Busy Goliard = Slow blogging. Circumstances will be preventing your humble author from spending much time blogging for the rest of this week, so expect posting to be sporadic; that is, unless you also will be busy with many other things over the Fourth of July weekend…in which case you will hardly notice, will you?

TUESDAY QUOTATION

Idleness, in the old sense of the word, so far from being synonymous with leisure, is more nearly the inner prerequisite which renders leisure impossible: it might be described as the utter absence of leisure, or the very opposite of leisure. Leisure is only possible when a man is at one with himself, when he acquiesces in his own being, whereas the essence of acedia [idleness] is the refusal to acquiesce in one's own being. Idleness and the incapacity for leisure correspond with one another. Leisure is the contrary of both.

— from Leisure the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper

SPORT

I called it! Many of my World Cup predictions wound up going horribly awry—as did everyone else's—but I am pleased to report that I was right on the money with one of them. Yesterday, Bhutan handily defeated Montserrat 4-0, thereby proving themselves to be only the second-worst national side in world football.

A moment for the entire planet to treasure, surely.

ON OTHER PAGES

Bonus British Monday Funny. While I'm on the subject of British politics-related humor (see below links to Private Eye), Dodgeblog gave me a good chuckle with his riff on Tony Blair and The Truth Laid Bare's blogger league tables (known as "The Blogosphere Ecosystem", and worth a glance even though your humble author is not yet included on it):

Tony Blair has decided to send government "hit squads" to take over and "improve" under-performing blogs. It involves setting up a well-funded (at taxpayer expense) commission to determine why UK blogs are not performing well in the tables. This will involve MPs, ministers, and "experts", while not including any bloggers. They need to have hearings, "fact-finding" trips to successful blogging nations, and a full-time staff. Funds needed for this project will be in excess of £50 million over a 5 year period. Rumours that this commission is Peter Mandelson's way back into government have been denied by Alastair Campbell.

If you've seen Disney's latest animated feature, which is a gem, you'll also enjoy today's The Truth Laid Bare post titled "I want to be 'Stitch' when I grow up".

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Eagle-eyed reader Richard Chonak points out that Nihil Obstat posted the words, "Neither are milllions of citizens…", and wonders if St. Blog's official proofreader "meant to misspell 'millions'". I should hope so. I would find it awfully disconcerting to learn that Nihil Obstat is not practically perfect in every way.

PET PEEVE HAIKU

Once I had archives
Now the links have disappeared
Thanks again, Blogger!

Talented? Hardly
Attractive? Not to my eyes
Just get lost, Britney

No lane discipline
Trucks, slow cars in the left lane
I want to slap them

When have you ever
Heard important words spoken
Into a cell phone?
Blather, all day long
If I had nothing to say
I would just hang up

Bad things might happen
Ridge doesn't know where or when
Still he warns us. Why?

MONDAY FUNNY

Colemanballs. The satirical British magazine Private Eye runs many regular features that I enjoy. One of the best is "Colemanballs", named after a BBC sport commentator famous for making clumsy and inane statements on the air. This week Private Eye is running a special "WorldCupballs" which includes these gems (the name in parentheses at the end of each is that of the Private Eye reader who submitted the quote and thereby earned £10):

“Football is much harder if you don’t have the ball.”
SVEN GORAN ERIKSSON
(Brian Clifford)

“The underdogs will start favourites for this match.”
CRAIG BROWN, Radio 5 Live
(John Vear)

Lineker: Do you think he [Rio Ferdinand] is a natural defender?
O’Leary: He could grow into one.
BBC1
(A. Cooper)

Another Private Eye favorite of mine is "Pseuds Corner". Go check it out if you like to see pseudo-intellectual blather satirized by the simple act of quoting it. There's also always lots of good political humor and muckraking to be found in the pages of the Eye, if you happen to follow British politics as I do.