Off-Season Boredom and Petty Retribution
In a blinding flash of epiphany, I realized part of why I’ve been so bored lately, and it made me cheerful and sad all in one awful moment. The real soccer season (i.e. in Europe) is over. Since that wonderful blast of activity last week involving the FA Cup and the rollercoaster Champions League final, there is only MLS for me to follow. And I’m just not excited by the level of play in MLS. I’ve been reduced to reading all the football rumors piped from the BBC. Wolves turned down Miller? Ricketts from Spurs signed on the dotted line? Is Beckham really staying in Spain? It’s all gossip. I’ve been reduced to the football equivalent of the nosy housewife who spies on her neighbors in order to have something to talk about on the phone with her friend Ethel. Today was the most exciting news day I’ve had in a week with that ruling on the Chelsea/Cole affair. Of course, we all sort of knew they were guilty, but that’s really beside the point. The drawback to becoming a real soccer fan, one who follows the sport as culture, is that during the off-season, it’s hard to find excitement.
You’ll have to excuse me for not posting my weight chart yesterday. We USians had a holiday on Monday, and that threw off my awareness of time:
1.01 kg/week with a daily calorie shortfall of -1301.
On a completely unrelated note, I think I should get to take one free swing at people doing stupid things with a whip or plastic children’s sword. Today at Target, in the express lane (six items or less), a fellow came by with three containers of one type and eight containers of another type. So, in case you’re keeping score at home:
3 + 8 <= 6
This man deserved a short but satisfying beating.
On the way into Target, a woman in a large minivan(1) was trying to squeeze between a car blocking traffic to try for a spot and two pedestrians (namely Allyson and me). There wasn’t really space for her to do this because (1) her vehicle was larger than she was capable of understanding with her infantile walnut-like brain, and (2) the car she was trying to force into moving was driven by a driver so focused on the parking spot in question that I think she would have had to have been dragged out of her car LA Riot style in order to tear her expectation-fueled attention away from her intended quarry.
Both women were in need of a short but satisfying beating.
If I were a Jedi, I’d fall to the dark side in about an afternoon or so. Unless there were enough busloads of orphaned children on every street corner in desperate need of saving that might offset all the (deserved) choking and force lightning I’d be meting out.