What's 11 meters in feet?

I have a confession to make. Many of my 5,000 imaginary readers will probably not want to be friends with me anymore. Some may not even want to talk to me anymore, others will probably assure me they'll be there for me again once I've come to my senses...

It is not easy to admit it, but I am a soccer (Football - for you British English aficionados) fan. I am female, I have an advanced degree .... and I love soccer! Somewhat non-cliche. What's even worse: I suck at playing it myself. It is, admittedly, highly entertaining for others seeing me "play": Usually, what spectators will see is me starting to run after the ball, maybe getting it once, losing it while desperately looking for a teammate to pass the ball, then fainting from exhaustion halfway across the field. How can they RUN that far? It's nothing short of amazing to me.

Even if I weren't a soccer fan, I wouldn't stand a chance here at the moment. We have a couple of days to go before the World Cup 2006 starts. And it will be right here in Germany! That's the good part. Now for the annoying stuff:

They even have sausages shaped like soccer balls! Everybody is trying to make money in that big bad marketing machine. You should see our supermarkets! It's almost funny. Who buys all that stuff? Alright, so I bought the soccer-shaped Nutella jar. But it was because it's almost a Kilo Nutella! See, it's actually a GOOD thing!

Obviously not that good - from the legal aspect - were the vibrators named after popular soccer players. They had to be ... er ... pulled off the market after said players protested the use of their names. Probably a good idea; What if the German team suffers a premature ..... exit and is literally kicked out of the World Cup after the first round? Wouldn't be good advertising for a vibrator not to be able to finish it, eh?

Oh well, so here I am, dragging my friends and my soccerball to the park every weekend, desperately trying to manage running across the field ONCE without needing a respirator afterwards. The World Cup starts in 10 days and I'll need to be in shape by then. Or something....

I'll be watching the games on Big Screens allover town. That way, I can see the really important thing: all those nicely displayed soccerplayer butts ..... er.... ya know! Whatever, I'm off to eat Nutella.