FOOTBALL. YES, I KNOW, SHUT UP.

It's pretty distressing how much I'm getting into this football thing. I have been getting up at ungodly hours in the morning to watch the first match, and I've been averaging two and a half matches a day. It's sick, I tell you.

Incidentally, last night I had a bit of a suspicion confirmed. I turned to Matthew and said, "Did you know that if you are in the possession of the ball, and you want to pass it to one of your teammates, there have to be two people between him and the opposing goal?"

He looked sort of...disappointed? disgusted? and said, "Who told you?"

Yes, that is the offside rule. It was clearly a letdown to him that I knew what it was. And I let him know that NOBODY explained it to me, because nobody WOULD explain it to me, and eventually I had to look it up on the Internet.

Hmph.

Some of the matches are fairly interesting, but it's obvious that the sports commentators have a list of regional information and that sort of thing that they have at hand so that they can fill up dull bits with small talk. This makes for some of the stupidest small talk I have ever heard in my life.

For example, during the Ireland/Cameroon game, the commentator said, (and I am not making this up, although I'm paraphrasing the last part of it) "Well, that guy went down like a sack of potatoes. What would the Irish know about potatoes? Heh. Well, around here, it's not potatoes, it's rice. Most meals here are based around rice, and this particular area is renowned for its rice wine, which is known as sake."

I'm telling you, sometimes it's almost painful.

Anyway, last night I got to walk around and see part of the stuff that's going on for the Queen's Jubilee. It's actually kind of fun. You know, the queen just seems like the nicest woman in the world. It's interesting to see the difference in the way that patriotism is displayed here. It's so much associated with right-wing politics in the US, that it's hard to see it any other way.

A lot of things are different here. It's almost like the country is more of a small town. I know that's weird, but the politics just seem more that way to me for some reason. Everything is more "local." People have a certain type of pride in the local boy artists, for example, that is different from the way it is back home. It seems like local artists are a bit more supported, because there is pride in the fact that they are British. Back home, listening to an artist from another country is seen as more cosmopolitan or something, and the more well-educated thing to do. Here, even well-educated people sort of feel an affinity for the local musicians and are proud of what they do.

I guess it's that the masses back home are xenophobic, and so more well-educated people try to make a point of embracing the other. This sounds like some kind of horrible stereotype, and I'm not saying that there aren't quite lovely uneducated people who are neither racist or xenophobic.

But you have to make an effort back home. It's easy to assume that your experiences are the same as everyone else's. You have to make an effort to figure out that your opinions and beliefs are very much a product of your experiences and environment, and that alternatives exist. You can go thousands of miles and never meet people whose experiences and environment differ all that greatly from yours. To go beyond your own borders usually requires some kind of unique thought or deliberate effort. It's actually possible to go through life having only rare encounters with people who are quite different from yourself.

America seems to be a pretty homogenous behemoth sometimes. And we turn out schlock of every variety. So I guess that when someone from somewhere else makes good, it's like the underdog has won by working hard and making something nice.

All right, I'm rambling, and I don' t know what I'm trying to explain.