halloween horror stories

 

"I saw your friends the O'Donoghues last week," said my cousin John with the air of a man beginning a recital. 

He was standing behind the counter in his pharmacy where I had called to purchase elixirs of youth and whatnot.

"O'Donoghues eh? I don't have any friends by that name or indeed any other name," I interjected modestly.

"Gerry O'Donoghue," elaborated the cousin.

"He taught me in third class at Primary School," I admitted, "and many years later starred in one of my plays with Kilcullen Drama Group, albeit unbeknownst to himself or to me, ie he didn't know I wrote it and I didn't the gulpens at the Drama Group were producing it. That hardly makes him a friend. Of course the Drama Group never paid me for the play because it was directed by that great gawdelpus Eilis Philips and she had promised the purported writer of the play she thought she was producing, one Jimmy Kersey, that she would produce his work without any changes, and then went absolutely reliably to the Drama Group archives and accidently and still absolutely reliably retrieved my reworking of the same play which another producer had commissioned me to do months earlier and which had resulted in a completely new play which Jimmy Kersey had expressly refused to allow to be produced under his name, and of course Eilis Philips then went and produced my version word for word, fully convinced she was keeping her promise to Jimmy Kersey not to change a thing in his original drivel. It was exquisite I tells ee. It's the only script of mine that the Drama Group ever even nearly got right. And Jimmy Kersey stood up in the front row after five minutes on opening night and cried: 'This isn't my play,' and stormed out. So I suppose I can claim from the legal point of view it really is my play. I mean we can't leave it an orphan. And Gerry O'Donoghue dancing with the mop and then making out romantically with the mop as a girl comes into the room behind him, with all the vital expressions the actress can do as she drinks in the scene, that was mine of course. And the bit where he does Dirty Harry and Mel Gibson and John Wayne voices in front of the mirror as he tries on a shirt. That was mine. In fact that was me. And the other character introducing himself grandly as Clive Snotley Greene.  Mine. And the bit where another guy says you can't use the word blackmail because it's politically incorrect and nowadays you have to say African American mail. All mine. I sometimes wonder did Dunnywhacks suspect he was reciting my lines while he was making a galoot of himself on stage. My only regret is that my late Uncle Scutch who had asked me to do the re writes, wouldn't allow me to have a sequence where a voracious sensual sexual woman karate chops her way through a table to get at the hero a la the 1970s Hi Karate After Shave ad, and in a later scene the same girl is only barely deterred from advancing on him again when he claims to be a Muslim transvestite and goes into a room to prove it to her and emerges dressed in a full length Burka brandishing a knife and chases her round the room shouting 'Allah u Akbar.' It would have been fun to see what Eilis Drilbits would have made of that one while trying not to change a single word.."

"Let me finish what I was telling you," said the cousin, "Stop interrupting me with your interminable reminiscences. I was saying I saw Gerry O'Donoghue in the street. He had the fishwife with him."

"That's not fair," said I. "I haven't called her a fishwife in 37 years, since 1988 to be exact. And back then I was sorely provoked. If I remember rightly I had greeted her in the street at Logstown with: 'Good afternoon Mrs O'Donoghue,' and she had replied without any preamble: 'I didn't like that article you wrote about the Philippines. And I know what you are. You are a lonely, single man, about 32 years old. You never go anywhere. You have no friends. You don't go to discos. And you think you know something about the Philippines.' Apparently she wasn't joking about not liking my article on the Philippines. I ask you. Defending the Marcos regime against Amnesty International, the Soviet Union and the O'Donoghues. What's not to like? But ah, the O'Donoghues always had a weakness for ad homonem attacks. And her greeting was uncanny. It was like a gypsy curse. It all came true. She was right on every point except that I was 22 not 32."

"You're reminiscing again," said the cousin.

"Sorry. Continue your fascinating discourse about Hare Baithers in their natural habitat. I can't wait to see how it turns out. What were the great left wing power couple doing in the public thoroughfare?"

"Well that's just it," said the cousin. "It was very strange. They seemed to be walking up to lamp posts and pulling at them. Then I realised they were tearing down Irish flags which someone has been sticking up around the town."

"Strange," said I, "I always took the O'Donoghues for closet Rahmen. I'd expect them to be waving Irish flags rather than taking them down."

"It is strange," said John. "I wonder what's at the back of it."

Later that week I drove through South Kildare on my rambles. It was an idyllic sun splashed evening.

My feminist cousin Pauline's house is in the neighbourhood.

On impulse I stopped for a visit.

I met her at the door.

"I can't stay," she said. "I'm going to a bake sale."

"In aid of your writer's group?"

"In aid of the Palestinians."

I bid her adieu and drove on.

All around the hinterland of Narraghmore as I drove away, I encountered little groups of rosy cheeked country people scurrying along bearing cakes wrapped in tin foil.

With some measure of spiritual mastery I resisted the urge to wind down the window and roar: 'Let those hostages go you evil Palestinian ****s.'

The last time I engaged in such public polemic was at a picket line of police employees outside Naas Garda Station during their strike action. I had roared: 'Go back to work you lazy ****s. You're bankrupting the country.' Before that it was picket lines of teachers on two separate strike actions with more or less the same appeal to their better natures as I used with the cops, and prefixed by the same honorific. Before that it was Muslims demonstrating in the streets of Dublin. Each time I seem to have favoured the cee word in my discourse. Mrs O'Donoghue doesn't know how lucky she was back in 1988. I was less vulgar then. But I'm reminiscing again.

And I have grown mellow in my middle years.

Not a word of contention did I raise to Pauline. Not a word did I say to the good hearted burghers of South Kildare scurrying like rats to their bake sale.

Back at Aunty Mary's house I fished out a computer and began a typically intense chess game with Mohamed in Teheran.

I was quite engrossed when my cousin Frances who is a retired Secondary School teacher entered the room stage left, chatting with the aforementioned Aunty Mary.

They sat at the table.

I looked up from my international outreach to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Frances had a black eye.

She was in the middle of telling the aunt how it happened.

"There are Irish flags all around the town," she recounted. "It's an anti immigrant thing. Those right wing bastards are hijacking the flag. I went up to a lamp post to pull down a flag and somehow I fell and broke my glasses and gave myself this black eye."

She actually said 'right wing bastards,' with me sitting right there right handedly, mightily rightily righteously playing chess.

Truly I have mellowed gentle readers.

Silent though I remained, my face did betray the ghost of a smile.

So Frances wasn't beaned by the yobs who put up the flags.

She was beaned by a lamp post.

And if the lamp posts are turning on humanity, where will it all end?

With a little luck, maybe they'll get the O'Donoghues next.

John Carpenter could direct the film version.

how to cheat at chess

The internet website styled Chess Dot Com is purportedly the world's leading online platform for chess players.

Statistics for the site claim over two hundred million regular users. Occasionally there are higher claims of up to 400 million users.

It is a phenomenally successful site.

I would recommend it for anyone looking to learn chess, improve at chess, or test themselves against chess players of all abilities.

I am accused of cheating by other players about once every two months.

Some players would make such an accusation during a game merely to distract you.

Others may be a little neurotic.

Or maybe I'm just good.

I always take such accusations as compliments and often reply via the messaging service to wit: "Sorry it's against my religion."

A fellow from Spain accused me thusly during an intense blood and thunder game last night: "What the hell Bro! You're moving instantly and every move's a good one."

I made a special effort in replying to him as follows: "I'm flattered but I have learned not to praise the morning until I see what the evening brings."

This is a one liner lifted from the German general Heinrici who is reputed to have said it while playing war against the Russian army on the outskirts of Berlin.

I have never been accused of cheating by the administrators at Chess Dot Com.

About once a month the administrators send me an email to award a game to me in which they have adjudged my opponent was cheating.

I'm not sure if this is simply to reassure me that there is oversight from the website's owners or if a genuine cheat has been identified and excluded.

Chess Dot Game claims to have closed the accounts of tens of thousands of users caught cheating in recent years.

There is no point in cheating.

It is a meaningless act.

And in the words of Mr Mackey from the opprobrious television cartoon Southpark: "Cheating is wrong, mkay."

The method of cheating which is said to be most favoured on Chess Dot Com is for a player to have a chess computer programme running while he plays you so that effectively you are playing Big Blue or some such thing.

The meaninglessness of cheating is summed up for me by the analogy of me racing against champion athlete Mo Farah over the 5000 metres and claiming to win because I drove a car while Mo was on foot, or of me fighting Mike Tyson in the boxing ring and claiming to win because I used a machine gun.

The use of machines to cheat is without merit in terms of genuine achievement in any human endeavour.

Chess is only of interest because human beings compete honestly against each other.

It seems to me that the vast majority of players on Chess Dot Com do not cheat and have no willingness to do so.

But those that do cheat, have methodologies beyond machines.

Each chess player is given an Elo points rating, so named for Arpad Elo the Hungarian American chess master who originally devised the system.

Elo points ratings are used by Chess Dot Com and other websites as well as by the international Chess Federation FIDE (Federation International d'Echecs.)

You are awarded Elo points for each game you win.

You lose some for each game you lose.

It is a continual rating.

The central computer at Chess Dot Com selects competitors for you as close to your Elo points rating as possible.

The chess master Anna Cramling says that a 2000 point Elo rating on Chess Dot Com implies you are what she calls a chess expert.

Positions in league tables on Chess Dot Com are decided by a separate points award for each game you win. These are called Trophy points. Unlike with Elo points, you do not have trophy points deducted when you lose a game.

So a high volume of  winning games can put you high up in the league regardless of a high volume of losses.

In the scenario I am citing, cheating involves artificially depressing your Elo points by deliberate losses so that you are matched against players much weaker than your real ability.

These novice opponents will be easy to defeat rapidly.

Trophy points will thereby mount up quickly while you keep your Elo points low by ensuring you have as many deliberate losses as wins.

Another method of cheating is for two or more players to get together and play in relays on one account, allowing them to log up incredible numbers of trophy points.

The most prestigious league on Chess Dot Com is the Legends League which this week has nearly two million participants.

My assessment is that the top five positions in the world on Chess Dot Com's Legends League this evening are held by people or groups of people systematically gaming the system.

I would say the same about most of their top fifty.

The player at the very top of the Legends League whose user profile features a picture of President Trump in a chicken outfit and who calls himself "Oops Wrong Piece," has an Elo points rating right this moment a little above 100.

Not a thousand, a hundred.

This would be considered a beginners' level Elo points rating and theoretically could not arise for someone in the Legends League let alone someone who is topping the Legends League worldwide.

The next four players also have very low Elo points ratings between 400 and 1100 still guaranteeing them opponents well below the level of an average player in the Legends League.

I am suggesting that all of these players or more probably groups of players using the cover of each of the top five accounts to play in relays, are cheating.

I would expect the cheating cabals to register new accounts next week when the League resets and on into the future.

In person to person chess games, cheating is also a part of the landscape.

In 2022 the world champion Magnus Carlsen accused 19 year old American Hans Niemann of cheating against him in a tournament that Carlsen withdrew from in a huff.

Chess Dot Com has said their investigations into Mr Niemann indicate cheating in online games.

Mr Niemann admits to twice cheating in such games.

Fide's investigation declared that there was no evidence of cheating in his person to person clash with Carlsen.

Various methods have been postulated as to how Mr Niemann might have cheated against Carlsen. The billionaire Elon Musk suggested, perhaps mischievously, that Mr Nieman may have had a sensor device in his anus through which an external agent could signal moves to him using vibrations.

The external agent in this scenario would be using a chess computer to come up with his moves.

The conventional more prosaic methods for cheating in person to person games are thought to involve a player going for a toilet break and contacting an external agent for advice through his mobile phone (as opposed to through his anus) while in the toilet cubicle.

Classic chess tournament games are usually set at ninety minutes.

Football players are not routinely allowed toilet breaks or the use of mobile phones during 90 minute international soccer championships.

It is probably past time for Fide and other chess authorities to forbid mobile phone use or possession for players during tournaments. It would also seem sensible for world championship events to stop facilitating unsupervised toilet breaks for participants while a game is in progress.