Eventfulness, Please – Offseason Sunday Etc. Etc.

Saludos amiguis. I hope this post finds you pantsless and within the range from Relaxed to Comatose. OR, better yet: if you have a rooting interest in college hoops or a visionary bracket rai nau, 🫡

I envy you basketball fans cheering for Media baccalaureate candidates and the odd 6’4” obvious Plumbing and Sewer Arts major who sets screens near the 3-pt line. Oh man, I wish I were you and get bet payouts or gloat over wins on actual games. You know me; I’m all for gloating as long as it’s grounded on a concrete, undisputed outcome. Events, always events–i.e., stuff that is not opinions.

For me, the arrival of Spring and the approach of the NFL draft are the best the calendar can provide to cope with The Void. Nevertheless, the emotionally raw (like 19th Century Romantics or current Cleveland Pauls fans), offer a perspective. They say, with conviction, “The yearning is the best part”.

Mm. Let’s see.

I admit to be as mushy, or more, than anyone. (Proof: when she was a child, I took The Heiress to Disney movies in the theater because quietly crying in the dark in public is less cred-damaging than privately at home with the spouse.) The feelings I prefer are those that come from experiences, not internal and individual thoughts. And so, for me, the Best Part is the event, never the speculation before it. I will always acknowledge an actual event–i.e., an outcome or quality that is certain, unlike dinosaurs or the present shape of planet Earth. So, during draft speculation season, I have a ritual: study Horatio’s mock draft, and then let the rest of the draft coverage go through me like microplastics on a hot & sour soup reheated in the original container.

Put another way; last century, I had an outstanding Lit. professor who taught The Divine Comedy. She gave us to read a couple of academic papers on the identity of the ostensible real-life Beatrice who inspired Dante Alighieri. But the Prof. was emphatic on this: it was unthinkable for the flesh-and-bone Dante to make up a scheme to run into the real-life Beatrice. The idea of the beloved, unspoiled by experience or actual contact, was the truest of all loves. My Prof. was brilliant and her argument is tightly logical. How vah,

Disagree. When it comes to love among folks, gimme personal presence, conversation, falling over each other by thrashing mutual hatreds, locking glances… And then a furtive kiss followed by a mutual grope like coked-up octopi.

Uf. Yeah. But OK. Rails rails… Ah, here they are.

NFL NEWS

-The annual league meetings started today in Phoenix, Arizona, and will go on until next Wednesday, April 1^st. No tush-push abolition is scheduled, which is a testament to the Iggles 1&Dun 2025 playoff performance.

LOOKING FORWARD TO:

FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifiers

Yes yes yes. Next Tuesday, March 31, will be the final Win & Ins for the ’26 Mundial, aka the 48-Team Squamish. The intercontinental playoffs are played in México:

• Congo DR v. Jamaica – 4 PM
• Iraq v. Bolivia – 10 PM

Goes without saying that I’m all about Bolivia and Jamaica.

Then there is the Europeen Morass, live at 1:45 Central on Tuesday:

• Bosnia and Herzegovina hosts Italia
• Czechia hosts Denmark
• Kosovo hosts Turkey
• Sweden hosts Poland

Aside from my prejudiced wish-casting (Italy, Czechs, Turks, and Swedes OUT), I offer an out-there racial TAEK.

Last year on the Web, I saw a geographically-accurate map of the world. Yeah, that day I decided to forgo Mercator propaganda for good. Anyway, the part of the European continent that does NOT include Russia is smaller than the continental U.S., and is also smaller than all of South America.

On the other hand, UEFA (the European football association), is composed of 55 teams. Among such 55 teams are Turkey, Russia, and Israel. This means that, at least according to FIFA, the Europe we non-Europeens consider Europe is composed of 50-plus countries.

50+ countries, y’all. It is fucking deluded to think all those countries are bound together, in any way, just because their peoples are, you know, pale-ish.

In América (i.e., from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and all nearby islands), it is undisputed that all white folks–every single one–come from Europe. Again, that’s 50+ different countries, with different languages. Hell, some countries have their own alphabet, formed before and after the Roman Empire.  Anyone having attended History courses during adolescence can glean that there is no such thing as White People uniform in anything. Except maybe skin tone, when compared with people from other parts of tghe globe.

It’s quite simple. The folks who inhabit the dozens, DOZENS, of European countries have been killing and occupying each other for centuries waaay before a handful of them colonized our part of the globe from the 15^th Century onward. To think white folks are a homogeneous, ancestral, and superior culture, has to be the biggest accepted dumbassery around.

Counterpoint: I’m drunk