one world, one beer

31 days to go. I will send my passport off to the Afghan high commission in Ottawa this week. Australia has an online visa application for certain types of applicants from certain countries. That's a great idea. And Finland requires no visa at all for Canadian tourists, an even better idea.

I was listening to an interview with British/Italian author Tim Parks on Monday night. I wish
I'd heard of him earlier. I'll definitely pick up one of his books. He's written novels as well as non-fiction (termed travel writing, but as he pointed out, he never left Italy after he moved there and began writing about it). He read a short section from "A Season With Verona". The short section Parks read describes a scene on a train after a football match (football is the setting for the book) in which a young man simultaneously curses policemen out the train window and soothingly reassures his mother, via his mobile, that he'll be home by the time the pasta's ready.

The book explores is the phenomena of the space cut out for football in Italian life. It's a wild place where passions sore and men scream and cry and shout blasphemous things. It's the stadium-turned cathedral from the World Cup adds. . ."these are our anthems. . .this is our worship. . .this is our holy grail" etc. He admits that football is nothing, it means nothing, it's empty, but people are willing to stake their life on it because the game and the culture make them feel like there is something. That's kind of depressing, actually.

Maybe that's why Budweiser adds are so over-the-top. It's promoters are desperately trying to believe that there's anything of value in the bottle.