potentialities

All four of the teams I was pulling for in their quarterfinal matches lost, leaving me without any preferences aside from wanting someone to beat Brazil after their appalling behavior in the match against Colombia.

This was achieved beyond my wildest dreams.

I have never laughed so hard during a sporting event.

I continue to be entertained.

I have gotten sucked into following the World Cup, which is not entirely surprising, as I have a history of taking an interest in literally any sport so long as it is being played at four-year intervals by national teams for wildly enthusiastic fans. (The cartoonishly-evil organizing body is a point of similarity I could have done without, but the World Cup has that as well!) It started innocently enough with randomly catching chunks of group games that happened to be playing while I was at the gym, but then I watched the US-Portugal and US-Germany matches on purpose and have avidly watched every single match of the knockout round thus far.

Never having seriously watched any soccer football before, I learned for the first time that I really like watching goalkeepers. I could just sit and watch a good goalkeeper goalkeep for hours. (It really doesn't hurt that many of them are also quite good-looking.) People who don't like soccer football and feel that they need to defend that dislike and/or convince others to share it always complain that it's a low-scoring game, but I love watching teams battle fiercely down the pitch to take a shot on the goal only to have it casually swatted away by the goalkeeper like it's nothing. When I don't particularly have a side to pull for, which is most of the time, I incline towards the team with the more attractive goalkeeper in terms of personal appearance and/or goalkeeping.

This is a terrible time for The Bugle to be on hiatus, though! For the first time since the London Olympics I'm actually watching the same sporting events as Andy and would be able to follow along with him.