Hot, humid, exhausting -- plus, thoughts on the World Cup, the British Monarchy, and a few other things

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Toronto is an unpleasant place to be when it's this hot and this humid, and I'm sure it's the same for many of you suffering through this heatwave in the U.S. northeast and central Canada.

I'll be back to blogging tomorrow... er, later today, as it's already past 1 am. I'm just too tired to write anything.

So stay tuned for more from me and the team.

But first, a few thoughts:

-- I'm really looking forward to Germany-Spain tomorrow. That, to me, is the final. (Sorry, Holland.) And I, who has long rooted against our two-time World War enemy of the last century, can hardly believe that I'm rooting for Germany. What an exciting team. And it helps that it's a genuinely multicultural team that reflects the new Germany and that has incurred the wrathful opposition of the neo-Nazi far right. For some reason I can really get behind a German team filled with Turks, Poles, and Brazilians.

-- The Queen (Elizabeth II, that is) was in Toronto yesterday, at Queen's Park of all places. I'm a Democrat in U.S. politics, but I'm definitely a republican up here. I'd like to see the monarchy abolished in Canada. It's pathetic to see so many Canadians on their knees, so grateful that she came to visit us on our birthday, so thankful that she seems to care about us, as if she blesses us with her presence, as if her very appearance here proves our worthiness. Sorry, but I don't care to be her "subject," and I think this country needs its own head of state, and not just a governor general who acts as the Queen's representative. If Britain wants to keep the monarchy, fine, and, as a British citizen as well as a Canadian one, I suppose I support keeping the monarchy there, but we need to move on. (Yes, the Queen is deeply popular with many Canadians, and it's not clear what could replace the monarchy (an elected "president," as in Germany?), but today's Canada -- diverse, cosmopolitan -- doesn't need her anymore, if it ever really did, and much of the popularity is directed at her personally, not at the institution.)

-- How hilarious, in a sad sort of way, is this? A BP offshore oil drilling board game from the '70s, featuring "hazard cards" that read, "Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million." Really, you can't make this shit up. (I wonder if Dr. Evil came up with the $1 million figure.)

-- John McCain, you have clearly become a hollow shell of a human being. And that's putting it nicely. Have you absolutely no self-respect left at all?

-- Washingon v. Arizona over the latter's draconian anti-immigrant law? Arizona will lose. And rightly so.

-- Sign already, LeBron. Somewhere. Please.

-- Just got my seat assignment for Roger Waters' The Wall in Buffalo in October. Thirteenth row! Awesome. I can't even begin to express my excitement. (Yes, I'm seeing him here in Toronto, too.)

Alright, enough. Good night.