I’m writing this while half-watching the British Open, which has gone into some sort of interminable tiebreaker between the rather dull Ernie Els and the completely undistinguished Todd Hamilton. I’m having trouble telling them apart, actually, because the T.V. is sort of far away and I left my glasses in Australia. Don’t worry, though. This isn’t going to be a British Open column. I already did one golf column this year, and that’s my quota. Wake me up when Tiger gets his swing back. If I wanted to see semicompetent nobodies compete for titles, I’d watch heavyweight boxing. The sports world is experiencing something of an across-the-board slump just now, in my rarely humble opinion. I guess there’s always the Tour de France, but long distance bicycle racing is probably the least entertaining spectator sport ever devised, and that’s beating out some stiff competition. Seriously, I’d rather watch Scrabble. Is Scrabble a sport? I think they show the Scrabble championships on ESPN2, and the point at which ESPN2 draws the line is probably the closest thing we have to a common standard for what constitutes a legitimate sporting event. So pretty much all board games are in, it seems, along with poker, of course. Some people may complain that these sports require no athletic ability whatsoever, and that, by this narrow-minded standard, they should be disqualified. I say that if bowling and golf are in, poker and Pictionary should naturally follow. Hell, ESPN2 showed the Magic: The Gathering championships. And I think ESPN1 broadcast the national spelling bee. I mean, the spelling bee? A sport? This all reads suspiciously like a long-term geek revenge on high school jock tormentors, waged by computer engineers who have surreptitiously gained control of ESPN’s programming. The next thing you know, Sportscenter will be replaced by Stargate SG-1 reruns. Oh well, I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I don’t even watch ESPN anymore. I watch C-SPAN and MSNBC for hours on end, drinking rye and muttering darkly at the set. Politics is the true king of sports, after all, and I have a strong desire to take a Hunter Thompson trip and load my Thunderbird up with Wild Turkey and drive it to Boston for the Democratic National Convention, but for some reason Knotmag stubbornly refuses to give me an expense account. I encourage readers to write angry letters to my editors demanding that they acquiesce. In the meantime, I’ve decided to go on a mini-strike by refusing to use paragraphs. Power to the people. Paragraphs are just another tool of The Man. The Man thinks you’re too stupid to discern transitions and main ideas without lots of little breaks. The Man wants you to think within the box. His box. Free your mind, baby. Kerouac tried to get rid of paragraphs, and the CIA had him injected with live cancer cells, just like they did to Jack Ruby. Both Jacks. You think that’s a coincidence? Maybe you’ve heard of a guy named Jack Kennedy. The CIA and FBI hate Jacks. It all goes back to J. Edgar Hoover, who was, of course, born John Edgar Hoover, but he despised the name John and all its variants, since he was named after his grandfather, whom Hoover witnessed attacking his mother with a Kaiser blade when he was five years old. For the rest of his life, Hoover dedicated himself to destroying Johns of all sorts, and it continued to be FBI policy after has death, thus sealing the fates of John Lennon, Johnny Carson (captured and brainwashed in 1982 in order to insert subliminal disinformation into Tonight Show opening monologues), and, most recently, John Ritter, who was a highly targeted double-John for famously portraying the character Jack Tripper. The only hope for an end to our government’s vicious, indefensible John-extermination policy, is, of course, the election of the two-John ticket in November. Politics, as I mentioned, is the rightful king of sports, so here I am doing my small part for the team, targeting the small but significant demographic commonly known as "dangerous crackpots," who may be tempted to vote for Nader or whatever psychotic the Libertarians are running. So, Bobby Fischer, if you’re reading this, welcome back to the country. I hope they let you register to vote. And yes, of course chess is a sport.