In trivial pursuit of late night football I would rather dye into my bed, than visit the WC By Cecil Pinto
A good play on words, very popular these days, is with the initials WC. "The WC takes up all my time!", could mean anything from a fascination with World Cup football, to an anal fixation. Very few folks I asked though knew that WC was short-form for 'water closet', similar to the French usage 'cabinet de toilette', much as 'powder-room' may be coyly used today. A toilet by any name smells the same but yet humanity has used so many words to disguise this fact - john, lavatory, can, privy, loo. In fact that last, chiefly British term loo, has fascinating origins. One theory is that it derives from a corruption of the French phrase gardez l'eau loosely translated as "watch out for the water!" The phrase served as a warning to passers-by when chamber pots were emptied from a window onto the street. A much more plausible theory comes from nautical terminology; loo being an old fashioned word for lee. The standard nautical pronunciation (in British English) of leeward is looward or lieuward. Early ships were not fitted with toilets but the crew would urinate over the side of the vessel. However it was important to use the leeward side. Using the windward side would result in the urine blown back on board. The phrases 'pissing into the wind' and 'spitting into the wind' mean the same thing. With such a disgusting start to a column I can't do much worse. Lets see what we can learn about World Cup football, that has not been done to death by the newsmagazines already. Take the Offside Rule. Nobody, yes not a single dedicated World Cup match watcher I asked, could clearly define the offside rule to me. Quite simply the offside position is determined if a player is closer to the opponent's goal line than the ball, and the second to last opposing player. Simple? Now you place yourself in the position of the Assistant Referee who has to keep the definition of Offset Position in mind while simultaneously measuring distances between a moving ball and players, and also keeping his eyes open for a hundred and one other offenses. It is no wonder then that most Assistant Referees become stark raving alcoholics! A regular phenomenon at major sport events, that I've not seen much of in this World Cup, is the Mexican Wave, or La Ola, which is an effect formed when crowds in stadia (which is a fancy word for stadiums!) rise up and down from their seats in succession. This effect was given that name when the phenomenon first came to a global audience during the football World Cup held in Mexico in 1986, exactly twenty years back. It had originated though somewhat earlier, in US colleges during baseball and American football games. What is not widely known is that the Mexican Wave has been thoroughly analysed and studied by mathematicians and physicists. In physics terminology, the Mexican wave is an example of a transverse wave: the spectators move only vertically (standing up and then sitting down again) but the wave travels horizontally around the stadium. They found that three out of every four waves travel clockwise around the stadium (partly because the majority of people are right-handed) and that they typically move about 12 meters (20 seats) per second. Interestingly, it requires only 30 or so fans standing up simultaneously to start the ripple effect leading to a full fledged wave. In fact if you are Internet savvy just log on to http://angel.elte.hu/wave/ and click on Interactive Simulations. You can simulate your own Mexican Waves in a virtual stadium and see exactly how fast and how long they will travel. Change individual parameters and see the effects immediately. Far more intellectually stimulating than watching those clowns commenting on ESPN. If they know so much how come they're not hired as coaches and managers? Now for the truly adventurous. Make a Mexican Wave with your eyebrows. Try it - now. Start by arching the left end of the left eyebrow and move centrally across the bridge of your nose and forehead. Try not to wrinkle your forehead too much. Who said you had to move your eyeballs? Why all that grimacing with the mouth for heaven's sake? And why are your nostrils blowing out like a dragon? Just the eyebrows have to move. Ok, try it one more time. Now casually look around and try to explain to all the people staring at you exactly what you were attempting to do. Ha! Gotcha! Back to World Cup trivia. The only person to have played both World Cup football and World Cup cricket is Viv Richards - Antigua for football and West Indies for cricket. Telstar provided by Adidas was the official match ball of 1970 FIFA World Cup. It was painted with black and white panels so it was more visible on black-and-white television, and hence its name which is short for 'television star'. It was the first World Cup ball to use the Buckminsterfullerene C60 design consisting of 12 black pentagonal and 20 white hexagonal panels, which since became the quintessential design of a soccer football. As far as mascots go between 1966 and 2006 there have been two lions, one cockerel, one dog, four little boys, one orange, one chillipepper, three aliens, a cube-puzzle type thing and a talking football. Goleo, the current mascot, is a portmanteau of the words "goal" and "leo", the Latin word for lion. In Germany, "Pille" is a colloquial term for a soccer ball or football. Everyone knows that die is the singular of dice, but how many know that 'dye' is Konkani for 'dive'? Goalies don't dive in Goa - they dye. "What a dye!", has no connection with colour. Ha! And they said I couldn't write an informative column about World Cup football. Give me an Internet connection and I can write about anything. Next week maybe I can try my hand at nuclear physics! --- The humour column above appeared in Gomantak Times dated 6th July 2006. === _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
