U.S.A. in 2010 - the athletic team we support will score more points than our opponents

Thanks again to youtube, here is some classic Maryland Terps footage. It is true: “The athletic team they were supporting did score more points than its opponents.” It is also undeniably true “There is no I in Sofa,”
All you terps alumni can be proud.


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Ok, I’m sure many of you got that idiotic “Evolution of Dance” video sent to you in the past couple weeks. I think four different people sent me that video of some dorky white guy pulling off every dance move invented throughout the last thirty years. This version alone got over 1 million views.

Well here is the “Evolution of Dance” for the “rest of us.” I believe this video has captured all of MY dance moves through the years...unless it is 1:30 am and I’m hammer-timed and decide to bust out the back that azz up.

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I have the perfect accessory for watching my video ipod on the metro.

So what if I look like some kind of Star Wars extra, nobody will distract me from my downloaded copy of The Office, and that unshowered homeless meth-addict will not get all up in my grill to try to sneak a peak.


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In case you were wondering just how astoundingly stupid the conservatives running our country actually are -- the Senate came within one vote yesterday of passing a constitutional amendment to ban something that hurts nobody - just to prove how damn patriotic they are - flag buring. America... Fuck Yeah!

I guess after Congress failed in trying to change the Constitution in order to more easily discriminate against fags, they turned to the next most important issue, protecting our mighty flag. Because the real problem is not our soldiers in Iraq being burned, instead its our flags being burned, pretty smart congress.

Although the amendment barely failed, at least I can see why they brought it up. According to the Post, there has been a “33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.” May it is a problem, a 33% increase, this must be stopped. But then from the post... . “The number has increased to four, from three.” Wait a second, these morons are trying to change our constitution, which has been rarely tinkered with in our whole nation's history, in order to stop four moronic protesters a year, from burning a piece of cloth. Wow.
Unfortuneatlely for all the brave conservative supporters, we were not able to join the other three mighty freedom-loving nations that have already enacted such bans...China, Iran, and Cuba
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I was already terrified of snakes on a plane, and now Colbert points out that according to the conservative Wall Street Journal, I must also be afraid of snakes in a marriage.
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I now present everyone’s favorite new game show: Coulter vs. Hitler
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Score another one for David Cross. In another shocker, it turns out that self-proclaimed redneck comedian Larry the Cable is not really a redneck, that is not his real accent, he is not a cable guy (shocker) and his whole act is just him trying to make some money by convincing middle america that he is a high-larious blue collar redneck, with a bunch of cool fart jokes. Check out this side-by-side comparison with his old act as some kind of east coast liberal.
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The rest of this post will be dedicated to the greatest sporting event on earth – the World Cup. The World Cup only comes around once every four years, so if you are a soccer hater -- shut up, deal with it for a couple more weeks, and enjoy the next four soccer-free years until 2010.

While the World Cup is the greatest, there are a few things that I would like to change about international soccer. What follows are my four main areas of concern, or formal complaints that I would hereby like to lodge with FIFA, soccer’s international governing body. Just remember I am making these criticisms out of love for the game – not like the idiotic article I will profile after my four issues.

1) Diving. The swan diving and fake injuries after every bit of minor contact are out of control in international soccer. There is no way that MAGIC SPRAY can really work. Seriously? Magic Spray? (Watch any game...one second the guy is being carted off on stretcher, then he is sprayed with the magic spray and.... BOOM, back on the field running). Soccer players are super tough, but when everyone is caught up in this acting nonsense, in order to draw foul calls, they look like humongous jackasses. Win like a man, lose like a man, but quit the diving.

2) Time keeping. The time-keeping redonkulous. There is no rhyme or reason to injury/stoppage time, and the ref makes no signal when the clock is stopped. Why not just have the ref, raise his arms to stop the clock during any stoppage in play, and the time keeper then press the little button on the clock to stop it ticking - just like in basketball. Instead, the referee is the only person who knows how much time is left, and he clearly fudges it – randomly adding 2 or 3 minutes to most games. Why is this the only sport in the world that cant use a clock to countdown the time? Instead the clock counts upward and the only person who controls the clock, makes no mention of the time to anyone else. This is incredibly stupid, especially when the refs often let a play continue and until the ball is eventually played out-of-bounds and then call and end to the game. Clearly the ref was just making up the time left in these instances... Nonsense.

3) Penalty Kicks. There is a large box in front of the goal and all major fouls in this box result in a penalty kick. OK so far, so good..... except that the box is not entirely directly in front of the goal, and wraps around the sides. Also it makes no difference if the player is in the far corner of the box and running AWAY from the goal when he gets fouled -- automatic penalty kick. After the foul, or dive (see complaint #1) the player is awarded a penalty shot from point blank range that will most likely result in a goal. The percentage of penalty shots converted in-game is about 5,000 times higher than any other type of shot, and in a game in which the average number of goals is somewhere around 2, awarding a penalty kick for every foul in the box is just stupid. What we are left with is referees “deciding the game” (See, Ghana v. USA, Socerroos v. Italy).

4) FIFA subbing rules. For some odd reason, international soccer has decided to allow only three subs per game. The result is that the last ten minutes of the game – which should be the most exciting – often involve players who can barely make it from one side of the field to the other. Also if there are unforseen injuries, some teams are left playing a man down because they “used up” all their subs. I have yet to hear a good argument for limiting the number of subs to only three.

Despite these complaints, I still love the game, and I would rather watch 4 consecutive zero-zero ties, than sit through nine innings of even the most "exciting" baseball game. So on with the blogging and redonkulous linking
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As opposed to my reasoned criticisms of soccer, I will now show you what happens when an esteemed conservative publicaiton, the Weekly Standard, attempts to critique soccer. Bullshit ensues. These clowns in a respected conservative publication actually believe that soccer is part of a liberal plot to pussify America and replace their boring-ass baseball. If you don’t believe me, here is one such direct quote:

“DESPITE HEROIC EFFORTS of soccer moms, suburban liberals, and World Cup hype, soccer will never catch on as a big time sport in America.”

Suburban liberals are trying to foist soccer upon us? About the only thing that the article gets right is the last paragraph which states that doooonkeys would be money at soccer.
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The freakonomics authors, who apply economic theory in kick-ass real world applications, have now studied penalty kicks and determined that while many more kickers use the strategy of kicking it down the middle, this is not employed as often as it should, because you look like a freaking idiot on those occasions when you don’t score. I buy that theory completely. Those in the world cup would be merely be seen as chokers in their home countries if they missed wide on a penalty shot, but if you kick right at the goalie the shame is probably tough to live down.
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Finally, in an amazing video there is a young Brazillian striker who does an amazing Seal-like March with the soccer ball, and it looks impossible to stop. The guy can flick the ball up to his head and run down the field balancing the ball. He has claimed that the only way to stop him is to foul – and the defenders in this video seemed to have bought that theory, because he gets destroyed many times. Yeah, watch these fouls on the guy and tell me soccer is not a full contact sport/
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Although, we lost last week, I was sure right about Dempsey, he is the future of US soccer.