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So, I was having some vague ambivalence issues about which teams I wanted to do well this World Cup. I mean, the UK is in for a rough few years ahead, it looks like, and soccer matters so much to them, and England doing well would make the English people happy... but my British allegiances lie pretty strongly with Scotland, and, well. You know. Scotland likes Diego Maradona. Yes, he's a cheating little bastard, but he cheated against England, so.
Then there's South Africa - also a country going through a hard time for quite some time now, and a country of which I am, technically speaking, a citizen. But my dissatisfaction with the South African government has long robbed me of allegiance to South Africa except when represented by the Springboks. The amaSoccerBokke Bafana Bafana may be, but they aren't the Bokke.
Which brings us to Australia, a nation of which my citizenship is less a technicality. Last World Cup the Socceroos made it as far as the semifinals before being robbed by those cheating diving bastard Italians, but I just don't have a sense of real national allegiance in soccer, as opposed to, say, cricket.
However, I have, in fact, found a new favourite national soccer team.
And it's the USA.
Not just for hanging on for a plucky draw against England - I'm watching the game, and the USA team are remarkable, demonstrating a total lack of the things that irritate the hell out of me about professional soccer.
I've seen several US players receive some viciously dangerous tackles. They cry less about it than Italian players do when they haven't actually been touched. They pretty much go down, clearly in pain, then... get up again.
I haven't seen them dive at all, themselves.
US keeper Howard just watched Rooney fall over trying to make a header for a goal, and he gave him a sort of friendly pat on the shoulder as he went to retrieve the ball. That's nice.
I just... it's like the US soccer team are demonstrating all the best characteristics of American-ness and none of the bad ones, right now. John Oliver spent a couple of days with the team for the Daily Show, and on the Bugle he was talking about how - to his horror, as an England fan - he really liked them, because they were genuinely nice guys with no ego. It comes across on the field.
... A US player just got a yellow card, but his bad challenge was a little reckless, but not *nasty* - it was slightly careless, is all. And he didn't immediately bounce to his feet and try to pretend he totally didn't do that.
So basically, go Team America, you are the nicest soccer players I've ever seen.
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So I haven't been working on my painting for the month since I got really sick. (Before that, I was working on an oil painting.) I decided today I'd get back to readiness for it - step one, cleaning all the dried paint off all my palette-type stuff.
Doing that, I just managed to get a blister on my thumb rubbing at the paint.
W.T.F. Shovels, axes, and metalworking equipment, I have never, ever had a blister. Blacksmithing, no blisters.
Other than burns, the only things in my life that have ever caused my hands to blister are these:
1) a walking stick
2) cleaning up paint.
Apparently the gentle life is the one thing my skin can't handle.
This is going to be irritating.
In other news of my health: Friday morning saw an amazing turnaround. Pretty much first thing, I saw my doctor, who remarked on how much better I was looking.
Less than an hour later, on the bus home, I was in a cold sweat, throwing up into a hastily-repurposed paper shopping bag, ready to spend two days feeling like I'd been hit by a car. (A feeling with which I am literally familiar.)
The trigger for the change: I decided, sadly, to buy a couple of books, and while I was at the register, a dude came up to buy a pen. Dude reeked heavily of marijuana; apparently I got enough exposure to set off my allergies.
Some people can get a contact high; I get contact severely ill.
Chas and Dean both commented that at least we can all be confident I won't turn to drugs.
I bitterly replied that I wasn't going to anyway. I would not be tempted by marijuana if I weren't allergic to it, I really wouldn't. I don't need to get violently ill if I pass too close to a stoner to maintain that aversion...
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