The World Cup/ The Tour De France/ Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Sooooo.... they are related. I do not not know how as of yet but I will try and pull this together before we finish. The U.S. is out of the World Cup and we are on to the semi finals. My prediction of The Netherlands going all the way looks pretty good. (Go oranje). the Dutch are of course a deeply troubled country always laboring under the misapprehension that are part of Germany (a misapprehension maintained primarily by Germans) and the fact that a lot of people (me) get confused when we talk about Denmark, Holland, Belgium etcetera and wonder why they are all not part of Germany. If The Netherlands wins their semifinal then Germany will have a chance to possibly annex them in the finals. Breathing room. With three European teams in we must assume that the boys from Montevideo might not make the finals but it would be a sweet little lark to have the boys from Uruguay steal it all.

The Tour de France has started. Floyd Landis has reprised the role of a low rent Jose Conseco (can there be such a thing) and given about 2,000 interviews laying out in detail how dirty the sport is. The only thing we have learned about doping allegations thus far in all sports is that they are true. Every time. No matter who denies what. Mc Guire, Nolan Ryan, everyone who ever ran in the Olympics, Tiger Woods... all dopers. Probably the entire NHL: does too but i do not even think it is against the rules for them. But Landis filleted Lance and his team mates directly before the Tour and now the Tour has started and, well, frankly based on the number of crashes.... it appears they are all on drugs. So we assume Lance dopes and we assume he will get away with it. I know that I do not care about professional athletes doping. I am not sure why anyone does. People who hold view athletes as role models and encourage or even allow their children to do the same are very misguided and if little Johnny's world is going to fall in because a ball player (or bike rider) is juicing then Johnny has a lot more serious issues then we have tome to deal with today. By the way, despite all the Lance hoopla and his great team, I am predicting Contador does a back to back if he remains uninjured. No one can climb with him right now. If his team protects him, he wins.

That leaves us with irritable bowel and other gastro-intestinal maladies. i know of what I speak having been suffering now, post Wagenfeld Levine and never really recovering and now with my occurrence "presenting" again. They say that stress does not cause my problems but it does cause it to..."present". What a great word. i have lost 30 LBS. I would like to think I look better but I just look week and sick, which sucks. But my pants are falling off me which is kind of cool I guess. Do to my "condition" I am not absorbing vitamins B and D. Evidently I need them to hold weight. They have me one some drugs and so maybe that will help. Perhaps it will have the same effect as doping... or a Uruguayan hand-ball...or doping....or a bad crash in the Peloton.... and a little IRB will deliver me to full health. But probably not. perhaps it will help me "win".... but probably not. Perhaps it will just let me have a solid stool. I bet there are a lot of people who might consider that win.

By the way Netherlands advanced to the finals and that means....irritable bowel or no....I am a GENIUS!

WORLD CUP FEVER! And A.M. Beers!

Sooooooo.... there are some things that are just wrong. Stealing money from people (especially clients), cheating on your spouse, murder (unless the person was a real ass hat), and having a beer at 8:00 in the morning. We know these things are wrong. We do not need religion or anything else to inform us of our sin. yet we still justify various behaviors. Many might look on having a beer (alone) at 8:00 A.M. on Saturday morning to just be pathetic and to not actually be placed in the category of "mortal" sins but these are shallow people who do not really understand what is happening.

It had formerly been my practice to go have a beer with breakfast on Kentucky Derby morning. It seemed harmless and properly celebratory as I would go to Skip and Beverly's Other Place on Lemay Road in South County. (It is remarkably hard to find a place to get a beer at 8:00 A.M. in Kirkwood, Webster, West County or any civilized place. Someone should look into that. Is that really how it is in a socialist country like Barrack Obama's America?... but I digress). Somehow I got out of the Kentucky Derby habit but this morning was special as it was the first Saturday and first 6:30 A.M. World Cup Game from South Africa.

Now a few things about this years World Cup:

1. I really do not give a shit about South Africa and this being the first World Cup on the African Continent and the first real world wide celebration of post apartheid South Africa...blah, blah, blah. South Africa was horrible, bigoted revisable place on a beautiful piece of real estate and how it is just a horrible, miserable and poorly governed place. Freedom is really not free.

2. I have no love for soccer but love the World Cup. A mainline speedball of soccer every 4 years is just about right for me. I am a Lutheran. We really (despite the protestations of certain German Lutherans) do not play soccer. Although we like things that roll and explode, the non collision nature of soccer, though sweet is somewhat circumspect and perhaps a little gay. But the World Cup is COOL.

3. It is nice to get a chance to cheer for Korea. Though any place which borders a country which has a "beloved leader" who routinely starves and or violently kills several hundred thousand of his loyal citizens each year deserves a little support from me.

4. I am cheering of course for the U.S. but believe the Netherlands will win it all this year.

5. How cool is it to start out with the English who we last played and beat 60 years ago in this contest? Settling old scores? Damn right. I hope the Tea Party People take an opportunity to remember what real oppression looked like.

So I got up and had some breakfast and drove around looking for a place to watch this morning and it was remarkably difficult. I finally settled at Hammerstones (Formerly 9th and Russell but still at 9th and Russell remarkably) and admired their very small TV (bars with large screen TV's tend to not really be bars and often call themselves "sports bars" which I find detestable), ordered a Busch (what else) and watched South Korea destroy the Greeks 2-Nil despite a plethora (look it up Larry) of bad calls clearly directed not against the team but against their neighbor the beloved leader who this very morning threatened to turn the capital of South Korea into a "sea of fire". What a guy! But anyway, lots of bad calls against. Korea and in favor of the Greeks. The Greeks! They are broke. They are lazy! They are shiftless and on the cutting edge of leading us into a world wide depression with their corporate welfare state. Where did they even get the money to travel to South Africa and shouldn't the IMF have intervened. If they win a trophy will international bankers seize it and melt it down? They should!

Now in my defense I watched the end of the game and only had one beer before I went into work. I was mildly distracted during the game by large groups of men and woman dressed in pink and grabbing some breakfast before the Susan Koman "Race for the Cure". Many of them had the names of breast cancer non-survivors pinned to the back of their pink shirts along with their race numbers. What was disconcerting was watching them get hammered and chain smoke (I swear every one of them was smoking) as they prepared to support finding a cure for cancer by taking part in the activity which other then genetics is probably the greatest predictor of cancer. Life is weird. Life is good.

"Ole', Ole' Ole"!" Lets enjoy the World Cup. The World comes together to compete and revel in a love of sports and competition and in my case an excuse to sneak a beer at 8:00 A.M. GO NETHERLANDS!