On the 11th of September

On the 11th of September 2001 I was in Manhatten, in Spanish Harlem more specifically at the Central Park Hostel & Inn 103rd Street Manhatten. On the 10th of September 2001, I was in a very nice place over by Park Avenue....how I got from point A to point C- is an entirely different story....but anyway, here is what some recent travellers had to say about the hostel in question:

It has a really good location in front of Central Park. But the hostel is too dirty and smeel really bad; also the bathrooms. Good place, great local, but really dirty.... The restrooms were very dirty, but the location of the hostel was fine.The has been either a mouse or a rat in the room, eating my cereal bar which I had left in my bag! that is extremely ugly and unclean! I like the bit about the mouse in the room.

I don't recall a rodent infestation during my visit, though there was a large garbage bin outside the hostel from which rats the size of an overweight cat occasionally appeared. As I alluded to earlier, I landed in the 103rd Street hostel on the night of September 10th. I had originally planned on flying to Chicago on the morning of the 11th. I went to a travel agency on the 10th and booked a ticket which the travel agent subsequently printed out. But then, I don't know why, I just suddenly felt, as I leaned against the travel agency counter, on the brink of handing over my credit card, that something was wrong, profoundly wrong. Maybe deep down I just wanted to spend a day walking around Manhatten and this manifested itself in a nervous "I can't get on that flight" sort of way. In any event, I made them take back the ticket and change it for the 12th.

A quick cab ride later I was in my new home for the night and had already begun fraternizing with my fellow hostel goers. I met two guys one from Germany and the other from Spain. We decided to head downtown (or rather uptown) for drinks and socializing. We arrived back at the hostel quite late, and upon waking the next morning I immediatly saught out coffee. Downstairs, just in front of the hostel was a sort of mom and pop place that sells a bit of everything (in Paris we call this "chez l'arabe" because it is the sort of tiny store that North African people often keep). When I approched the store keeper with my coffee in order to pay, she suddenly started saying things to me in Spanish. Something like "amoizejfmocvx,mqihe airport qmlsdkjfoiaqeznfwxc airplane qlskdhfoiqez" was what I understood. I assumed this meant that there was a strike at the airport. Imagining that there is a strike is a direct consequence of having lived in France for an extended period of time. So I sipped my coffee, handed over 75 cents to the lady and made my way back to the English speaking side of 103rd Street. At this point only one of the towers had been hit, I learned this at the hostel reception....and then well you know the rest of the story so I won't bore you with the details.

Women and Soccer

To be honest, I’ve never watched a soccer game in my entire life. I don’t even own a television so watching a soccer match means either: a) going there physically or b) being invited to somebody’s flat to watch it on their television or c) going to a pub that has one of those big screen things Due to the fact that I have never gone into a bar on my own and have no friends and largely live in my work cubicle (having the occasional shower in the office bidet) - I have never seen a match. Because you see I am an American and currently posses two ovaries (for whatever that is worth) and up until now I just have never met anyone who was interested in the game or interested in taking me to one.

Other places and events I have never been to include: rock concert, Broadway musical and Euro Disney. I guess you could say I’ve led a deprived and perhaps even depraved life, and I would not argue with that. The irony is that as a teenager I did in fact play on the girls’ soccer team for a short time.....which was long enough for me to realize that I wasn’t very good at it mainly due to a deformity at birth known as Morton’s Toe in which the second toe is slightly longer than the first. To make a long story short: I was eventually redirected to the ballet club by a school guidance councillor.

So the two universal questions to be addressed are: Why aren’t women interested in soccer? Why aren’t Americans interested in soccer?

WOMEN

Schopenhauer the German philosopher of course pointed out that attraction and love were simply disguised motors of evolution, causing people to form couples and mate for the betterment and proliferation of the human species. So for example short women are attracted to tall men so that their offspring can fit into ready to wear clothing without a problem. According to Schopenhauer this all goes on without anyone becoming consciously aware of it, but as a pragmatist and psychologist I would like to offer up another explanation; one based on motivation and survival of the fittest: European women, you see, must force themselves to be interested in soccer in so much as it is an essential part of husband marketing.

Husband Marketing can be defined as the active and strategically executed, conscious or unconscious search for a husband by women between the ages of 30 and 35. Husband marketing’s implicit objective is the production of babies (some of whom will be born with Morton’s Toe). Due to the fact that European women are marring / forming couples later in life (click here to see some of my less serious work on international birth rate analysis) and as an extension having fewer babies, again later in life, older women have been resorting to aggressive husband marketing business plans as is made evident by some of the vulgarised literature on the subject: The bestseller, penned by Harvard MBA graduate, Rachel Greenwald, Find A Husband After 35 (Using What I Learned At Harvard Business School), is an excellent example.

Madame or Mademoiselle? Greenwald incites her readers to: Bag a man with all the relentless focus of a great jungle cat on the prowl for fresh meat by making a 12-18-month mission of finding a husband, to put the man back in management, and to follow her rules if they desire maximum dating efficiency. Advises women to change their appearance, home, habits, and lifestyle in the hunt for the someone fabulous. Greenwald likens the manhunt to a successful marketing campaign, her original area of expertise.

Pubs (during soccer matches) are an excellent place to meet potential husbands. Whether women realize it or not, they are acting in a way that increases their chances of procreating. Because, lets face it, if it weren’t for mother nature sending us subliminal messages, the soccer match and pub (i.e. sweat and beer) combo isn’t a very interesting one for those of us of the XY persuasion. American women are faced with the same problem, but must perform market research in sports bars dedicated to one of the nation’s more popular sports if they hope to fish from a population pool that can be deemed statistically significant, mainly: American Football, Basketball, and to a lesser extent Hockey or Baseball.

THE COLONIES

Why soccer never gained in popularity in the United States remains a mystery. Perhaps because America has been historically isolationist, perhaps because European men cross their legs when they sit, and this is definitely frowned upon in the states as is everything implicitly or explicitly European....