Situation Normal: All Fall Down

Was it not Fitzgerald in his magisterial grave-robbing of Omar Khayyam who produced the line:

"The Bird of Time has but a little way to flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing"

(Question mark down here somewhere. Can't find anything in the AP Stylebook to help me out.)

Of course, it was! I don't ask any rhetorical questions the answers to which I haven't googled.

Anyway, the point is that in my new identity as the Speedy Gonzalez of bloggers, I need quick hits and simple ideas.

Here's one: Though playing the game is not the only way to produce interest in a sport, it certainly helps. Thus, a factor in America's indifference to "world football" -- oh we call it soccer and how dumb we are -- is the fact so many of us haven't played it.

Here's my idea. All it needs is millions of dollars to implement. Create age-appropriate skills-appropriate soccer leagues in which Americans can learn soccer by doing. I imagine myself placed in a group of fat old out-of-shape guys and gals who are then taught the game of soccer, which we would play and play and play on weekends and perhaps in the long evenings of summer.

The point is that we would all be equally decrepit and thus we would be competitive if laughably incompetent. "Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast," we would call out to one another. Afterward, there would be adult beverages.

(Oh yeah. We would all have to take a 70-question inventory to determine fundamental decency and niceness. Send the assholes over to the Ann Coulter Debating Society.)

And thus through happy play we would learn enough about soccer to understand that something is happening when nothing appears to be happening.

As in baseball.


And here's a Whoa Dude moment. So where did the word soccer come from? Blame the English!!

rdorigins.org
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordors.htm
"Soccer
Soccer is an abbreviation for Association Football. The Football
Association was formed in London in October 1863 when representatives
of eleven clubs and schools met in an attempt to standardize the rules
of the game. One of the rules prohibited the carrying of the ball, a
rule that would lead to the Rugby-oriented clubs leaving the
Association several months later. The name Association Football was
coined to distinguish it from Rugby.

By 1889, the abbreviation socca' was in use, and the spelling soccer
had made its appearance by 1895.