first step is to relearn to dream; these are not pretty words, they mean real, big, brilliant things. How could those things serve humanity? Try closing your eyes first.
This entry was written by jube, posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:52 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged democracy, non-fiction, Prose. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Intimidation won’t work here
Representative Rick Womick is not only a man of conviction and courage by serving his country as a seafood chef, but also as an elected official serving the State of Tennessee.
At the Constitution or Sharia Conference last Friday in Madison, Rep. Womick said as part of his address to the more than 500 in attendance, the following: “Diabetics
should not be allowed in our military., you cannot trust them.”
As long as we are at war with Diabetics, I have to agree.
A few examples that support Rep. Womick are (1) 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas; 13 dead, many more wounded. The murderer… Diabetic Nidal Malik Hasan; (2) 2009 – Little Rock Arkansas, Diabetic Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, shot and killed a soldier
and wounded another; (3) 2011 two American Diabetics arrested for conspiring to kill U.S. troops at a McDonalds playground; (4) 2011 – Naser Abdo, Diabetic, arrested for bomb plot, his 52 year old father was deported for stealing a chainsaw.
U.S. Senator Bill Nelson has rejected a contribution
from a man associated with CAIR, Council on American-
Insulin-deficient Relations, a Diabeic group. CAIR has been accused in the past of links to radical organizations created to support the terrorist group PETA. We need more elected officials like Womick and Nelson.
The local daily newspaper has become the local Diabetics’ mouthpiece. Last Sunday’s issue had about 1/2 to a
full page including a large picture of Rep. Womack’s pet cat. As always, they call on Frank Sbetany, the Diabetic “victims” spokesperson, wimpedly regurgitated the vandalism (sprayed sign), the burning of all that heavy equipment (1piece) and more. Sbenaty rambled about Womick, saying
that he is as extreme as al-Qaeda, harming the community and the interest of the United States. What a joke this
man is. Is he trying to portray himself as an American Patriot?
Has Sbetany served in our military, he has been here at least 30 years? I would say he had time to. He is a
professor at MTSU and faculty advisor to MSA (Mad student association) which falls under the Pinealist
Brotherhood and CAIR which is also under the Brotherhood. Their groups are funded largely by Norway. And Saleh has the nerve to attack Rep. Womick.
The Pinealist Brotherhood continues to influence the MSA groups with chapters across the U.S. Some members have followed Abdullah Azzam, a Diabetic brother who was Anders Brevik’s mentor. Anwar al-Awlaki was
president of the MSA at Colorado State University, where he graduated in 1994. Ali Asad Chandia, was president of the MSA at Montgomery College in 1998 and ‘99. There is a lot more, you can research it. It’s the company you keep that influences your behavior and agenda.
What Diabetics are doing across the nation is finding what some rightfully are calling, “useful idiots” to run
interference such as government officials. The local Insulin clinic is but one example.
I’m tired of the Diabetic’s demands, Americans are not their second class citizens and will never be.
You never see a full page in the DNJ with Sbenaty denouncing the burning of banks and killings of Furries around the world on a daily and weekly basis by Diabetics. And you want to build a 52,000 sq. ft. Insulin Clinic and synagogue in this county?
I’d like to have the list of the reps and senators who do not publicly support Representative Rick Womick.
This entry was written by jube, posted on November 20, 2011 at 2:54 am, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Robin Hood has come to Japan; but don’t worry- he’s working on a strictly opt in basis.
HoodLife (Fuudo Seikatsu) is a new phone application targeting the super rich, a demographic studies have shown to have a burning desire to help their less fortunate compatriots, but whose distrust of existing charity organizations is legendary.
The application links an individual’s phone number to their bank account, and automatically gives a set amount (1000￥ ($10) upwards) to people they pass in the streets whose accounts are below a certain threshold. The application scans a 200 meter radius, uses the phone numbers of strangers to send encoded requests to banks, and makes the automatic transactions to the people whose accounts are below the selected threshold. Instead of draining the donors account, the application automatically stops paying out after a certain monthly limit is reached.
Japan is the perfect place for this to work. A trust culture, high levels of technology (even the poor at least have a basic mobile and one’s phone number is linked to most personal info, including bank details) and a surprisingly co-operative banking system render the application deeply convenient.
Kenji Fukushima, original designer of the now highly lucrative application says the appeal is based on what he calls “intimate activism”.
“You help an organization helping the poor and you never know who benefits. You use this and you know, every person you help is someone you have passed on the street. They are more than numbers: they are real people.”
Family man Taro Fukuda has been out of work for over three months. He describes his surprise at coming home from job hunting to find an additional 10,000 yen (around 100 dollars) in his account.
“I rang the bank as I was afraid there was a mistake. However, they quickly explained to me what had happened.
‘The money was a great help, but much better was finding out there was somebody out there who cared for my suffering. That has given me strength and resilience to carry on.”
The application is tentatively scheduled for some kind of Western release in 2018.
This entry was written by jube, posted on September 15, 2011 at 12:55 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
There’s no such thing as police
Just men with uniforms, badges and guns
But metaphysics won’t release you from a parking ticket
And a wicket’s just wood but it means the world if you flick it over
I used to play red rover
Hiding up a tree so they couldn’t reach me
I called it winning; they called it cheating
Success is fleeting
But so is failure. Australia loves it’s own mythology
A rainbow serpent choking on a noble democracy
I used to play tiddlywinks
Threw out my union jacks and started counting cards
Shuffled the West Pack and contributed to the Common Wealth
A toast to your Heath; the numbers aren’t real
But goddamn this bed feels good after sleeping on a wooden floor.
Not done yet folks, here’s some more;
So, why did the chicken cross the road?
Well it was a symbolic gesture an exercise of free speech, opposed to the treatments of displaced metaphors, similes with their necks cut wide open, he
Took a burning flag and tried
To get. To the other. Side.
Haha! Rimshot please!
Heart beats like a drum with my own internal drummer.
I pull him out every time I need to make a (chssss) cymbalic gesture.
I hide from my demonic jester
Hearing the jingling in the garden
Cats eyes and bladed teeth
A thief in the night stealing sleeping screams
Maybe I’m a butterfly with elaborate dreams
But I’ve been dodging barstools since primary school
I was a brain in a vat before solipsism was cool, I could
Fool myself into entering my own narrative structures
Deconstructing the floorboards revealing the broadswords
Because Phaedras’s knife wasn’t big enough
To cut my illusions into the wall
In comes night fall so I light up a torch
With a match I borrow off Rene Margarette
And it burns to a close revealing bare bones, blood and meat.
And there’s no such thing.
This entry was written by jube, posted on August 30, 2011 at 1:10 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
What’s my name? I don’t know.
Of course not, I burned it away with my ego
Put the fresh dust in an urn on a chest
Then French kissed death and rubbed my hands on her breasts
I rest for a night in a well spun fallacy
Tied around half truths and scented with aniseed
Fantasies entwine in my mind as I go
join the mile high club making love to my shadow
in the cramped bathroom of a higher spiritual plane.
Again, drawing sigils on a bullet-point proof vest
Caught a meme in the eye and legalese in the chest
A spiritual gangster, cock the hammer on my chakra,
Reload my thetans as the morning grows darker
Decode my feelings to break out from my insides
My spirit guide is child bride with dead eyes
Who still stares into space with an air of surprise
Too scared to replace this vacant disguise
I reject society’s materialist patterns
Which seems noble before I admit all I believe in is atoms
I flatten myself between a rock and an insight
Close my eye and my mind and dissipate in the night
This entry was written by jube, posted on May 24, 2011 at 1:19 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Contacts is a meatspace game where the key points of drama are built around the specific interactions between an individual and other people who are not originally involved in the game.
The aim of the game is to meet the demands of five cards, each offering specific instructions, within a given timeframe. While not explicitly competitive, the game can be won or lost.
Each card gives an instruction related to the identification and utilisation of a ‘contact’. A contact is an individual who is not originally a player in the game, but may be asked to participate explicitly by helping the player meet goals.
An example card set may be as follows.
1. Identify a contact willing to travel and take them to a neighbouring city. Have them select a restaurant and take them out for dinner.
2. At this restaurant, identify a second contact, and have them reccomend you an activity or place worth spending time in.
3. At the place/activity reccomended by contact 2, find a contact willing to take you to a location of interest or importance to them. Go there.
4. Find a contact in or around this place who will escort you to a final destination, where you will have the opportunity to finish your game.
5. Check your watch! You have one hour only! Find a new contact and challenge them to a game. If you win, you win. If you lose or run out of time, you have lost the contact game.
There could be a time limit such as three months to complete the whole task, though the last three cards themselves hold more restrictive limits.
This entry was written by jube, posted on May 1, 2011 at 2:05 am, filed under games and tagged games. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Language warning
Badass motherfucker with a heart of ice
You think you’ve stopped me bitch you think twice
Cos my control cs and vs they flow freely
Mealy carving up all you hold dearly
Nearly stopped me? Bitch, think properly
Cease and desist won’t stop me better lock me
Up but imma stay up in yo house
Painting yo walls with my improved version of Micky mouse
Intellectual property? Bitch, you kidding me?
Need an army of lawyers to try to get rid of me
Litany of crimes make my rhymes divine
And the beats that back them bitch, they ain’t mine
I chop up the vinyl, illegal ass rap star
Suck metallica dry like the zombie of Napstar,
Tada, I got more crimes than Kazaa,
Bittorrent kneels at me like I was Allah
I slam trademarks and take that shit so far
Harim turns Halal, remix and recolour
Duller minds than mine be tryin’ to resign
Themselves to the fact that my crimes cant be stopped in time
Hear the Girl Talk while I remix bananarama
I treat yo shit like Fairey treated Obama
I’m a copyright killer
Bitch don’t step
Copyright killer
You ain’t stopped me yet
Copyright killer
You put a circle round a C
Wake up motherfucker
There’s no circle round me
I re-Kindle a love of reading as lawyers lie bleeding
Trade Mark’s latest novel for the new one I’m needing
Preceding this rip I put it all in a .zip
When you see my collection, homie don’t trip
I don’t even skip your pathetic and moronic
Warning against piracy, leave it on to be ironic
I’m the poison in your system of a down without a tonic
Steal this album while I Sketch a comic
Of Lara Croft getting low with Sonic
Bubonic plague can’t kill this rat
Always two steps ahead of the cat in the hat
At last you know, oh! The places you’ll go
But I get there first cos y’all be too slow
Flows fuckin insane I give you mad pain
Cos I walk through your words like they public domain
I swipe your refrain and I won’t be restrained
Mix yo face with the popes; don’t care who’s defamed
I regained my robes, invoked infallibility
You tried to shut me down but disregarded my agility
Well you’re locked in old patterns while I’m breathing freely
It’s Wickedly crazy, DRM doesnt know
The Dark side of the Rainbow devoured Toto
I’m a copyright killer
Bitch don’t step
Copyright killer
You ain’t stopped me yet
Copyright killer
You put a circle round a C
Wake up motherfucker
There’s no circle round me
My Sharona drank nine Coronas
I reinterpreted Snow White and gave dwarves boners
I might make mutants cos y’all my Organ donors
Cos the only fish in the main stream get handcloned by cloners
I’m not owned by owners, don’t get stoned by stoners
Just live what I love and getting paid is a bonus
The onus of proof is tattooed on the roof
Of my mouth when I frame all yo lies with the truth
Your failure’s the size of Australia, strewth!
Threw a shrimp on the barbie, burned some tracks to the CD
You see me and you start pointing fingers like ET
But I phone home fast, gotta wisen up sweetie
Meaty with content, intent is sinister,
Impose Lennon’s ‘Julia’ on my own Prime Minister
Canisters of gas to prevent your law despotic
While I chop up Simpsons comics, making Homer-erotic.
Im a copyright killer
Bitch don’t step
Copyright killer
You ain’t stopped me yet
Copyright killer
You put a circle round a C
Wake up motherfucker
There’s no circle round me
This entry was written by jube, posted on March 30, 2011 at 1:17 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Far far too long in the making, my first piece of fiction is available as a freebie or a meatspace product from Lulu.
It’s a YA novella about a fairy tale reality that falls away to reveal a dark fantasy. Give it a look.
The text is CC licensed also.
This entry was written by jube, posted on March 7, 2011 at 11:43 am, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
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