The World Cup still hasn’t started. And I can’t wait, because the sooner it starts, the sooner England can get kicked out and the sooner we can have normal tv. Every product on the market somehow manages to squeeze a football cliché into their TV ad. I’m waiting for the World Cup specials for immodium and tampax.
So, if you were to get so fed up with the constant wank of football that you left the sofa and, if desperate enough, the house, you’d be horrified to discover that london is now an England flagscape. There are bits of Eltham that resemble a BNP rally…
But rather than start a rant on the subject, I shall simply direct you to a typically brilliant piece from Charlie Brooker which is more succinct and funny than anything I could manage anyway. I mean…he’s my hero:
Nowadays, when you see an England flag on a car, sprawled across a T-shirt, or flapping from a novelty hat, you no longer assume the owner is a dot-brained xenophobe. Instead you assume he’s just an idiot. And you’re right. He is.[…]
It’s a great piece of visual shorthand. Imagine the outcry if government passed a law requiring the nation’s dimbos to wear dunce’s caps in public.
[…]
Instead, every numbskull in the land is queuing up to voluntarily brand themselves. They even pay for the privilege! As brilliant ruses go, it’s the most brilliant, rusiest ruse you could wish for. I can’t wait for stage two, when they’re persuaded to neuter themselves with safety scissors.