Isn't it very strange that humans would play a game that doesn't allow them to use the appendages with which they're most dextrous?
No, actually it isn't remotely close to being the sort of thing that a reasonable person would contemplate considering strange, even for a little bit.
Lots of people may find soccer strange. But anyone who finds it strange because you can't use your hands obviously hasn't spent much, or any, time thinking about games.
I mean, isn't it strange how in basketball you can only move the ball by bouncing it up and down? It's much easier to carry it.
Those aren't analagous, as you can surely see.
You know, if you had to go off on an indefensible hare-chase about sports, you should said that golf is not really a sport. Probably still indefensible, but less so.
Could it be that certain US citizens have brains which operate on too unsubtle a level to appreciate the world's finest game?
Come to Europe, where we enjoy sport for its own sake, and don't feel the need to mix it in with poltics.
Surely you understand the basic principle, which is that we set ourselves restrictions in games and then challenge ourselves to succeed in spite of them.
True. And it would have saved Arbusto Contra Mundum the bother of trying to find any allies at all in the entire world, because everyone would agree that it would be a hopeless search. Even in Britain, given the choice between America and Football, no one would have to think twice.
And if you doubt Europe's ability to deploy large numbers of combat troops rapidly across long distances, just think about what happens every World Cup.
It's very, very rare for a game not to involve the arms/hands. Aside from track and field. I can't offhand think of another game with points that is like this.
Also, shouldn't we declare war on the metric system before we attack soccer?
But, baa! To declare war on the metric system would be to declare war on SCIENCE!
we set ourselves restrictions in games and then challenge ourselves to succeed in spite of them
Yes, but there's a difference between making it more difficult to do something with your hands, and forbidding their use entirely. Watching humans playing soccer is like watching a jumping toad contest in which the toads have their legs tied.
One more thought. Only Americans call the greatest game "soccer''. Please use its proper name - FOOTBALL, And hey - we the English invented the game - along with golf, tennis, badminton, billiards, et. etc.
I've been thinking again about soccer, and I'm disturbed.
I've been thinking again about biscuit conjuctions, and I'm frugal.
If you're so sure, email me a question only the real Standpipe could answer.
Also, should I assume that your answer to this question is now inoperative?
While I agree with most of Peter's sentiment, I'm skeptical of the claimed separation of sport and state in Europe. Certainly there's more than footie to the bitter rivalry between Celtic and Glasgow Rangers, as well as Atletico Bilbao's tradition of only employing Basque players. I mean, AC Milan is owned by the Italian Prime Minister for cripes sake!
Back on topic...it's the inherent difficulty that makes the game so transcendant when it's played well. Not everyone can dunk like Dr. J and not everyone can have the ball on a string like Zidane, but watching the best overcome what should be the laws of physics is a thrill to behold. I won't defend (or watch) ugly, amateurish soccer anymore than I would a pickup game of hoops at the YMCA. However the sport can, when played at the highest level, be pretty fantastic.
RE 13
I want the US to win the world cup just for the resulting "Football has a new name" articles.
Please use its proper name - FOOTBALL
With all due respect, fuck no. Football is a sport unto itself here, and, I might add, one that is vastly more enjoyable as a spectator sport than soccer.
When I was a kid we played soccer against a team that had a kid with no arms. We thought that was totally unfair.
Don't do it, SB! You may say that the pleasures of the old "Standpipe Bridgeplate" moniker will be available to us in memory, summoned up with a touch by the new dry-as-dust "Standpipe." But what about the children? Will our children ever know "Standpipe Bridgeplate"? We must fight this shortening now, for posterity's sake. It's like in vitro meat.
I initially read 23 as "I hate you, SP." Made less sense, but funnier somehow.
I only hate him if he was the armless kid.
It looks like people feel strongly about this. Names and authenticity are so confounding!
Standpipe Bridgeplate is a lov'ble cockney sonnavagun down on his luck but quick with a pint and a joke. Standpipe is a mirthless scrivener quietly rotting away in the bowels of some bleak and lightless cubicle farm. Bridgeplate is a merciless paramilitary killing machine with only dim memories of his once-human past.
Toads, since you know so much about the Bridgeplate, tell me this: where has Alameida been?
I must second apostropher's notion in 21. I understand why foreign nationals may want to continue using the term, but when folks from the States try it, there's always an air of trying-too-hard-to be-Euro. We're developing our own soccer culture, and we'll do it with a different name, thank ya very much.
Sorry, please return to regularly scheduled debates on handle usage. ;)
Who is the mysterious Isle of Toads? Is Toads a he or a she? Is Toads, or has Toads ever been, affiliated with U. Chicago? These are all questions posed in this comment.
Not everyone can dunk like Dr. J and not everyone can have the ball on a string like Zidane, but watching the best overcome what should be the laws of physics is a thrill to behold.
It's called "the beautiful game," Ogged. And I would agree that it is beautiful because it is so hard.
Unitas Unilateralism. We'll tell the world what fucking football is or isn't. Holy shit, I feel like Toby Keith.
it is beautiful because it is so hard
Thanks, ac.
And tell me that Bill Bradley couldn't have won the 2004 election with a basketball-centric platform.
Soccer forbids the use of hands.
Hackeysack forbids the use of hands.
Soccer is morally equivalent to soccer.
All hackeysack players need to be punched in the nuts.
I leave the remainder of the equations as an exercise for the student.
All hackeysack players need to be punched in the nuts.
The female hackeysack players, they should be punched where?
In what would have become their nuts if they had realized their full human potential, Aristotelianly speaking.
All hackeysack players are douchebags
All douchebags are male
Female hackeysack players grow testicles
No offense or anything. Just pointing out some logical conclusions.
Totally off-topic, but I thought I'd point out that this AdRants post manages to provide the conceptual continuity between these two Unfogged comment threads.
Is it really a "common" sexual hand gesture? I suspect that if you pulled that one on the average American woman, you might be introduced to another common sexual manuever: the biting of your cock.
Yes, but there's a difference between making it more difficult to do something with your hands, and forbidding their use entirely. Watching humans playing soccer is like watching a jumping toad contest in which the toads have their legs tied.
You're just perverse.
I can't believe I went all the way to Hyde Park to go to the library, and the first place I go is ... the linux lab.
Only Americans call the greatest game "soccer''. Please use its proper name - FOOTBALL, And hey - we the English invented the game - along with golf, tennis, badminton, billiards, et. etc.
Actually, 'soccer' comes from an acronym for the sport's early association in England, something like SOCA or SOCCA.
Play ultimate.
It's called "the beautiful game,"
By the Brazilians; I don't think anyone calls what most Europeans play beautiful.
1889, socca, later socker (1891), soccer (1895), originally university slang, from a shortened form of Assoc., abbreviation of association in Football Association (as opposed to Rugby football); cf. rugger, but they hardly could have taken the first three letters of Assoc.
There's a really good part of Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue about words and phrases which the English dislike and dismiss as new-fangled Americanisms but are in fact elements of old-fangled British English which has faded out of use in the UK.
The chapter on swearing in that book caused me to laugh so hard that I had tunnel vision from lack of oxygen.
You can't argue with that, and there's no way that a steady bombing campaign would increase the incidence of soccer.
I really hate you guys sometimes. Anyway, different objectives, different results.
According to the internets, Bryson is complicit in what Geoff Pullum called The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. Reader beware.
Yeah, I think I remember him saying that. Since what he wrote is just a (very very funny) popular summary of a number of other people's primary source research, where he sometimes tries to assess who is correct in disputes between his sources, that would not really be surprising.
Anyway, while a global war against soccer would no doubt have a unifying effect for the country, it undoubtedly be a foreign policy disaster, spreading our forces too thin over too many fields of battle (the mideast, Europe, Latin America and Japan) exhausting us both economically and militarily while uniting our soccer-playing foes and possibly catalyzing the formation of the very soccer caliphate feared by so many soccer hawks here in the states. An abysmal prospect. Better to pick a cheap police action against curling.
The poetic beauty of the war against global soccer is that it requires no boots on the ground. In fact, we wouldn't even have to drop bombs: just golf balls and golf clubs, which the local children would gratefully take up and use to put divets in all the soccer fields.
I thought they'd plant the fields with the seeds of democracy and let a new era of global prosperity bloom.
I know it says isle of toads but I keep reading I love toads.
I'd rather watch soccer than football. The continuous action, the graceful play with the ball, the nuances of positioning, it's cool, zenish. Plus the crazy hairdos.
Also, I submit that soccer is not odd because our drive to invent games necessitates that we would invent a game to be played only with the feet. What would be odd was if we didn't have a sport only played with the feet; to have so many games exploring so many different uses of the human body and not to have explored that fairly obvious one. As regards baa's objection that there are few sports involving only the feet, well, it's not easy to think of a sufficiently different sport involving only feet, is it? Soccer's uniqueness is in no way contrary to its existential necessity.
I don't have the rulebook in front of me, but I'm quite certain that cyclists are not allowed to pedal with their hands either.
Also baa's "for points" rule is unjustifiable. Hackeysack was mentioned above, albeit by a hater.
I don't have the rulebook in front of me, but I'm quite certain that cyclists are not allowed to pedal with their hands either.
I'm pretty sure they don't steer with their feet, but then, it's not as if soccer players don't use their arms and hands for balance.
"it's not as if soccer players don't use their arms and hands for balance."
Or for scoring the occasional goal, too. Just ask Maradona and the "Hand of God".
Two propositions.
Ogged does in fact love him some soccer, but loves him some petty squabbling even more.
Ogged does in fact hate him some soccer, but only because he's jealous of all the incandescent monkey sex soccer fans are having, and not for any reason pertaining to its merits as a sport.
Another proposition: ogged's post is really motivated by the same sentiment behind "I only hate him if he was the armless kid," and his prior post on mocking the developmentally challenged (and the one before that on kicking the homeless for sport).
proposition 4: soccer is actually a red herring to draw away attention from the fact that Ogged is a xenophobe.
I am assuming, since the world revolves around my little self, that he does this to bait me.
Proposition 5: Ogged is a Shi'a mole sent to weaken the US by convincing it to attack every country in the world that enjoys soccer (that is, every country in the world).
Scientists did try to make a glowing monkey. Scientists did not however attempt to gauge its skill as a lover.
Scientists did not report trying to gauge its skill as a lover.
Scientists did not invite journalists to the after-party party.
Scientists were worried the glowing monkeys would be promiscuous and unfaithful. Not that scientists are prudes or anything.
The glowing monkey should've known the scientists were going to kick it out of the lab if it kept telling them about all the great sex it was having. You just don't disrupt the scientist/glowing monkey relationship like that.
Scientists will respect the glowing monkey in the morning. Scientists promise!
One more thought. Only Americans call the greatest game "soccer''. Please use its proper name - FOOTBALL, And hey - we the English invented the game - along with golf, tennis, badminton, billiards, et. etc.
Posted by: peter hinchliffe | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 10:09 AM
Not true about only Americans calling it soccer. I know an older English lady (okay she's welsh, but she's highly anglicized and has lived in Oxford for more than 60 years) who calls it soccer too. She reserves the term football for Rugby.
And should Italians also stop calling it "calcio"?
to be honest, no one really cares what the Italians do.
and who cares who invented badminton, either?
Football will always mean a bunch of big fat guys with helmets pointlessly crashing into each other in the hopes of moving an oblong lump a couple yards down a field of astroturf, and fuck anyone who says different.
"glowing monkey" shall henceforth be a term for a lad or lass with sex appeal.
I expect this to take off in the way "cow eyed" caught fire in the public's imagination.
some of them aren't fat, and run very fast. Some of them are very tall and slow and throw. Some of them are kickers.
we are the scientists, Isle of Toad. And we are the makers of music.
We are the prophets of old, who of luminous primates fortold.
Re 71: I love petty squabbling, I don't much like soccer, but will watch if the Brazilians are playing. I am not jealous of monkey sex.
Because I could not shine for him,
My monkey shone for me;
The midnight lab knew fur and flab
And luminosity.
I am not jealous of monkey sex.
You know I was just using "monkey" as an intensifier, right?
To the tune of 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.'
That song pretty much ruined me for Emily Dickinson poems.
We slowly glowed, he knew no haste,
And it was bright as day
My favor gave him seizures too,
For his civility.
With all due respect, fuck no. Football is a sport unto itself here, and, I might add, one that is vastly more enjoyable as a spectator sport than soccer.
Fuck I hate Americans. Now where that goddamned suicide bomb belt thingy?
[Storms off to kill infidels]
It doesn't really surprise me that a terrorist named "Juicy" would misplace the bomb belt.
You people make me deleriously happy. Purple glowing monkey buttsex.
American football as seen from elsewhere:
1. Everybody stands and glares at each other for what seems like half an hour;
2. Everybody runs into each other;
3. Everybody walks off and on the pitch;
4. Everything stops for the advertisements.
(Wash, rinse, repeat)
That, my friend, is the essence of sport.
This is late but I don't really understand 61. If there were a global war on soccer, wouldn't we start by invading Canada because of its support for curling? And the possibility that Canada would give curling irons (or whatever they're called) to the soccer players? It all makes so much sense to me.
If there were a global war on soccer, wouldn't we start by invading Canada because of its support for curling?
On the theory that curling is a gateway to soccer?
It is part of the terrible price we are playing for resisting soccer--whether it is in the form of a group of people organized to attempt to kick a soccer ball into a goal, or a global network that outsources its soccer playing, or a bunch of Canadians curling on ice.
Canada would give curling irons
Brooms, I thought -- do we have to stamp out brooms generally, even those not used for sport? Because I'm good with that.
What do you have against a clean, well-kept home, LB?
So long as someone else maintains it in that condition, I approve heartily. Me maintaining a home in that condition has been tried and proven to be unworkable. Cooking, sure. Sewing, knitting, crochet? Fine. Generally obscure domestic skills (e.g. brewing)? I'm all over it. Day-to-day maintaining of a tidy home? Not so much.
Fibreglass Reactor? This is serious.
We lit the Space where Critters peeped
Through Cages—at the Scene—
We lit the Clutch of Locking Limbs—
We lit our Naked Need—
Dude, you are a sick and twisted person of indeterminate gender. I approve heartily.
Or rather—It lit Us—
Our Loins drew quivering and wet—
For only Simian, my Swoon—
My Science—ill-begot—
Text? Anyone? Someone else finish, I'm creeping myself out.
We knawed within a cage that beamed
with monkey hair, and bound;
The feces, they were visible,
The panting, chanting sound.
Also to sprinkle dashes.
Leave it to me to be away when we finally get around to bashing soccer. Grrrrrrrr. Thank goodness Apo was here to hold up my end of the argument in 21.
So breezing through this discussion I see soccer... beauty... beauty because it is hard... and interesting hair styles? This was all said to promote soccer as a sport?
I think not.
Soccer is a fine sport in which your whole body gets some exercise. Some of us appreciate the sport whereever and whenever it is played regardless of who is playing it.
Soccer is a fine sport in which your whole body gets some exercise. Some of us appreciate the sport whereever and whenever it is played regardless of who is playing it.
Could you be any more gay?
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The thrilling conclusion!
Since then—my Lab has Darkened—yet
Seems brilliant as the Day
I first surmised the Monkey's Meds
Would rouse Depravity—
a most satisfying conclusion. We have learned much from the journey.