just in case you think i've gone completely soccer/football crazy. i haven't. managed to read a book as well. manifold time by steven baxter. a little too pie in the sky for me. there is some silly probability shell game (seems to me at least) that humanity will be gone in a couple hundred years. this book works around the idea. not that it is without interest -- cool look at intelligent enhanced squid ( but dropped after a point in time), good writing, interesting characters. But all that stuff about deep time, the ultimate fate of humanity and the universe and computers making simulations of us, yada yada, just ain't all that interesting to me. Somewhat hard to relate to one could say. Others I know would say otherwise.

World Cup: another nailbiter for me -- england hanging on to defeat argentina 1-0, bunkering down the last 10 minutes underneath an onslaught -- but only allowing one really good chance. michael own looked awesome through all his play, the score could've been a bit different.

sad to see nigeria go out, but someone had to! I don't thing i mentioned the south korean game against poland last week, one of my favorite games. the atmosphere in that stadium must have been amazing -- the s korean team was pumped. it will be interesting to see how the us does against them wednesday night!

World Cup Two great games Wednesday morning. Ireland coming back at the last possible moment keeping themselves in the running and forcing the Germans to wait another game to go through (with the +8 goal differential they seem hard pressed not to go through unless maybe Cameroon defeats them).
And then the US team playing an amazing game, trouncing Portugal in the first half, then staving off the onslaught in the second half. No doubt, people will say that Portugal played poorly, but it's how you play on game day, not how many times your players were players of the year!

World Cup! two great games yesterday with ireland coming back at the last possible minute to beat germany, forcing the germans to wait another game to go through (with an 8-0 game against Saudi Arabia, they will surely go through on at least goal differential). And then the US! trouncing the Portugese in the first half, and staving off the onslaughts in the second half. Been a while since I've been so nervous watching any sport. The US and their goals looked good. I'm sure people will say that Portugal played poorly. But hey -- it's how you play on game day, not how you played yesterday.

World Cup! Yeah, another benefit of being unemployed -- being able to gorge myself on soccer. The best game so far has been Turkey v Brazil. Despite the controversial ending, where Turkey got robbed out of a tie by a bad call (well bad placement, the foul should not have resulted in a penalty shot). Their keeper had done such an amazing job, to lose on his bad clearance at the end. ugh. Course, I think he should have never got that ball, but oh well. I think they already saw themselves with a tie and lost focus. Alas!
And of course the Senegal v France game was great too! David v Goliath!

RANT (continued): Ok. So back to Attack of the Clones for a moment. If you want examinations of a person exploring there dark side, check out Insomnia the American or version from Norway ( yes that's right, the American version is a remake of a 1997 film, written to be a little less dark ( nice little pun there since both films are pretty blindingly white ), and more redeeming (making it a shortened version of the whole star wars sage ). Or for that matter Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, who also have much better sword fights ( even like myself, not being a big fan of the "flying stuff" ), especially the two between the two female characters. I'm sure there are others out there, I just haven't thought of them.

Cool subversive graffitti!