To give you a taste....

My intentions for this entry will not be met. (Upon some prompting) I had wanted to paint a mildly detailed landscape of forwhat/why I am here. Given the last 45 minutes, i'll be down a tree (happy or otherwise) or two.

Yet again the World Cup beckoned. A housemate was watching the Croatia vs. Australia game, and I happened to wander in several minutes before it careened into utter chaos.

The following events, reminiscent of BLERNSBALL, actually transpired:
- A player was given 3 yellow cards (2 = immediate ejection), tantamount to a DOUBLE EJECTION. How he managed to evade the FOUR referees in charge of such events is beyond even my potent hypothetical foundary. The player in question did have a similar name to a teammate (Simunic vs. Simic), but these guys play by the numbers AND Simic had ALREADY been ejected.
*UPDATE: My housemate says Simunic wasn't officially ejected from the field until AFTER the game was over. If I'm ever called upon to pick an internationalspy team, I will certainly consider this performance among the other thousands of applications i'm sure to surreptitiously receive.
- There were two balls on the field for a period exceeding 25 seconds, with one player changing the direction of his run to pursue the second ball, errantly introduced by an over-enthusiastic ball-person (gender unknown, likely male).
- Australia (who advanced after successfully tying the game) ended the match with 4 forwards, after throwing them on in desperation to score before switching two to defenders and having one (yes) ejected with 5 minutes to go (a total of only 3 subs are allowed per-game)
- the referee disallowed an Australian goal and was duly rewarded for his decision by receiving a hug from the goal-deprived forward
- the last 20 minutes resembled a foosball game where both players keep spinning their shafts (or whatever the specific word is - probably not THAT one)
- Australia now plays italy. if 1/10th of the madness quotient from the game i just watch conclude itself in epileptic fits is transferred to that game, about half of the Italian adult male population will formally enter Berzerker mode (unless of course Italy's winning)

In any case, I'm here doing research. (ok, Call it a forest) More to follow.

I, PHiL, signed my earlier entries like that.