GO METS DIE BRAVES

Whoa, is the blog still a thing? Well, the World Cup is still a thing, and I'm still a thing (technically) and the World Cup is still made up of soccer playing sportsmen, and this is a sports blog after all, and so on it goes!

The World Cup. Sports and nationalism. One of our species' greatest inventions combined with one of our fucking shittiest. All wrapped in one great big over hyped, vulgar, extravaganza used to peddle mass quantities of soda, sneakers and credit cards. Its a great big global farce, and the only real winners are the miserable corrupt wads that run FIFA.

So I figure I'd go through each team and make fun of their dumb countries. Because all countries are dumb and its fun and I like making fun of stuff. I also like pizza.

Allright, let's see how many teams I get through before I get bored and give up. 12? 24? All fuckin 32???

Group A
Brazil
The Brazilians seem a little pissed that their government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on soccer stadiums and not a whole lot on, like, roads and schools and shit. I can't say I blame them. Why is it so great to host the World Cup anyway? So a bunch of jagov Eurotrash can scum up your town squares? So you can sit and sweat in god forsaken traffic as you gaze out at idle machines, not working on the infrastructure improvements that you were promised but will never live long enough to see finished? There's this thing called TV you know. Its pretty good. Let's you watch the sprots events live without being there through the magic of the electromagnetic spectrum. I also hear there is this new series of tubes that carry bits of information that can be decoded nearly immediately that OK WHATEVER YOU GET IT.

Brazil is the big favorite to win and I guess that's only fair. Did you guys see that movie Elite Squad? Or City of God? Well see them. They are rad.

Cameroon
Hey here's a fun story: My great grandfather was an engineer working in the German colony of Kamerun in the early twentieth century. When the Kaiser called all of Deutschland's native sons home to defend the fatherland in the Great War, my great grandfather dutifully hopped on a boat and sailed directly to Shelton Connecticut, where he worked as a machinist for the rest of his life. Good call dude, I hear Germany was kind of a shitty place in the ensuing decades.

Hey cool story right? So I'll be rooting for Cameroon. How can you not root for the African teams? I don't know if you guys know this but I've been to Africa. It's fucked up. I even went to the nicest parts of Africa and it was still totally fucked. Root for the African teams you heartless sons of bitches.

Croatia
I met this Croatian dude at a wedding one night and he was shocked, and I mean FLABBERGASTED, that I had ever heard of his country before. I was all like, yeah, on the Adriatic Sea, across from Italy, with Zagreb as the capital. And he just plotzed. YOU KNOW ZAGREB? he asked. And I was like, yeah, and I can name some other shit too, like Belgrade, in Serbia. And he goes, SERBIA? And then he pantomimes a dude strafing people with a big machine gun turret, and went like WHA! WHA! WHA! WHA!

Yeah I don't think the Croatians care much for the Serbs. Also they jerseys look like tablecloths. Who the fuck decided on that dumb flag anyway? [wikipedias] OK some old dead Christian saint liked to put checkerboards on his church things or whatever who cares.

Mexico
Why the fuck didn't the US purposely lose to Panama during the qualification process so as to eliminate Mexico? ITS GAME THEORY BITCHES, ELIMINATE YOUR STRONGER OPPONENTS HOWEVER AND WHENEVER YOU CAN.

Who would you rather potentially face in the knock out stage, Mexico, or fuckin Panama? It has nothing to do with sportsmanship, it has everything to do with playing by the same rules as everyone else and doing everything you can to win.

Anyway, I like it when Mexico loses but that's only because Mexicans take that shit too seriously. Its like, bruh, you about to kick a ball. Chill it the fuck out.

But also fuck this idea that the USA is in some kind of rivalry with Mexico. They are our NAFTA partners but we also force drug cartels to operate on their territory and decapitate tens of thousands of innocents because we like getting high. Fuck that noise. You want to make this about politics and national pride then fine, the US deserves to lose every fucking game to Mexico forever.

Group B
Australia
This may shock you but I've never been to Australia. Even though everyone goes there to study abroad because they speak English and get super drunk, and I'm fairly decent at both of those.

I like going to this bar that sells, like, a hundred million different beers, but when I'm there I only order the Foster's giant 25 oz cans, because its the only option that gives you a decent value. See when I'm at these bars and they have the huge menus that list the price, size and alcohol percent, I always just mentally calculate the value. And then I convert those numbers to what I call an aclo-bevy-unit (ABU). A 12 oz can of beer at 5% alcohol that sells for a buck a can has an ABU of one (e.g. a 12 pack of Bud Heavies selling for $11.99). Natty Light is usually 1.2ish (cheaper but only 4.5% ABV). Heineken, besides tasting like shit, also has a very low ABU. The only way to get a decent ABU with craft beer is with super high gravity beers, like Flying Dogs. A sixer of Raging Bitch can often approach an ABU of 1, since its usually a little more spendy but double the knockout punch. So now what I need is someone to create an Ap for my phone that does most of these calculations automatically. HEY INTERNET: TAKE CARE OF THAT PLEASE. THANK YOU.

Anyway, the Australians are called the Socceroos and that's the best nickname of any World Cup team by far. They seem real scrappy too. Lots of hustle and grit in those Socceroos. Look for them to be eliminated by a far more athletic team.

Chile
Chile seems like a really cool place (OH NO I DID NOT MEAN THAT AS A PUN) to visit. They're they only South American country to be in the OECD. That's a good list of countries to be on. Especially if you want people to vacation in your country. It means you're much less likely to get accidentally caught in a peasant uprising.

Chile probably benefited from having a lack of natural resources. You'd think sitting on top of an ocean of oil and gas would be good for a country, but more often than not it becomes a curse and turns that county into a basketcase. What you want is an information based, service economy so you can devout more resources to fun stuff, like sports! Great job, Chile, way to set an example for your South American buddies!

Netherlands
Hey some old rich family that controls all the land and bankrolls all the merchants really likes the color Orange, lets plaster that shit all over the god damn place! Like this shitty, rocky island in some dumb bay on this weird continent full of beavers and deciduous forests. And then a city will develop on that island and that city will use the color orange in their flag, and then a baseball team will use that flag as the basis for the colors of their uniforms and WOW LOOK HOW I BRING IT ALL BACK TO THE METS.

Hell yeah, that's why I get paid the big blogger bucks.

The Netherlands is also a dumb name. Sounds too much like Nether Regions, which is where my balls and anus are. Holland isn't much better. Hole Land? Yeah I have some holes for you, pal. Haha, holes.

Man, this is gold.

Spain
I don't mean to brag but I've been to Spain before. They are also a very tastefully named country. SPAIN. Though I could do without all the lisping. Mexicans don't do it, why do they have to? Also why add the E in front to make it Espanya? You want to begin your words with the letters SP. Spain is better, trust me.

Spain's a bit schizophrentic when it comes to national sovereignty and territorial integrity. It wants Gibraltar back from the UK but it also wants to hold on to Cueta and Melilla? It gave up allits Caribbean and Pacific islands but not the Canary Islands? Majorca and Menorca? Ibiza? They renounced nationalism when Franco died, (props due to King Juan Carlos II {even tho he turned out to be a pud who quit his job}), but then federalization led to Basque and Catalonian separatism.

But you can buy giant beers at McDonalds, so on balance they are doing just fine in my book.

OK I need to take a break and eat dinner. And by eat dinner I mean watch some pornos. NO WAIT, I MEANT DINNER.

Group C
Colombia
You get all the fun of both Atlantic and Pacific coasts without the embarrassing shape of an isthmus!

It's nice that Columbia is no longer a semi-failed-quasi-narco-state, but I still don't get why more countries don't tell the US to get stuffed when it comes to the war on drugs. No amount of aid money is worth ceding legitimacy to gangs, and the attendant violent crimes and savagery they bring with them.

Hey also why isn't the big titted Colombian woman on Modern Family considered a hateful stereotype? I'm genuinely curious. No way you could have the same character from an Asian county, right? Is it because she's hot? Like if you had a hot Chinese woman be like, Jaaaaaaay, you rikee me cook you fwied egg rowwr? And if her heaving cleavages were showing it'd be all good?

God that show sucks.

Greece
That their economy is in the toilet is not completely Greece's fault. The ECB's monetary policy probably isn't doing them any favors and in hindsight they probably never should have been in the Euro or at least joined when they did. But a LOT of that shit IS on Greece.

Like, you know how when you want to see what your neighbor paid for his house, and you just look up the tax records online and the whole neighborhood is plotted out in a nice electronic map with nice records and shit? They don't have that in Greece. Not just the lack of an online database, they don't even map out the boundaries of their real estate. They use descriptions of the land, like your property goes from that rock to that tree. And the records are stamped at city hall and thrown in a pile and if they lose it or you just create a new one its like, no big deal, no one will ever check. It's not like you can buy title insurance either. But you CAN bribe government officials who have hereditary sinecures.

Say that reminds me of a joke: Whats the difference between Greece and Turkey? Absolutely nothing.

Ivory Coast
This whole idea that places can demand that you pronounce they're County in a specific way no matter what language you're speaking is just straight up retarded. Same with cities. Sure, YOU can pronounce it anyway you want, but forcing all foreigners to do exactly the same just isn't practical. Languages don't line up 1 to 1. Most don't even use the same alphabet or writing system. So how the fuck are you going to demand someone pronounce AND SPELL your country Cote d'Ivoire if you don't use Roman fuckin letters, or have the morpheme "d'uuughvuuuaaghrrr" in your vernacular? Fuckin assholes.

Almost as dumb as NBC saying the Olympics were in Turino, Italy. At least make it Italia then, dumb dumbs.

I hate NBC. They fuck up all sports. And they fucked up Ninja Warrior. And American Gladiators. What a pathetic network.

Japan
Ever been to Japan? (not tryna brag but I have) The whole place looks like a god damn video game. Sounds like a stereotype but it's true. Just like how all Colombian women are well endowed shrieking banshees.

Anyone else remember the 80's when people were losing their shit because Japan was taking over the world and rust belt towns had an easy target to direct their blue collar rage? And then they made the movie Gung Ho and we learned all about shame ribbons and fifateeneh thhhhhousanda carus, goodeh teemeh? And now Japan has an impossibly doomed inverted demographic pyramid and zero immigration because they are all still horrible racists even though no one can tell the difference between Japanese or Korean or Chinese or Mongolian or Vietnamese etc etc?

It's funny, I guess, in an awkward way where your county's biggest problem is that young people don't fuck enough without condoms.

Shouldn't be too bad though. Plenty of country's have a kick ass time with less than 50 million people in them. Anything that means less traffic for commutes can't be all bad news.

Group D
Costa Rica
I can see why all these other CONCACAF teams might hate the US, because it's like, hey fuck off guy, go ram your helmets together and leave the futbol to us. On he other hand, the only reason CONCACAF has 3.5 qualification spots is because FIFA is terrified of not having both Mexico and the USA in the World Cup as that would totally fuck up their profits and force Sepp Blatter to maybe sell one of his yachts. So actually YOU'RE WELCOME.

By the fucking way, did you SEE fuckin Blatter call everyone racist for pointing out Qatar's horrible bullshit? His I-aint-give-a-motherfuck-o-meter is off the charts. There are obviously worse civilizations in the world than Qatar but they are also straight up monstrous jerk offs. Blatter says this all while ripping off people the federations are supposed to help enjoy the sport of soccer but instead are just giant money funnels for his miserable cronies douche bag friends? It's impressive, the depth of his disdain for humanity.

England
Hey assholes, nice Empire. Nice fuckin Empire. At least you'll always have the Falklands.

And stop trying to make wanker happen. And stop trying to make twat rhyme with hat. Just stop talking altogether. You embarrass yourselves every time you open your stupid mouths.

Peep Show is an excellent program though, I will give you that.

Italy
Want to hear another great joke? Garibaldi didn't unite Italy, he divided Africa. Haha, because Sicily is part of Africa, like Dennis Hopper explained in True Romance.

Also next time someone tries to correct an Eyetalian American for not pronouncing mozzarella correctly you can tell him to go sit on a pishidell bah fungol, because Scicilian is not mutually intelligible with standard Italian, which is really just one of many related Romance languages but no closer to Sicilian than Portuguese is to Spanish.

Did I mention I like pizza? Ham and pineapple are my favorite toppings but I also like Pepperoni.

Uruguay
Yes we know, Homer Simpson once called it U-R-Gay. Very good, back when the Simpons didn't lick balls. Hahaha, its great to reminisce.

I knew a Uruguayan in college and I never didn't feel like a schmuck every time I pronounced the name of the country in front of her. I still don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced. I guess that's why that joke is such a classic.

A timeless funny. What laughs we enjoy. Oh how we laughed and laughed.

Group E
Ecuador
Speaking of the dreaded resource curse, back when it was still a banana republic, Ecuadorian politicians cut a bullshit deal with Texaco to extract oil wealth. Texaco fucked it all up, mainly for trusting Ecuadorian politicians, but the end result is a shit ton of oil and toxic waste ended up ruining a good part of the rain forest. There was a big fight, and then Chevron said they wanted to buy Texaco, but not while they were still fighting with Ecuador. So Texaco cut a deal with newer, slightly less shitty Ecuadorian politicians and cleaned up a whole bunch of their mess, but they also left a bunch of messes that they said they weren't responsible for. In many ways they probably aren't, as the Ecuadorian government did a bunch of shit themsevles. But in other ways its like, yeah its still Texaco's mess to clean up. Like when you take on a shitty room mate but he doesn't sign the lease and then he fucks up your apartment and then bolts and your landlord demands you pay for the shit he fucked up its like, well, what can you do, right?

Anyway, after Texaco cut their deal and were acquired by Chevron, some new shitty Ecuadorian politicians (but shitty in a different way then the old shitty politicians), came knocking on Cheveron's door and told them they eed to clean up the other messes too. And Chevron told them to get fucked. So some awful lawyer in the US told Ecuador, no sweet bros, I got this. I'll get that Chevron money. So the shithead lawyer tried to extort billios from Chevron in a legal way. When that didn't work he tried extorting the billios in an illegal way. That still didn't work, and then he got caught.

Now the shithead lawyer is out of business and Chevron is back where they started but only after making a bunch of other lawyers very wealthy. Oh and the dirt poor Amazonians are living next to a shit ton of toxic waste.

Ah the rich tapestry of life, it never disappoints.

France
The French have a reputation as being the most craven pussies in all of Europe (and thus, the world) and I suppose most of that is earned, but for many hundreds of years, France easily had the most boss armies in the world. They also are surprisingly passionate about bad ass sports like rugby and judo.

Also, if you've ever read the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, you'd know that, despite being a despot that wielded his divine right with callous savagery and is responsible for the slaughter of untold Huguenots, Louie Catorze was also a totally chill dude who loved to bone rad babes and hunt animals for sport.

I don't know what that has to do with anything either.

Honduras
Great, another CONCACAF mooch.

People call the Wall Street Journal right wing rag and a tool of the Murdocch political agenda, and maybe it is both, but as long as you know which blowhard columnists to ignore I find it's a pretty useful newspaper to read on a regular basis. I like reading that and the Economist to strike a nice balance, with a sprinkling of the NY Times to keep up with the latest progressive trends (and the lifestyle section is great for when you need to purge after too much pizza!).

Anyway, a while ago, the Honduran President tried to be a mini Hugo Chavez except he had no oil money spread around and so people were like, hey fuck off pal. So he ran away like a good failed populist and the Supreme Court of Honduras ruled he abandoned his post and ordered new elections, for which he was ineligible. Most media outlets wanted to call that a coup, but it sounds more like an impeachment to me, and I appreciated having the Journal around to take up that perspective.

Hey you think they drive Hondas in Honduras? I bet the fucking love them.

Switzerland
I don't know how these asshole get away with being so fucking neutral all the time. The only excuse for being neutral during WWII is that you were getting squeezed simultaneously by the Soviet Union and had to make a Sophie's choice. These dick bags just sat the whole fucking thing out like it was no big deal. Mountain dwelling goat fuckers.

You know I bet they like not being blowed up better than they like being neutral. Watch some Al-Qaeda shit go down in the Alps and then we'll see how important their precious neutrality is.

Group F
Argentina
No country has had a more useless century then Argentina has over the last 100 years. They've defaulted on so much sovereign debt that the last round of international paper they wrote had to include specific clauses that said all disputes must be mediated in New York City under American law. It had a bunch of other super tight restrictions that dead beats have to agree to when they want someone to lend them money, too. So when Argentina inevitably defaulted, again, some American lawyer went around buying up all the other people's bonds on the cheap and then demanded Argentina pay them back in full or else they'd never be able to raise money again.

Argentina held out for a while but then this fucking lawyer guy paid some African country like Senegal or something to commandeer an Argentinian warship that was refueling and demanded it be repatriated as compensation. That's a fucking big league Wall Street move right there.

I think Argentina got their boat back but now they're out of money and need to sell more bonds and so they're back at the negotiating table with this vulture lawyer guy. Good fucking luck with that!

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Not so much a country as a playgroup foisted on 3 surely kids that don't like each other. They all speak the same language except one kid is Catholic, one is Eastern Orthodox, and the other is Muslim.

That's the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks for you. I don't know why they bother fighting over the shittiest, rockiest, poorest part of Europe like it's some prize. Especially when the ultimate goal is just ceding sovereignty to the EU. So who gives a shit? Give up your nation, quit your culture, move to the US, watch cable TV, play video games and eat fast food and you'll forget all about the old country in no time.

That is my plan for global world peace, thank you.

Iran
Speaking of culture, Iran should play up their ethnic minorities more. They got bitchload of cultures and ethnicities within their borders. Turks and Kurds and Arabs and Azeri and Armenians and Lurs. Do you even know what a Lur is? I don't. But there's literally millions of them in Iran.

And they treat them decent enough. I mean they allow the Armenian Christians to sell booze within the county. People would think the Ayatollah was less of a dick (just less of one, he's still be a tremendous fucking dick) if they knew that, I think.

They are also the world champions of Freestyle Wrestling, and I think it would be cool to go there and watch a tournament with their super passionate wrestling fans. But that fucking Ayatollah fucks it all up. Hey more like ASSAHOLAH AM I RIGHT?

Nigeria
Folks, what are we going to do about Boko Haram? Please don't say its about Muslims versus Christians. That's would makes Americans fall for those Nigerian scams, because they think some West African Christian asshole has anything to do with some Midwestern Christian hick.

Come to think of it, why isn't some weird, recent, Christian offshoot, like Mormonism, not considered just as non-Christian as some weird, ancient, Christian offshoot like Islam?

Not even like Boko Haram are real Muslims. They're just another gang of ignorant motherfuckers looking to swing their dicks around, rob people and abuse women.

Cool. Fun times we're having. Just two more groups to go, thank god.

Group G
Germany
So remember that guy who quit his job oppressing the people of Cameroon to come to America and start my dumb family? Right, yeah, Johann is his name. Anyway, after WWI, Johann went back to Deutschland found it to be a real piece of shit. So he took a wife (kidnapped for all I know) and came back to America to work and raise his two sons as English speaking Americans, even though his homesick wife wanted to go back to Germany.

But Johann knew better and knew that Germany and all of Europe was super fucked only going to get more fucked in the future. And when WWII broke out, both his sons served in the US military. Only they made them fight in the Pacific theatre because they were krauts and didn't trust them much.

But fight they did. My great uncle was in the 3rd wave of Marines on Iwo Jima and my Grandfather was in the radio room on the Aleutian Islands when the unencrypted message went out to Japan that a nuclear bomb was on its way that if they were waiting for a good time to surrender, now would be it.

Then Johann died and my great grandmother went back to Berlin. She even stayed after the Iron Curtain fell and she found herself living on the Soviet side. She even stayed after my Grandfather was able to pull some strings and get her safe passage back to the US. Maybe she felt bad for abandoning all her relatives who since died. Or maybe she was retarded and loved a dumb shitty country like Germany too much. I have no idea. Either way, ancestor worship is dumb.

Cool story thanks I know.

Ghana
Come on guys. Stop being sore losers. Don't be mad at Ghana. Its the losers on team USA who couldn't beat the tiny, developing nation in West Africa that you should be mad at. They're the losers, not Ghana.

Hey want to know the rest of the story of my relatives? Don't worry it's real short.

Poor white trash from Norway, Ireland and Scotland (and some other shitty places mixed in) came to various parts of the US in the 18th and 19th Century. They stayed poor until WII, then got married, then had my parents.

Wow, not at all interesting! I guess that's white people for you!

Portugal
I spent a decent amount of my high school days visiting Newark, NJ either 1) attending my wrestling club's practices 2) completing my Eagle Scout community service project or 3) buying underage booze, so I see from a position of authority that it's a real pit. I'd be nice if it weren't such dog shit, but I don't really have the time nor inclination to get into why I think it got that way and what I think needs to happen for it to not be that way.

But ass it does suck, except for one neighborhood called the Ironbound. Besides having a bitchin name, it's full of Portuguese people (see all that preamble had a point). And last time the Brazilians won the world cup, all the Portuguese in the Ironbound flipped out and celebrated, and I could never understand why. Because they speak the same language? So do think English celebrate when America wins Olympic medals?

Seems weird. I don't know any Portuguese people personally but they seem weird. Buncha weirdos.

United States
You guys, I know all the bros that made the USMNT are probably really cool dudes, and I know you see all the fun all those other countries are having and wish we could be like them, out waving our red white and blue scarves and painting our faces and singing songs in bars, but I simply can not bring myself to give a shit about a bunch of random soccer playing dudes just because they have the same kind of passport as me. I also don't vote. OH GOD THE HORROR.

But seriously, I root for real sports teams. Like the New York Giants. Not UN members. Grow up why don't you?

Also there are more important things to care about. Like how our education system is failing our children of lower socio economic backgrounds. And the X-Men. So please, get off my sack.

Group H
Algeria
Hey this is the only African team not from West Africa. I think the only Arab county too. FASCINATING.

Hey remember when the Mediterranean Sea was considered the center of the globe? Me neither, but that's what the name means, and that's where all the advanced civilizations of the world started. Now it's just some fetid, cigarette butt holding, cesspool that separates the desert part of Africa from the greasy part of Europe.

So have fun with that, Algeria.

Belgium
Not a real country. Should probably just turn into an EU federal territory and get it over with. Not even worth keeping around to be butt of lame Euro jokes about how boring and nothing it is.

Say what you will about Empires, but as long as they are based on the rule of law and not on an ethnicity or some fucking hereditary monarch, they actually kinda sorta work pretty well. Set the legal framework for everyone so you can do business and sign contracts, (e.g. NAFTA, EU, WTO, etc) then leave all the other meaningless crap to your dumb little nations that you've been so fucking obsessed with the last hundred years.

Oh we need to keep Dork Republic a Dork speaking country? Spazania only for the Spazanians? Hah, great, fucking good luck with that. Stay with your own kind and stay away from me. And Red Sox Nation? Oh jesus. Sports fans who celebrate their identity as a nation are the worst.

The end of the age of the nation-state can't come soon enough, god damn it.

Russia
Though it perhaps seemed like a good idea at the time, the toppling of the Tsar and the assumption of power by the Soviet Union has produced more human misery than nearly any other political regime in history. A legacy created by the murderous sociopaths in charge that is still paying miserable dividends today thanks to the criminals and thieves that permeated the corrupt society, both before and after the fall of the Soviet global extortion and oppression machine.

By the time Boris Yeltsin was "in charge", Russia was a terrifying free for all, where the only way to achieve any kind of wealth was to steal. Things were so fucked up that when the part of Russia called Chechnya tried to succeed (after a mere 150 years of subjugation), the Russian army sent to fight the rebels found a Chechen army fighting with their own Russian equipment, sold to them through deals brokered by Chechnian mafia that had contacts with old corrupt Soviet military officers.

Ironic then to now find Chechen mercenaries infiltrating Eastern Ukraine and fucking shit up at the behest of Vladimir Putin, who has since re-subjugated the Chechens and turned the country into a lawless vassal ruled by a warlord loyal only to Putin himself.

But before Pooty Poot could take the reigns, Yelstin had to first realize just how fucked things had gotten. And once he did he understood that he had made too many enemies, and that he'd never be able to retire from power and drown himself in vodka as he so desperately wanted to do.

Flailing for a lifeline in a sea of post Soviet chaos, Yeltsin called the old reliable KGB, now known as the FSB, and the least decimated of the surviving Soviet power apparatus. The reliably Machiavellian FSB concocted a plan to get rid of the Chechnyan problem (now de facto independent having won embarrassed Russia in a war despite being 1/100 the size) and install one of their own as the new boss. Enter Vladimir Pooty Poot. Their scheme involved blowing up a bunch of apartment buildings around Moscow, killing the innocent Russians sleeping therein, blaming it on the Chechens, and using it as an excuse to obliterate the rebel Chechan government.

This plan was dutifully put into action after Yeltsin appointing Putin as Prime Minister (a position previously with a revolving door policy) and it worked pretty well except for a few minor hiccups, too morbid and lengthy to repeat in full, and Putin was subsequently elected President after a swell in popularity following the reinvasion of Chechnya.

People, as you might suspect, began investigating deeper into these apartment bombings, and subsequently turned up dead under suspicious circumstances, although sometimes not so suspiciously. Once ex-KGB turned informant was blabbing about the plan in London until two spies poisoned his soup with radioactive polonium. Nope, not making that up, either.

Another fun thing that happened under Putin's watch was the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from Hermitage Capital, a hedge fund set up by (formerly) Russophile American businessman. When a lawyer hired by the American exposed the tax fraud used as cover for the theft, he was arrested, jailed, and beaten to death. He was 31 years old.

But don't worry, Putin put that money to good use. He built himself a breathtaking mansion on the shores of the Black Sea in Southern Russia. Not to far from Sochi, actually, the tropical resort town that hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics after Putin bribed IOC officials with large amounts of cash.

Vladimr Putin is a true piece of shit. He deserves a long painful death.

Look for the Russian squad to squeak their way past the group stage with the help of young talismanic striker, Alan Dzagoev.

South Korea
Hey I made it through all 32 fucking teams. And an obscene number of words typed. Christ I need a life.

North Korea sounds like hell on Earth but did you know South Korea has the same demographic and fertility problems that Japan has and also one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Makes you wonder which society is really better doesn't it?

Haha, no it doesn't, South Korea is still way more better, duh! Gangnam Style!

OK so I just tried looking for Vegas odds to wrap things up and pick a team to root for, and I got all these messages about the federal government seizing web domains because of online line gambling laws and the FBI and some shit. Jesus why does America have to suck so bad sometimes? Every other county manages to have online gambling, and they're fine just fine. Fucking asshole America.

Now I'm definitely not rooting for the US. Sorry bros. My team is going to be... fucking Bosnia and also all the African teams. Yes great. Now to hope my BlogSpot account is still active.

Go Bosnia Die Murica!