Goooooooal!

While Canadians are glued to the TV in hopes the Edmonton Oilers win the Stanley Cup, and Americans are following the NBA finals or baseball, the rest of the world is crazy about the World Cup of Soccer. Having grown up in Canada, a country whose soccer team frequently loses to the world's most economically challenged nations and is currently ranked between the UAE and Namibia in the FIFA rankings, soccer has never elicited any emotions from me (wait, is apathy an emotion?). However, this year I've decided to cheer for team Mexico. My reasons? First off, I think it's about time something good happened to Mexico; they've had a fairly rough time recently. Plus, it'd be sort of cool to see the World Cup come to North America (and this way I don't have to cheer for any Yankee scum). Normally, I'd jump on the bandwagon of some poor African nation, but unfortunately it doesn't look like Africa will have many, if any, teams making it out of the round robin this year (unless Tunisia pulls something out of it's ass). So yeah, go Mexico (or Ecuador, if Mexico doesn't pan out).

On the topic of sports (well, sort of) I've recently become addicted to pong, a game played with ping pong paddles, a ping pong ball, and lots of beer. Supposedly, Dartmouth is where the game was invented, before it spread across the rest of the nation. However, according to pretentious-sounding Dartmouth undergrads, the rest of the country no longer plays pong but rather "Beirut," since paddles are not used. Anyways, it's an interesting game, because the longer you play, the drunker you get (effectively, you are punished for winning). Last night, I won three straight, and nearly made it four, but blew a fairly good sized lead in my last game.

Later on that night, as I was puking my guts out in a Dartmouth washroom, I thought about what a shame it is that I can't drink like I used to. I remember during my 18th birthday drinking 5 ounces of tequila, several pints of beer (including from a beer bong), a number of whiskey sours, and several assorted shots (including a Rocky Mountain Bear Fucker *shudder*). I got really drunk, but felt awesome the following morning. Now if I drank that much I'd probably die.

Also, a neat NPR story on South Africa in the apartheid era.