Soccer. Fussball. Futbol. Call it what you will, but don’t ask me to get it. I’ve tried to assimilate, even bothering to learn the rules, and to participate in a soccer tournament last summer (a losing effort, obviously). It was a curiosity as I was a wee lad, the sport that dare not uses its hands, but now it seems there’s soccer everywhere. When the local team wins, the locals here in Dogpatch lose their shit, and drive around town honking their horns and shooting AK47’s in the air like a Turkish wedding. There’s not much occasion for that, luckily, as the Augsburg soccer Club is a miserable failure. And anyways, it’s not like there’s any Augsburg natives playing for them, the team being mostly manned by drunken Chinamen, so what’s the big deal? Like American professional sports, I assume it’s a celebration of the winning style of locally owned and operated businesses, instead of a confirmation of the superiority of local gene pool in all things kicking.

Anyhoo, I’m getting pretty drunk now, and the yahoos in the bar here are getting roudy, owing to a 30-inch plasma in the corner showing the eagerly awaited Milan vs. Tobago game. I should quit now, and start rooting for Tobago. If I knew what the flag looked like, I’d strip off my shirt right now and paint it on my hairy, distended beer-gut.