WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INNES PLEDGE?

You may recall that Brattleboro was suggested, by the Bedlam, as a
better choice for USCF headquaters than Crossville. Since Crossville
often has been ridiculed, I figured Brattleboro should be more closely
examined. Also, the Bedlam has frequently posed as the Great Moralist
of US Chess; let's hear him discourse on the homeless camps and other
problems of his home town. -- Neil Brennen (aka The Historian, etc.)

An interesting development among the ratpackers
has been a transference of anger from Phil Innes to
the town of Brattleboro itself. It is as if these worthies
are telling us: the United States is not big enough for
the three of them: ratpackers/Brattleboro/Innes.

The process that has hit upon Brattleboro as the source of
their and Edward Winter's difficulties is worth rehearsing.

If hitherto -- indeed for several years -- the
understanding was that Mr. Innes was the source of
ratpacker discomfiture, this line began to alter -- at first,
almost insensibly, but like the old-fashioned snowball
rolling down hill, it gathered momentum and the gravitas
of rgcp slush and gush.

The first sign that something serious was
happening among the ratpackers was the strange
business about taking an Inne Pledge. The point is
not that no one believed anything would come of the
Pledge but that after so many false promises for so
many years from Neil Brennen and others that they
would ignore Mr. Innes -- well, after all of these
faux promises, they were now shouting out the Pledge
with an absurd, nay preposterous, energy. They were
worse than Ray Milland in Lost Weekend. Milland lied
that he was not drinking, but he never thought to say
anything so absurd as that he did not wish to have a
drink. Yet our ratpackers were telling us that not
only would they no longer quaff from the Innes Cup,
they were positively averse from doing so.

Hah!

After a few days, veteran rgcp-ers noticed that
the ratpackers rose was sick. The petals of the
Pledge were withering. Just as Neil used to killfile
this writer several times a week (unkillfiling during
the interim period between killfile spasms) so there
were occasional renewed affirmations of faith. But
they lacked the earlier fervor that this writer likened
to the hoohah and hoofpoofle inside a prairie preacher's
revival tent.

The ratpackers stood about, hands behind their
backs, heads down in shame, shuffling their rgcp feet
in embarrassment. They they were -- Neil, NMnot
Kingston (our A-rated masternot), Louie and
Rapper-Tapper -- like schoolboys caught peeking
through a hole in the girl's john.

Still, the ratpackers shifted target. First, the
target was Phil; secondly, the target was themselves;
and now, in the last fews days, the target has become
the town of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Neil has begun talking about Brattleboro having
"homeless camps," a kind of Rio de Janeiro of the
Green Mountains. Lula da Silva, meet Ethan Allen and
the Green Mountain Boys.

Yet news reports state that Lula will easily win
reelection as president of Brazil. Why? Every Latin
American populist is hated after his term of office.
Why should Lula be an exception? And here, I think,
Neil has suggested the answer. Lula sent the Rio
homeless to Brattleboro.

If true, then Phil Innes must still make the
case that Brattleboro is better than Cross-to-Bear.
How will Mr. Innes explain the presence of possibly
tens of thousands of Brazilians in Vermont and
elsewhere, who may at this very moment be creating
somewhere in the hidden valleys of rural New England a
second Sugar Loaf Mountain or, still worse, another
Cordova Mountain with a statue of Christ the Redeemer,
arms spread wide, surveying all of the American East
Coast. Too, there will be the accustomed tasteless
Latino Catholic Cathedrals with their wax Madonnas and
bleeding Christs, garish in color, rudely religious in intent.

How does Mr. Innes propose to explain this kind
of threat to exemplary white parents of Ritalin-wrecked
children from Denver, Colorado, who would be as shocked
by wax figures with nails and pegs in their hands and tummies
as they are by any other kind of religious fervor?

The effect on scholastic chess of a move to
Brattleboro could be negative. The Brennen bola is
now in Phil's court, and he needs to give it a thwack.
Or he needs to move the Rio homeless, apparently
currently living in Brattleboro, back to Brazil.

Everyone: ya gotta love those ratpackers.


The Historian wrote:
Chess Freak wrote:
Nudity is a "problem"?

Public nudity in the center of town, yes.

Gee, dude, do you bathe with your
clothes on?

I generally don't bathe in public places. Perhaps your experience is
different?

Good ol Historian the Puritan.

That's an improvement over what the Brattleboro Bedlam calls me.

You may recall that Brattleboro was suggested, by the Bedlam, as a
better choice for USCF headquaters than Crossville. Since Crossville
often has been ridiculed, I figured Brattleboro should be more closely
examined. Also, the Bedlam has frequently posed as the Great Moralist
of US Chess; let's hear him discourse on the homeless camps and other
problems of his home town.