It’s rare that I pick up a Lego set specifically because I want to build it, and not necessarily because I want it on display, but I took a look at the soccer ball set that hit stores in time for the World Cup and then a conveniently timed double points weekend rolled around and my money disappeared. Because look at the inside of this thing:
That looks a lot more complicated than it was, surprisingly enough, and it was tremendously satisfying to put together. Then there’s the bit that goes in the middle:
If you press that little tan piece sitting right in front of the green, the players jump up and down and the fireworks swing from side to side. Then the whole thing can close up, and honestly, the ball looks pretty cool closed up, too:
We aren’t going to do the math on how much this cost vs. how many hours it took to put together or anything like that, we’re just going to say it was a fun way to spend an evening and an afternoon, leave it at that, and … sigh, figure out somewhere to put it.
Book review coming tomorrow; I’m waiting for the high to die down a little bit.
Done with sports again, I think, because really all I have left is hoping for Argentina and England to lose, and they both keep winning matches in the exact same horrible way, so let’s just put soccer in the closet again until 2030.
That’s the thermometer in my back yard, at 7:37 PM, and you’ll note that thermometers don’t know what a “heat index” is, so I can only assume it’s the literal apocalypse outside right now. It’s supposed to be like this all week. I’m not excited about it.
I watched both World Cup matches this afternoon; Brazil-Japan was exciting despite ending the wrong way; Germany-Paraguay was a textbook example of Everything Americans Think is Wrong with Soccer, not only featuring a truly ludicrous amount of flopping (if I took a drink every time I said “you’re fine, get up,” I’d be dead) but ending in a shootout where the pivotal miss on the German team’s part, the kick that more or less decided the game, soared ten feet above the goal.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I suggest that, given a stationary ball and no one defending, any professional soccer player should be able to hit the fucking goal. Someone out there– possibly not someone reading this, but someone— will surely disagree with me on that. I could put a ball in the goal from that distance when I was playing soccer at ten. The goalkeeper is basically relying on vibes and luck to choose which way he jumps; he’s only barely relevant. All you have to do is hit the goal. The damned thing is twenty-four feet wide and eight feet tall. 192 square feet. Come the fuck on. And he wasn’t the only player who missed the goal! He was just the worst example.
The dude who missed that shot should walk into the ocean, is what I’m saying. Imagine NBA games that ended with each team shooting free throws and one of them airballs. That’s the rough equivalent here. Maybe one player from the opposing team gets to throw a ball at the ball to account for the goalie.(*)
The third game of the day features my Netherlands; I will have to cheer for a European team against an African one, which rankles a bit, but they’re my team and that’s that. I just wish I remembered why.
(*) No, an even better example: a football (our football) game where the game was decided on five extra point attempts. Any kicker who missed that badly wouldn’t make it off the field alive, and if he did he wouldn’t be taking his kicking foot with him.
OH AND ALSO:
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I am taking today off both from blogging and the World Cup, and I’m going to play video games instead. There are a bunch of matches tomorrow I want to watch, and I will legitimately have to stay up late if I want to see the US play, but there’s really nothing going on today that I feel like I absolutely need to see. My PS5 misses me, and Enotria: The Last Song has been quite fun so far. I think I’m a bit away from beating it, though, so I gotta put some time in. Holler at me if Scotland-Brazil gets super interesting in the next half hour or so, will ya?
Woke up at 6:30 in the morning, not because I wanted to.
Laid in bed and screwed around on my phone for a while, because to hell with getting out of bed that early on a Saturday.
Finished Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic, which was fine, I suppose, but I don’t have a lot to say about it. I’ve read two of Baker’s books now and I feel like I bounce off of her a little bit for some reason that I can’t quite explain.
Finished a not-Lego build.
Watched the Netherlands absolutely demolish Sweden.
Did a really poor job at several online games that I’ve been playing lately.
And now I’m watching Ecuador play Curaçao, which just went into halftime tied.
Tomorrow my brother and his family are coming into town, so I need to spend the morning cleaning. A sensible person would have started today; I am not sensible.
We are expecting cataclysmic rain for the next couple of days, and I’m genuinely wondering if I’m about to get another power-outage day off from summer school. Tonight should be manageable, but Wednesday genuinely looks horrifying, and I’m not even in the part of the state that’s going to get hit the hardest, although I will be if the storm track shifts northward even just a little bit.
I spent— brace yourself— the entire afternoon watching the World Cup, and liveblogging the entire thing, so if such a thing might entertain you feel free to head over to my Bluesky account. In accordance with my entire life history, both of the teams I supported lost. I started off neutral on the Norway-Iraq match, but for some reason my allegiances shifted quickly once the match actually started.
Anyway, not a ton else going on right now. I finished Monika Kim’s Molka, and if you liked her first book you will like this one. Maybe not quite as much as The Eyes Are The Best Part— the book is essentially telling two stories at once and they don’t knit together as well as I’d like— but still pretty solid.
I haven’t watched a World Cup game– sorry, match— yet, and it is entirely possible that I’ll make it through the whole thing without watching any of them, but I still have Strong Opinions about who should win. To wit:
Oranje!My team is the Netherlands. Why? I have no clue. However, I have been consistent about this for at least three World Cups now, including at least one that they did not actually participate in. I think I just like saying Oranje.
Sorry, not you: If the United States is one of the two teams, I am for the other team. Because to hell with patriotism right now.
Iran, because Iran winning the World Cup would be fucking hilarious;
Africa unite: If the Netherlands or the US are not involved in the game, but a team from Africa is, cheer for the team from Africa. If two African teams are competing against each other, choose the team with cooler uniforms. EXCEPTION: South Africa. See below.
All other games matches: No Netherlands, no US, and no Africa? The preference list is as follows:
Curaçao, because I don’t even know where that is;(*)
Haiti;
Mexico;
Any team from Central or South America (follow the “uniforms and vibes” rule if both teams are Central/South American)
Türkiye;
Any other team from Asia Minor/the Middle East; blah blah uniforms & vibes
Canada;
Anywhere else that isn’t Europe, including South Africa;
Europe, excepting the Netherlands; BBU&V.
So today we are supporting Qatar, Morocco and Haiti; tomorrow, Türkiye, Curaçao, ORANJE!, the Ivory Coast and Tunisia, and Monday, Cape Verde, Egypt, Uruguay and Iran. You get the idea, I think.
(*) I just found out that Curaçao is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, apparently, and moved them up on the list. We’re going to consider Cape Verde as Africa-adjacent as well.
