The final 32 teams of the FIFA 2010 World Cup have been decided, the nineteenth grand tournament of world football.  It is bigger than the Olympics.  It is bigger than the United Nations.  It is bigger than World of Warcraft.  I am happy to say that my country (THE United States of America), the place where I live (Australia), and the lands of my heritage (Germany & England) have all made it.  I am sorry to report that our despised rivals Mexico have also been included.  As second place in CONCACAF I might add … second place to deez nuts!

Sorry.  Sometimes I get distracted.

Anyways, I’ve got a plan on how the United States can win the 2010 World Cup, our first major FIFA trophy and the first country outside of Europe or South America to win said trophy.  We’re huge underdogs, but if we can get my plan in place then I’d say we’ve got a good to great chance. [Read Column]

In school, particularly high school, so much is predicated off of national, standardized tests.  You know the ones that were designed so that Jerome and Pedro would never have a shot at college?  The same ones that were designed so that Wang and Rajindra could deliver perfect scores and skew the entire average for the stupid white kids.  I’m talking about the TIPS, ACT, SAT, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, and more.  Much more.

These tests are so ridiculously stupid.  Why?  Well, good sir, I’m happy you asked. [Read Column]

As I’ve mentioned ad nauseum in this column, I was in a fraternity during college.  Greek life.  For the uninitiated, fraternities are blessings from blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby Jesus, collections of young men hungry for beer, pool, video games, and sorority tah-tahs.  I was a Fiji, which meant I was too smart to have anything to talk about with the cro-magnons at the Beta or Sigma Chi houses, but cool enough not to hang out with the Farmers or AGR.  My pledge class was known as the Upsilons and we were a collection of misfits, malcontents, and miscreants … to be kind.

There are literally hundreds of stories that I could share with you about my days in the hallowed halls of Sigma Omicron, most of which I can only shake my head at disbelief that these things actually happened.  Today, though, I’d like to tell you about the Code Red that we pulled on one of my pledge brothers.  Kyle McShitt. [Read Column]

The Psychic Friends phenomenon first hit in the late 1980s.  I remember it well, because I was just around ten years old.  Remember this was early ESP, way before Cleo or John Edwards.  This even before Dionne Warwick.  I can’t remember how they advertised, probably the same as they do now … late night or early Saturday television commercials … but I remember being inundated by their ads.  My brother and I were absolutely convinced that they were real.

So we called them. [Read Column]

Stillwater High School Soccer.

Few organizations can boast such a fruitless, ineffectual record of utter failure and disaster.  I present to you a collection of approximately 25 young men in Stillwater, Oklahoma that trained diligently under professional coaching yet could not have executed the World Game more poorly if we were playing on a mud slide of yak feces with waffle irons tied to our feet.  I am simultaneously horribly ashamed and strangely proud of my participation of this endeavor in 1994 and 1995. [Read Column]