Nigeria and the World Cup

I was remarking one day on how I'm blessed and ecstatic that my blog is being viewed by people all over the world. I joked that I don't have any hits from Africa, and really wanted some, because that would just be cool.

Joey Mullins suggested I write about the World Cup and Nigeria, which I thought was a wonderful and creative idea. Of course, that just opens the door for me to write about the Nigerian Finance Ministry, too.

Everything I know about world soccer (or Real Football outside the USA) consists largely of what I saw in the movie "Alive," that Brazilian football hooligans make the Scottish look like pikers, because they take it way too seriously, and that when Brandi Chastain ripped her shirt off, me and all my girlfriends thought that was the most Fucking Awesome Thing Ever.

So, let's see what I can make up About Nigerian Football.... okay, let me come back to that...

(Edit: Turns out "Alive" was about the Rubgy team, which just goes to show exactly how much I know about World Cup....)

The Nigerian Finance Ministry starts as the running joke about the spate of emails that used to circulate asking naive, desperate and foolish people to provide bank account info so someone in a foreign country - typically really was Nigeria - could launder money thru their accounts for a cut of the money.

I remember hearing that so much money was being stolen in these scams that it actually did become a measurable part of the Nigerian Gross Domestic Product for one calendar year. This might be pure urban legend, but it wouldn't surprise me.

It did become running fodder for Irregular Webcomic - produced by a guy with a PhD in Physics, who co-wrote GURPS Biotech, if I remember all my pieces correctly.  Some people really know how to make the most of their lives and make the rest of us feel like shallow underachievers.

(No, I take that back. The choice of feeling like an underachiever, or not, is entirely my choice. I can compare my life to his, or not. I have done some really amazing shit in my life, and I'm very proud of a lot of it.)

So, um, there you go. I've talked about Nigeria.  Think this will score me any hits from central Africa?  Yeah, probably not, but at least you learned some interesting factoids, and I had fun writing this, so it all works out ;-)