Category: Writing & Books

I Don’t Understand Fútbol

footballLike most North Americans, I watch fútbol (soccer) every four years.  I go World Cup crazy like everybody else on this planet, but when it’s over, I go back to regular sports … mostly football (football) and hockey.  It’s not that I don’t like fútbol; I do.   As a spectator sport, it’s got it all.  The joy of victory, the agony of defeat, sweat, testosterone, talented young men doing incredible things with their balls, wives and girlfriends so hot they could resurrect the libido of a dead man, and, of course, billionaire owners, buying and selling players like it’s a Zanzibar auction.  Which brings us to the reason I’m even talking about fútbol in the dead air of August.

It’s all very complicated, but here’s the decaf version.

There’s a player called Neymar (apparently, really good fútbol players are only allowed one name — i.e. Ronaldo, Messi, etc.) who’s changing teams — from Barcelona to Paris St-Germain.  No big deal, right?  Except this involves buying out his contract.  And get this!  His contract is worth 222 million Euros (263 million dollars!)  WTF!  That’s more than the entire payroll of the New York Yankees — the winningest franchise in sports history.  It’s more than the national debt of Haiti.  It’s unbelievable!  Hell, there’s probably a lab in China where you could have an entire team biologically built — from scratch — for that price.  I’m not kidding!  Not only that, but once he gets to Paris St-Germain (PSG) they’re going to pay him 40 million Euros a year to play.  That’s over €100,000 a day — every day — including Christmas.  Double WTF!  But — for serious grins — when the lawyers showed up with a suitcase full of money to purchase Neymar’s services, the Spanish League initially wouldn’t accept it.  They said it violated Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules.  Financial Fair Play?  Guys, the cash in this contract could feed every man, woman and child in Mali for a year or more.  Financial fair play has nothing to do with it.  Besides, think about it.  Uefa’s governing body is FIFA; these are the boys who could give shyster lessons to the Russian Mafia.  Trust me!  They wouldn’t know fair play if it bit them on the bum.

Actually, I have nothing against anybody making as much money as possible from their talents.  So, despite the fact I think it’s obscene, if PSG wants to pay 40 million Euros for a kid to kick a ball every once in a while, I have no objections.  Good on ya, Neymar!  The reason I don’t watch fútbol is I simply don’t understand how it works.  I can’t follow all the different leagues, all the different teams and all the different games.  I never know who’s doing what with whom or why.  So, I wait — and every four years, when people start waving flags I recognize, I cheer — ’cause that’s what I understand — like most people in North America.

Two Weird Ways To Make Money

moneyMoney isn’t everything, but it sure as hell is ahead of whatever’s in second place.  I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor — guess which one I prefer.  To that end, here are two weird ways to make a ton of money out of the New Economy.  The first one takes a lot of skill, but the second one just takes a little imagination and a lot of chutzpah.

Video Games — Of course, there are the traditional ways to earn money with video games — testing them, entering tournaments etc., etc. — but there’s also this semi-legit marketplace out there.  I heard about it from a World of Warcraft addict.  What he does is play World of Warcraft, like, all the time.  He builds different characters, adds powers and weapons, collects piles of Warcraft gold and like that.  (I’m not a player, so I don’t really know what’s involved.)  Anyway, once he advances to the upper game levels, he sells all his virtual stuff to other gamers (who maybe aren’t as good as he is, or just don’t want to put in the hours) so they can play at the higher levels.  The beauty is he gets paid serious money for this — real money.  Apparently, there’s a huge demand for this sort of thing and, according to my buddy, it works with most video games.  But think about it!  There are people in this world who are actually paying other people to play games for them.  Personally, I kinda think this defeats the whole purpose, but who am I to judge?

Selling Useless Crap on the Internet — These aren’t scams.  These are real products, available on the Internet, and people have paid real money for them.  Things like UFO Detectors, DVD Rewinders and Dehydrated Water (just add water.)  There’s also Rocky Mountain Morning Air, Ghosts In A Bottle, Unicorn Farts and Leprechaun Kisses.  More than a few people are selling dirt — by the spoonful.  There was a guy who took a photograph, turned it into a million pixels, sold the pixels for a dollar each and — yes — he literally earned a million dollars.  There was another guy, in Canada, who took an ordinary red paper clip and starting trading it online.   Eventually, he ended up with a three bedroom house! But my very favourite is Nothing.  That’s right : you can buy a little plastic bag full of Nothing on the Internet for (I think) $4.95 plus shipping and handling.  P. T. Barnum was right.

These are only two examples of what is going on in the New Economy, but in our brave new world, it looks to me as if your financial future is  limited only by your imagination.

 

A Greek Tragedy

acropolisI’ve got nothing against the Greeks.  After all, democracy is still one of the biggies and you can’t argue with Socrates, Aristotle and Plato.  Plus, there’s Herodotus, Pythagoras, Euripides, Archimedes etc. etc. etc. and Venus de Milo still has the best ass known to man.  Okay.  That said, there’s been a lotta sunshine on the Acropolis since Pericles and the boys were calling the shots in Europe.  These days, aside from Adrianna Huffington, nobody takes the Greeks seriously.  Why?  They don’t pay their bills.

I don’t care what your particular pet theory on the current Euro/Greek monetary fiasco is: call it First World waste, corporate banking greed, aliens, Elvis back from the dead — it doesn’t matter — nothing escapes Economics 101.  Here’s the deal.  Whine all you want about the evils of modern capitalism, it’s still just a pumped-up version of the barter system.  I work for you; you give me coloured paper.  I give the coloured paper to KFC; they give me chicken.  And on and on.  It’s that simple.  You can complicate it with mutual funds, venture capital, bonds, debentures, George Soros and Bill Gates, but at the end of the day, it comes down to coloured paper.  And if you don’t manage your coloured paper properly, you’re going to get screwed and some faceless banking vulture is going to drop by and pick your bones.  Don’t believe me?  Quit paying your credit card for a couple of months.  This has been our monetary system since before Diocles was counting his drachmas.  The thing that astounds me is the Greeks, who basically invented it, have now decided the system doesn’t apply to them.  They believe they can spend what they want, when they want, and somebody else should pick up the tab.  It’s kinda like they’re giving anyone who actually pays their bills the financial finger.

I wonder what Aesop would have made of this whole mess.  I’m certain that he would have come up with some kind of a tale.  Unfortunately, it’s been a lot of years since Greek thinking and innovation shaped the world.  Today, Aesop wouldn’t have a voice because Greece has become just another silly little country living on the kindness of strangers — and very pissed off with themselves because of it.