saturday morning i get dragged from a blissful cozy sleep by the alarm. of course, my first thought is aw fuck time to get up again? my second thought is, hey, wait, isn't it sunday? then i'm thinking that oh, there must be formula one on today (we have a habit now of moving from the bed to the couch on formula one mornings, which nicely combines the desires to stay the fuck in bed on the weekends, especially when it's gotten chilly and the landlord hasn't given us heat yet with the desire to not waste the *entire* weekend). but then i realize that it's not sunday it's saturday, so hang on a minute why is the alarm on for formula one, i think 24 hours is a bit too much lead time for that? then i roll over, fully intending to go back to sleep, when karl hauls himself out of bed, saying, "you coming?" coming? to what? "football (by which he means soccer) game." "everton?" "arsenal v. liverpool." hm, okay, i'll get up for that.

we rooted for arsenal (liverpool is everton's biggest rival, since they're both teams from liverpool), and they won 2-1. later in the day, however, the everton v. tottenham game was on, and tottenham creamed everton 3-0, much the way everton creamed leeds 4-0 last weekend. it was a disgrace. if only everyone would play with the same enthusiasm as 17-year old star wayne rooney does. sigh...

stupid thing we sort of fought about this weekend: bringing the broken part to the hardware store so that it can be compared directly with the replacement parts. we need a new lint filter for the dryer, and a new swivel wheel for my desk chair. i brought both of those things, even though karl and brought out the tape measure to see about our kidney-shaped lint trap. i asked why he didn't want to bring them, he said because we'd have to carry them around. i said they weren't very big, so it was no big deal to carry them around. once we got to the store, he asked, as we were getting out of the car, whether i wanted to bring the bag o' broken stuff in. of COURSE i wanted to bring it in, why else would i have brought it in the car to the store? he suggests that we've got the measurements, and that if there's several possible replacements, and we can't quite tell which one we need, we can go back out the car to get the part. i just looked at him like he was a dumbass. which i think objectively he was. in the end, we found a guy in the dryer dept and i pulled out the lint trap and said "we need one of these" and he told us they don't sell them, and i could call up some number and have them send me one. this super-big hardware warehouse store also doesn't sell swivel wheels for desk chairs (what, do they never break?) so i have to go to some industrial part store in the industrial part of the city (8th and callowhill) that's only open m-f 9-5 and see if they've got one. bleh. i did, however, get a mouse to sand this chair that was on the balcony when we moved in and had several layers of old peeling paint on it. i've done all i can with the messy paint stripper, and don't care about preserving the patina. so chair, we i come!

second stupid thing we fought about (well, more like discussed) at the hardware store: whether to buy a hand jigsaw or not. karl was wanting to get a piece of plywood to hold our surround sound receiver, which kinda hangs off the back of the shelf. though later we found pre-cut pieces, at first we were thinking that we'd have to buy a big piece and cut it. his brother, who we see quite often, has a hand jigsaw, and i suggested we could just borrow his. karl wanted to buy one, and gave as a reason i kid you not, that even though we might not use it for "a couple years" and then use it "once or twice in a year" that it was worth buying it would be more convenient than borrowing his brother's. now, *maybe*, if we had a garage or shed or something to put tools in, i'd be in favor of buying a jigsaw. but all we've got is a couple of small closets which are already full. i'm not sure if he would've actually bought one or not because (a) they were out of the model he was considering and (b) the plywood came in pre-cut sheets.

discussion we had that could have been bad, but was actually interesting: the nature of soccer. the starting point was karl's mentioning that some group (americans, he thought, probably correctly) wanted to make the goals in soccer bigger, so there'd be more scoring. i could see both sides. on the one hand, soccer is the game that it is, and has been that way for i don't know how long, and you couldn't go changing it now. on the other hand, it might be more interesting if the typical score in a soccer game was 3-4 rather than 1-0. i see the point in saying that there might be some improvement to make to a game where 0-0 ties are not uncommon. karl maintains that europeans (and, presumably, the rest of the non-US world) get more enjoyment from the intricacies of between-goals game play than americans do, and so enjoy soccer. americans only enjoy the goals, he says, so don't enjoy soccer. now, it may very well be true that americans like games with lots of scoring (how else to explain basketball, where there is hardly any play that *doesn't* end in scoring). but there's a question about why: does american desire for goals lead to a like for high-scoring games and a dislike of soccer? or does the presence of many high-scoring games lead to an impatience with low-scoring ones? the first possibility says something about american desires attention span. the second is about adaptability to your environment. here's how: maybe europeans have grown to like the finer details of open play (and thus can get great enjoyment from a 0-0 game) because they've been forced to adapt to a low-scoring game. maybe the fact that soccer is such a low-scoring game *caused* the people of soccer-loving countries to develop an interest in non-scoring play. that is (for now, by me) an unanswerable question.

karl argued that the 0-0 game in soccer defines a perfect game. in the ideal game, the balance of the stikers' abilities to put the ball in the net is balanced with the goalkeeper + defense's ability to protect the net. thus, in a game with two brilliant teams, played perfectly by both sides, the game would end (satisfactorily, karl argues) in a 0-0 tie. thus, if you made the net bigger, therefore allowing more goals, you would have a lesser game. why? because then, the strikers wouldn't have to be so good to get the ball in the net. teams could get by with lesser atheletes in forward positions. i argued that the only reason why karl thinks of the 0-0 game as the perfect one is because it's always been that way. the net size is (semi)arbitrary. if the nets had always been a bit bigger than they are now, if games were routinely 5-4, karl would have a different definition of the perfect game, i suggested. would he, i asked, argue for reducing the size of the nets in ice hockey, to reduce scoring? because a typical score in hockey is what? 2-3? something like that? his response, which i didn't quite understand, was that hockey is a game that is difficult for an amateur to play (and score) whereas soccer is easier (he argued that he could imagine himself scoring in soccer, but not hockey). i thought this was a weak-ass response, since (a) there's no way he could score in soccer against anyone other than other weekend warriors, and (b) if he learned to skate, he might very well be able to score in hockey (at least, against other weekend warriors).

in the end, all i wanted him to admit was that there was nothing inherent about soccer that made it best as a low-scoring game. that if, way back when, the founders of soccer had decided to pick a goal size that would make a typical score 5-5, then today karl would enjoy that game and think it was the best way for the game to be. he admitted that it was possible.

this conversation took place, just fyi, while we were watching the usa women lose to germany in the world cup semifinals and playing pool at dave & busters. dave and busters is expensive for pool (thank god i have a sugerdaddy), and has zero atmosphere, but has really nice tables and cues, and a big drink and food menu, your order from which gets delivered to you at your table.