Moe Lane

I shudder at how these people would overreact if there was a real sport involved:

The eight-legged oracle picked Germany’s rival Spain to beat Germany in the quarterfinal, which he was right about, and has now chosen Spain to win the whole World Cup tournament. Germans have reacted by posting death threats and calamari recipes on Twitter and the internet, People reported.The “Psychic Octopus” has correctly predicted the winner in all 7 of Germany’s World Cup matches, including the team’s quarterfinal loss to Spain and their third-place victory of Uruguay. Paul’s powers were first noticed in the 2008 European Championship, when he picked the winner 5 out of 6 times.

Via AoSHQ.  As to the winner of today’s soccer game: who will be less obnoxious about winning? – that’s who should win it.

Moe Lane

PS: No, I recognize that it’s all in good fun.  For that matter, it’s not really a World Cup if there aren’t Americans out there blustering about the essential worthlessness of a sport that they can’t seem to put together a winning team for.  I’m providing a service, here.

We can’t really mock them for this: we do equally goofy things for sports that we consider relevant.

A “psychic” octopus is said by its aquarium owners to have predicted the country’s football team will knock England out of the World Cup.

When consulted, Paul the octopus chose a mussel from a jar with the German flag on it ahead of one in a similar jar bearing the cross of St George.

Still, there’s a video.  The Germans are wearing leis.

Moe Lane

PS: I heard that we lost to Ghana.

Well, that’s the idea.

I understand Troglopundit’s amused attitude towards provincial views on guerrilla advertising – the short version is that South Africa is arresting people and getting fairly upset over a squad of thirty or so pretty blond women suddenly wearing orange miniskirts at a soccer game, said miniskirts apparently actually being an advertisement for a brewery – but my amusement ended with this line:

…Budweiser is the official beer of the World Cup…

Budweiser.

BUDWEISER?  They’re making soccer fanatics drink BUDWEISER at this thing?  And the rest of the world hasn’t declared war on the United States yet?

And they say that the age of miracles has passed.

Moe Lane

From Rasmussen:

A new Rasmussen Reports nationwide telephone survey finds that 66% of Adults correctly identify soccer, or football as it’s known outside the United States, as the sport played in the World Cup competition. However, three percent (3%) say it’s all about baseball, and one percent (1%) each think the international teams will be playing tennis, hockey or golf. Twenty-eight percent (28%) are not sure what sport will be played.

66% is far too high – and we really need to get that percentage of the population who think that it’s a golf competition up. It’s absolutely critical for our long-term national security needs; the more people in this country who don’t have a clue what the World Cup is, the fewer people who will get upset when we get our rears kicked by countries like Costa Rica or Ghana.  Dammit, just because it’s a slightly absurd geopolitical safety valve doesn’t mean that it’s not a real one…