Ha. Soccer.

I have two subjects to approach this evening. One, seems to be a common theme, marriage, love etc. The other is soccer. We'll get to it second. Because I hate it more.

I had a discourse today with a nice girl at Borders about marriage. Maybe love, would be a better way to put it. Despite my experiences with love and girlfriends not being "the aces," you could say I'm still hopeful, and still passionate. I still desire to find that special someone. Now I just have more questions about who it is. Or why things happen the way they do. Anyway, she had herself a list, a set of hopes and goals, and ways a man needed to be for her to date him, ways he needed to be to get married. And while I don't consider this wrong, I certainly don't think it's right.

As a man who wants to have a family, wants to be married, I understand, or rather believe, that the most important thing I'll ever do is meet my wife, and have children. Nothing will outshine those moments, not for me. Maybe I write the great American novel. Maybe I invent Velcro that doesn't make that little ripping noise...who knows? I could do anything, and at the end of my life, still think my family was the best and most important thing I'd ever done, or been a part of. So to me, life is about finding that special someone, and holding onto her or him with everything you have. Giving it all you've got until you can't anymore, or until they don't want you to anymore...I think that once you find that person, that "love of the life," that's when you try work things out, figure out how to deal with opposing religions or differing opinions on politics and child rearing. If you aren't compatible, aren't attracted, aren't in love as well as being friends, none of the other stuff matters anyway. I've thought I'd found that person before. I've been wrong before. Love sucks until it doesn't...but I still can't make a list, I can't say that a girl has to be like this or not like that. It would be too hard, and I'd never be happy. It doesn't strike me as a great way to live. But, in the end it is simply a matter of opinion.

Now onto soccer. Facebook is beginning to distress me. At least, the people posting about the World Cup are beginning to distress me. Check that, I'm distressed. First off. All of my friends are American. American. As in USA, Land of the Free, songs, eagles, flags, football, hot dogs and beer. So why I still have friends cheering on teams for countries that the closest affiliation they have to is "my great grandmother lived in Germany for 2 years before her family came over..." is beyond me. I respect heritage, and culture, albeit I'm a mutt so, I'd be rooting for too many teams, but still. For some reason, Americans seem to be happy with "our" World Cup performance.

Yey! We won the group! Then lost to Ghana. How is this acceptable? If our basketball teams or baseball teams did this we'd be up in arms. SportsCenter nuts would be throwing beer bottles and sports casters would still be fielding callers from around the nation to complain about the coaching or the reffing. Instead we all seem to be glassy eyed over the fact we made it as far as we did.

The problem, in my opinion, lies in the fact that we don't actually play soccer in America. I know it happens, but not like it does in any other country. Over here, a kid says he's going to go play ball, he means basketball, or possibly football, if he has enough friends ready to play. There aren't enough kids playing soccer from dawn until dusk on the weekends, not enough kids with dreams to play in the Premier Leagues. And the fact that Premier Leagues are European speaks magnitudes on the "problem" on it's own. There are no new moves, no rising stars. Soccer is a controlled sport with whistling coaches and doting mothers, high cost equipment and sterile fields. It's not a way of life. And until it is, the chances of Americans ever winning the World Cup are next to nill. Which is fine by me, football is my game anyway.

It's literally impossible that I was the first one to think of this. In fact I think I got started off a linked article on someone's facebook about "back alley soccer." That being the case, my point still stands. Until you see soccer games on in people's homes, see grill outs for the next Galaxy game, or whoever is important in the MLS, (Does Orlando even have a team?) I don't think soccer is something we should worry about getting too worked up over.

-D