The World Cup began this weekend in South Africa. This is truly a world-wide competition between national teams from the four corners of the globe. Does a globe have corners?
Two thoughts struck me while watching the USA vs England (Limey bastards! Burn our White House back in 1814 then befoul our Gulf Coast with oil, will you? Fight off the Germans by yourselves next time!) match:
1. Team USA's next match will be against Slovenia. Who, what, and where is Slovenia? Through the magic of the Internet, I discovered that Slovenia sits in the NW corner of the former Yugoslavia and has a population of 2 million, so it has about as many people as Philadelphia. And the USA with 300 million people is going up against these guys? It's like the NY Yankees scheduling a game against Bob's Auto Body from the NW Lehigh Little League.
2. Should Team USA make it to the next round of the World Cup, their most likely opponent is Germany. The expert commentators warned of the great German player Schweinsteiger. Now there is a name. I thought that my years in Allentown had exposed me to all the classically hilarious Germanic surnames. Heffelfinger and Warmkessel always brought a chuckle and led to appropriate nicknames. I worked with Todd "Heffeltoe" Heffelfinger and Wanda "Luke" Warmkessel. Had Herr Schweinsteiger been working with us back in '83 when UB40's reggae hit "Red Red Wine" was all over the airways, we would surely have called him "Schred Schred" Schweinsteiger.
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