Wednesday 21 June 2000

Pic of the day: After the rains.

Football idiots

Today is, like, the height of summer. The longest day of the year (and those are pretty long even here in southern Norway). Nature celebrated with a light and sound show lasting for several hours. As I walked to the bus, the skies opened and the water fell right down like a sheet, changing the road to a river in seconds. Wowie! And not just water, hot water. It was so warm I could have walked naked. Though the neighbors would presumably have wondered, when the rain slowed enough to see anything, at least.

Or perhaps they would not have noticed. It's football season again, and the steep mountainsides of Norway are echoing with the sound of rolling marbles, lost by 4 million otherwise normal Norwegians.

***

Yes, there is some kind of European football championship, which combines football and nationalism, two already pretty bad mental disturbancies. (Incidentally, this is real football, you know the one where you preferably use your feet to kick the ball, not the gladiator sport where you throw all of yourself at other players. In other words, USAmericans, we're talking soccer. The game the rest of the world plays. Yes, there is a rest of the world, though it does not seem very restful right now...)

Sorry, people, but it is my honest opinion that interest in looking at football is a sign of a damage to the brain's software at least. Look at it: There's about a dozen people from each place running around competing for one ball. I heartily agree with those who say they should get one each and let each other alone.

I mean, hello, it's a game. Would you people wait with your eating and peeing for 2x45 minutes to see me play The Sims live?

Don't get me wrong, I see several positive things about football. It keeps the kids active, strengthening their muscles and training the motor (movement) centers in their brains. They learn to move quickly and to cooperate in a group to catch a moving object, skills that will serve them well when they grow up and need to feed a family by hunting rabbits on the plains.

Seriously, football in moderation is healthy for children and adults alike, giving a good work-out for heart and lungs in a social setting. But as a spectator sport? Hello? Looking at other people running around? I guess it can make some people's hearts beat faster; but it does not build muscle mass, only hypertension in your arteries. It is simply not a rational thing for a human to do. (As if that ever stopped anyone...) What's next, Female Jogging? World class trampoline bouncing?

***

It's times like these when I am reminded just how unusual I am. It seems to me that while I run the same brain hardware as the rest of humanity, the software is seriously different. Sure, it is the same operating system, taking care of generally the same basic needs. It's the application software that differs.

And yet, once I was pretty near normal. I know that when I was a boy, I would sit in front of the radio and listen to the sports commentators on skating. It was not so much the sport, actually, as the atmosphere of listening together with my brothers. And eating home-made caramels. Mmm. Actually, the caramels were the main interest. Still, there was something that could have developed into a serious sports interest. It did not, however.

When I was a boy, I was quite interested in anything with a motor too. When we got a tractor at the farm, I would actually sit in the driver's seat and just look and feel at the things there, without even the motor running, for a long time. And when my brother got a "moped", a very light and rather slow motorbike popular in Norway, I loved to borrow it and roam around. I see kids do that around here these days. Around and around the roads. And I loved car trips, even though I was of course not allowed to drive. We got a car a bit into my childhood, an old van that had problems starting in rainy weather. I'd drop anything anytime to go anywhere in it. It's a safe bet that I would have loved getting my own car and driver's lisence as soon as I turned 18, if I had survived that long.

How is it that some parts of me survived, while others were replaced? I do not know. I still like "super" comic books, which is clearly a spectator sport. Personally I can't even fly, and the superstrength is also conspiciously absent. I could, in the late 80es, program with the speed and efficiency of 20 men. (These 20 worked for a competing company as I computerized the business for a friend, that's how I know.) But that's pretty much it, and I don't even do that any longer. (I burned out.)

When I was a young adult, I still felt some attraction to houses and occasionally cars. But it seems to be pretty much gone years ago now. In other humans, it remains. I have friends who will look at advertising materials for homes or cars or furniture and delight in planning and fantasizing about these. Hmm. Me, it seems that there are gradually fewer and fewer things I desire any longer. Right now, the thing I'd like the most would be a bigger trash can.

And no, I don't have a clue whether Norway won or lost against Slovenia. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough, though. :)