Did you know that there's a World Cup occurring?

While I'm waiting to return to the Marshall Islands, I thought I'd write a few words about this World Cup thing that just happens to be occurring right now. Instead of trying to explain how big of a deal it is and why you in particular should care about it, I thought I'd instead illustrate those two premises with links and random bits of information I remember from game broadcasts.

1) The Saudi prince promised to award money and property to Saudi players for each goal they scored.

2) The Ghanian government promised to award money to the Ghanian team for each victory they earn. However, Ghana is a poor country yet had a rather successful run through the World Cup so the Ghanian government ended up borrowing money from the African Soccer League (I don't remember the official name of their league off hand) in order to pay its players.

3) The Ecuadorian government paid a Shaman to fly to Germany and chase away the evil spirits from all 12 World Cup sites.

4) National flag sales have increased so much that one professor has calculated the increased expenditure on fuel as a result of "flag drag."

5) On the day Ghana was scheduled to play the US to decide who would advance to the knockout round, the Ghanian government declared a half day so everyone could watch the game. During the broadcast, ABC/ESPN cut to a scene of scores of Ghanians watching the game... underneath a tree in the middle of a field on a black and white TV powered by diesel generator because no one in the vicinity had electricity. One wonders how the ABC/ESPN cameraman felt filming that scene on his $10,000 camera.

6) Prior to the beginning of the World Cup, English fans taught each other how to taunt in German.

7) FOX, in all its journalistic glory, has apparently given a photographer the all-important responsibility of traveling to the World Cup in order to take pictures of hot female soccer fans.

8) Numerous Chinese, whose nation isn't even in the World Cup, have taken drastic measures to watch the matches despite their early-morning televised times. They include one man who quit his job, telling his boss, "The World Cup is more important than my job." Another man's wife nagged him because the television kept her awake at night. In response the man locked his wife in a room and kept watching. But perhaps the most ardent Chinese soccer fan is a man who was watching Spain vs France when his house caught on fire. He grabbed his TV and ran outside... leaving his wife and child inside. When people arrived to help, they found the man frantically searching for an electrical socket into which he could plug in his TV and resume watching.

These people care about the World Cup. Why don't you?