cklablog

My friend Natalie tells me that it’s obnoxious to have to register to comment here, to which I reply, “who cares, because no one comments here” to which she replies, “exactly.”

So I’ve flicked some switches, penned some midnight executive orders and now anyone can comment without registering. Those of you who have made official requests for the whereabouts of relatives detained by the state over the last ten years must reapply, as there was a mixup with the official document exchange between Requests and Clarifications and the Detention and Reeducation Bureau.

“I think Cat Lassie’s trying to tell us something! What’s that girl? You’re out of food again?”

THis yeer I have bin reely gud at werk and at home and I always do what Emily sais and I almost never kcik peeches.

Can I has a striker who can finish and two fast, smert centrel defenders, plees? I dont care if they are hansome or uglee, aktually uglee pleese and tall would be gud too. Also, when we get them, can they not reck there car and smash there legs up?

Thank you,

Chris Kennedy

Okay, I don’t know who exactly sacrifieced the fatted (spoon?) lamb to the Football Gods, but this World Cup just dropped into place for the United States.  In the 90th minute against Algeria today, we were 0-0 and had one foot on the plane to go home.  We’d dominated the game, but another horrible referee call had disallowed a perfectly good goal, and we just couldn’t catch a break against an Algeria team inexplicably playing for a draw.

In a jaw-dropping reversal of fortune, we got a 91st minute goal and I’m not ashamed to say that I felt tears welling up in my eyes just minutes before I pointed and laughed at Landon Donovan crying on international television.  Bob Bradley nearly cried during his interview, too.

What a finish.  I’m still blissed out and hope to stay this way until Saturday.

I was glad to see Bill Clinton chatting amiably to Sepp Blatter in the stands, but I think based on how the referees have treated us this tournament, that they must be Machiavellian frienemies in the Bilderberg Group.

In our group, England finished second, and in group D both Germany and Ghana advanced 1 and 2 like I’d hoped.  This sets up for us like so:

USA vs. Ghana > Winner of S. Korea/Uruguay > Final Four.  This is a very nicely balanced quartet, four good teams but no great ones.  Ghana is the only thing resembling a home team right now, because they’re on their own continent, but if this tournament has proved anything, African teams don’t have a home field advantage.

Do you know why I think this is the case?  The Vuvuzela.  I hate them for what they are, but they are negating the home field advantage and absolutely shafting the African teams.  Usually, soccer players know whether the crowd is behind them or their opponent based on the crowd’s singing, chanting and cheering.  When you really need that extra energy, you get it from your home crowd, who are singing their lungs out for 90 minutes.  The best crowds can intimidate the visiting team, as well as bolster the home side.  At this tournament, all anyone can hear is BZZZZZZZZZZZZ*, and it is completely negating the home team’s advantage.   Hoisted by your own petard, South Africa.  Stupidest.  ”Tradition.”  Ever.

England get the buzzsaw quartet, pulling a round of 16 match against Germany and then most likely having to face Argentina if they are going to make it to the semifinals.  That path was the fate that we dodged today, and I’m on cloud 9 right now.  This is not to say we’ll cruise to the semifinals by any stretch of the imagination — with our defense as porous as it is, any opponent can beat us, but the USA won’t see a kinder path to a World Cup semifinal until my grandchildren are middleaged.

Things have really, really fallen perfectly for us.

For the neutral, Germany v. England will be a spicy, spicy affair.  Lots of mutual hate in that one.  I would love to see an England v. Argentina quarterfinal match to hotten it all up even further, but that’s almost as likely as Wayne Rooney pulling his prematurely balding head out of his ginger-haired ass.

Our rivals to the South (Mexico, not Texas) pulled Argentina, so this really can’t get any better for me.  Mexico will get destroyed, and we are so well positioned, I don’t even know what I can dare to dream anymore.

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* Except for when a Mexico opponent takes a goal kick, when you can hear the crowd scream “Puto!”

This made the rounds a while back, but I thought I’d share anyway.  From Nerve.com: How to defeat a homophobe on Facebook

Owned.

Thank you Wikipedia, for your neutrality and thoughtful, reasoned approach.

Click for larger image

That ref was having an awful game, but I wouldn’t have blamed him for our problems until he disallowed a perfectly good goal from Edu. There was no foul, not even the shadow of one.

ESPN have highlights.

What can I say? As bad as we were in the first half, Coulibaly stole the third goal from us. We won that game.

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And the Slovenians go wild:

I don’t think Em has tried to beat me to death even once for watching soccer. What a gem!

Via Soccernet:

JOHANNESBURG — Police say a South African man who wanted to watch a World Cup match instead of a religious program was beaten to death by his family in the northeastern part of the country.

David Makoeya, a 61-year-old man from the small village of Makweya, Limpopo province, fought with his wife and two children for the remote control on Sunday because he wanted to watch Germany play Australia in the World Cup. The others, however, wanted to watch a gospel show.

“He said, ‘No, I want to watch soccer,’” police spokesman Mothemane Malefo said Thursday. “That is when the argument came about.

“In that argument, they started assaulting him.”

Malefo said Makoeya got up to change the channel by hand after being refused the remote control and was attacked by his 68-year-old wife Francina and two children, 36-year-old son Collin and 23-year-old daughter Lebogang.

Malefo said he was not sure what the family used to kill Makoeya.

“It appears they banged his head against the wall,” Malefo said. “They phoned the police only after he was badly injured, but by the time the police arrived the man was already dead.”

I’m sure if she’d known there were going to be four goals in that game, she’d have relented. After all, what would Jesus do if someone was keeping Him from watching His favorite gospel show? Ok, He’d probably beat their head against the wall until they died too, but still.

KU Community Exhales as Big 12 Holds Together

So what do we call ourselves?  The Big 10 is taken, and the Big 14 is still a couple of backroom deals away.

Texas and the Texettes? The Texas Ten?

Howsabout we keep it simple and refer to it as the Texas Invitational Conference (the TIC)?

It’s true that we all seem to be on that longhorn teat, but I’m not inclined to be bitter, as there’s so much obvious relief throughout the KU and K-state coaching staff and leadership.  They are all pretty clear, this is a good thing for all of us, at least through 2020.

And of course, I am enjoying the schadenfreude of watching Missouri beg the Big 10 to come and get them only to be rejected and have to run back hat-in-hand to the protective shade of the Big 12 where they will continue to get beaten like ugly step children.  In fact, they’ll get it worse now that there’s no B12 North in football — they won’t be competing for any more “division championships.”  The D-North championship is called third place, now.  So suck on that, Slavers.

And now that we can do home and away schedules in basketball, as well as play all 9 teams every year in football, the meaning of the conference championship just got a little bit bigger, which I love.  The NCAA tourney and bowls are obviously the glamorous events, and the big money, etc., but I like the idea that the conference championship matters — it makes each individual game more important than just seedings or invites.

Football has had that right for a long time, because in order to be #1 you basically have to go undefeated.  If you are challenging at that level, the individual games are huge.  Basketball, not so much.  1 through 3 (maybe 4) your seed is mostly just for bragging rights, and since the NCAA tourney is the big prize in every fan’s dreams, those other 30+ games you have to play a year to get there just don’t seem as important as they should.

Basketball season just got a lot tougher, and a lot more fun without the two worst teams in the league.

Giant Jesus statue struck by lightning, burned to cinders.

I bet this in the Bible somewhere.