Day 187 - YMMV

rooney misses

Might as well post about the same thing everyone else is concerned with this evening.

We're off to the Lake District in the morning, and have masses to do this evening, but of course we're just watching the football. 

It's half time now, England are 1-0 down, and the pundits are starting to sound a little panicked.

I'm so glad that I don't really care!  

I'm really not that into football - I never watch it at all except for the World Cup and occasionally bits of the European Cup...do they even still have that?  I've no idea!

So I'm not really into football...in fact I'm not really into sports, as I've mentioned before, for various ethical and moral reasons which I'm not about to go into now.

I don't have any great patriotism, and I try to resist all nationalistic conditioning.  I'd rather consider myself a Citizen of the World than align myself with any particular administrative state.   Nationalism and patriotism do far more harm than good, so I have very mixed feelings about events like the World Cup.  

I don't feel patriotic and I don't wish to.  I find it odd the way people talk of the England team as "us"...to me, it's a bunch of people I've never heard of playing a game I'm not that familiar with against a bunch of other people I've never heard of...how do you make the leap to you somehow being a part of it?  

Proud of the team?  You didn't do it, it's not for you to be proud about. 

Proud to be English?  Well you have no right to claim pride for something you didn't do...do you?   It's just something that happened to you...you just happened to be born in a particular geographic location, or to a mother who happened to be born in a particular place.

As the late, great George Carlin questioned, are you as proud of your genetic disposition to colonic cancer?  


The second half has just started, so we'll see if it's the usual disappointmentfest...I'll hold fire before posting just to log the result, for future reference. 

But at this point, England need to be a bit less shit.  If they could think about maybe scoring more and conceding less, that would probably help...doesn't seem likely though.

All my life I've been watching this same scene play out over and over again.

I can remember the 1974 World Cup, although to be honest all I can remember is Johan Cruyff getting a penalty in the first minute of the final against West Germany, before going on to lose. 

But since then it's been the same thing over and over, and England never really look that good...

It's halfway through the second half now, and progressing as expected...that is, going nowhere fast.  England have all the possession, but don't look remotely close to scoring. 

Here's an interesting lesson on perspective...as mentioned above, I only really watch the World Cup.  So I've only ever seen Wayne Rooney play in the World Cup...my word, he's useless, isn't he?  

£250,000 per week he gets paid, someone said...really?!  No way!!  I've never seen him play well, so as far as I'm concerned, he's a total waste of space.

That said, he just scored, although I could have scored that one, and I'm shit too.

Oh well, there you go, situation normal, England going home.  They're saying England still have a chance, mathematically, but it's not going to happen, is it?

So now we have one country full of unhappy people, and another full of happy people.   I just looked up how many people there are in Uruguay, to see whether we've made the world happier or unhappier this evening. 

There's 53,000,000 people in England.  Guess how many there are in Uruguay...go on, guess...
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There are less than three and a half million people in Uruguay...I wrote that in words rather than numbers so you couldn't cheat so easily...I'll give you the numbers now...

3,300,000!!  Tiny country!  

But bigger then England, in footballing terms, apparently. 

Anyway it seems we've got a net result of around 50,000,000 unhappier people than there were before.  Well, I guess not everyone is unhappy, many people, like me, don't really care. 

Let's say there are 20,000,000 more unhappy people on the planet than there were before. 

What was that about sport being beneficial for society...really?

Are you sure?

I don't think it's as clear cut as we're conditioned to think it is...

Your mileage (of course) may vary...