I Hate The Fucking Germans So Very Very Much

You are accustomed to me spewing venom and bile at those who would dare to oppose me politically or philosophically. Now is the time on Sprockets when we get down to some pure and unmitigated nationalistic hatin', because the World Cup started two hours ago.

There are some regulars in this life who consider futbol to be "pussyball." To them, we say now, shut the fuck up and pretend you like it.

You also know that I am not, in general, an advocate of hatin'. In fact, I limit it to the world of sports. Typical major targets involve Duke basketball and the Dallas Cowboys, although there are certainly some lesser hate objects in the big wide world o' sportin'. Go ahead, call me a bad person for abandoning my hate-free philosophy for something so mundane and ephemeral. There are those who say that anyone who cares about the outcome of a sporting event more than 20 minutes after its end suffer from arrested development.

Those people are smug, arrogant prigs who suffer passionless lives and should just go to fucking hell and die.

With that, let us begin the hatin'. I hate the fucking Germans, and that's a sad bunny foo-foo, because this here Cup thing is being played in their country.

The real Kraut-hatin' began, of course, four years ago. They thugged it up in beating the US team in the Cup quarterfinals, aided by an uncalled handball and unreservedly filthy play from their glamor-boy captain Michael Ballack, secretly French pissant Oliver Neuville, and a host of others, and a whinging performance by (now non-starting) goalkeeper Oliver Kahn. They're just fucking bitches who should play in black leather with silver collar tabs. Then, they had the nerve to choke on the Brazilians in the final.

As host country, they get the honor of playing the opening game. Here's a funny thing: get 90,000 Germans together, and no matter what they're chanting, it sounds like "Sieg Heil"; no matter what they sing, the words include "Uber alles." And so Germany took on exciting Costa Rica (known as the Ticos) in the opener just now, in front of thousands of chanting, singing Germans.

Their methodical style pretty much overwhelmed the Ticos, who look to rely on speed and surprise. They managed a pair of surprises (both by the graceful and exciting Paulo Wanchope) against Team Uberyou, mostly because the Germans were relying on a defensive strategy of playing an offsides trap about 30 yards out from the goal, which is a strategy that relies on perfect timing and officials who are willing to put up with mincing pussy tricks like mid-zone offsides traps. But any kind of defense is not the Ticos' strong suit, and the Germans scored four times, including two goals by Miroslav Klose, who was celebrating both his birthday and his perfect Wehrmacht haircut, and a closeout goal by Torsten Frings, who should be Danish.

The Frings goal was interesting in a couple of respects; one was that he scored it from about 35 yards out on a surprise shot that he positively hammered. The other was that Frings and his flowing locks were up and around, after he spent five minutes on the ground nursing his pussy after diving on a non-foul midway through the second half.

Expect a few things here over the next weeks, as the Cup progresses. One will be a lot of German-hatin' (the team, not the peeps--what, I'm going to be a racist against my ancestral homies?). Another will be large measures of USA-lovin' and USA-hatin', because our side is simultaneously loveable and detestable. Go figure. You can also expect visceral diatribes about various world futbol powers like Brazil, Argentina, Italy, and France. And you can expect ambivalence about the English, who are good, and might be some fun, but who really must lose three games and score little or not at all, because the resulting British press blood orgy would be one of the most entertaining things in the history of history.

What you cannot expect? Is pussyball, because this ain't it. If you can't handle two hours of beauty, speed, grace, and passion, then just go...I dunno, watch "Gilligan's Island" reruns or whatever it is you do instead of watching the World's sport.