On Jingoism

I'm currently doing my hipster thing. Not intentionally you understand, I just have an hour to kill before I go sing in a concert and felt like killing it by having a small dinner in my favourite cafe. On my way here, I noticed something I have in fact noticed before. I'm fairly sure that everyone who doesn't live under a 15 tonne rock, conversing only with the moss and trees has noticed. Apparently today England play in the world cup against some moderately important country I've never heard of (yes, sarcasm). And Christ will people not let you forget it. On my way here I was barraged with flags, horns, more flags, and general good feeling. Horrible.

I'm being cruel, I know. There is absolutely no reason for me to not just ignore it and get on with my own business, aside from it being blared in my ear. But like I say, killing time, and it's this or waste an hour watching The Wire, so here we go.

Let me get one thing straight. I don't dislike football. At all. I even support a team, though doing so is more out of family loyalty that anything else (My dad supports them, my grandad supports them, etc etc). I just can't bring myself to support them to the extent that actual fans do. It's bizarre and strikes me as being decidedly cultish.

The World Cup though. That I understand. It's patriotism, innit. It's the love of one's country, and the desire for them to do well. Our country has it's myriad flaws, but fuck it, we're good at a sport, and we're going to beat the opposition into oblivion! Wait wait wait. Oblivion? I thought this was a game?

Maybe I'm being harsh. The kind of people who speak like that probably wouldn't know the word 'oblivion'.

But that's the attitude I get from these people. I can accept supporting your team. I can accept the buying into an obvious capitalist ploy to exploit such a stance in order to support your team with flags and little toys and plastic horns. What I don't get is when people act like it's a fucking war. When people get to incensed about their team winning or losing that they actually hurt people over it. When they go as guests into another country and fucking tear the place up. Proud of your country? You're a fucking embarrassment to it.

I suppose it doesn't help that this particular battle is against the USA. We've been majorly butthurt ever since they, you know, told us to fuck off. Though that particular argument kind of went out the window once they put God back into the equation. Separation of the church and state? Not anymore, fuckers. Ah, but they've had enough piss taken out of them by far funnier people than me. I'll leave them alone. As for Britain, well, maybe I'll make another post about them some time.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of either country and I apparently belong to one of them.

Still, it amuses me to see Americans trying to say that this match will be unpredictable because obviously we are going TO BEAT YOU US BASTARDS INTO THE FUCKING GROUND.

This is the worst post yet. May I sink no lower.