why isn't this growing legs?

BLOCK THAT POLITICAL METAPHOR du JOUR: LEGS not wings!

Okay I have actually now read the Craig Smith story in The New York Times, and there are items and details in it which are New & Totally Disgusting to Me. Also the yutz seems to have been entirely unaware about the Spectacle & Insurrection outside Amsterdam Arena by the chemically altered Utrecht fans, followed by Amsterdam Mayor Cohen's Declaration of Martial Law & Suspension of Civil Liberties for the Rest of zondag.

Well, okay, that's understandable, I hadn't been aware of it either, and I was 3.281 kilometers away at the time and not stoned. Sometimes reporters just miss things like that. Maybe he's a sportswriter. It's a Soccer Story, after all.

So there is a slim possibility that Smith did not Travel to the Future to filch my blog post. I still am pretty damn sure that's what happened, but my attorneys, Seebark, Lambert & Ku, say the lawsuit may be ill-advised at this time pending further research into the Time Travel Thing, and we may have to hire an expert witness on that one, perhaps the world's foremost authority.

(Cathy has asked me to add: If you have recently had your town water supply poisoned by a large corporation, Seebark, Lambert & Ku have all seen both movies, and know how to pursue these kinds of matters. 33% if we settle, 40% if it goes to court.)

So, like, Smith Guy starts publishing this wretched stuff, a Low Sludge Point of Earth Behavior, on 28 March, in English, in the biggest newspaper in the USA (Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 4 , Column 3). Vleeptron issues its Opinion & Feelings about this mess, and throws in the Amsterdam Footie Riots and Unusual Mayoral Response on 17 April.

And Truth to Tell, Ajax and its weird troubles from being known and beloved by a metric shitload of fans unofficially as "The Jews" and even "the Superjews," is all over the web in English, and it ain't hard to Google. God knows how many .NL sites there are. People, including Soccer Fans, barfing and screaming in Dutch. Not a pretty read. Utrecht Visiting Insurrection Sunday was about 4 years ago.

Oh and they got the newsfilm and show it to everybody as they're leaving the Anne Frank Museum. With subtitles in several Indo-European languages, if you need assistance. But most people don't have much trouble grokking a thousand drunks, mostly male, screaming: KILL THE JEWS! KILL THE JEWS!

So, like ... why isn't this story growing legs?

Aren't people worried about this? The LAST place this pustule is supposed to appear, pop open and leak goop is the Netherlands. These were not visiting fans from Oesterreich or the Balkans. These were Dutch guys from a Dutch city 33.79 kilometers down the intercity express line.

(My pal tells me I might give Utrecht another try on my Must-Visit List, he says it's just another big Dutch city whose streets are not ordinarily filled to overflowing with violent drunk antisemites.)

Obviously, this is not good for Jews, even though none of the people the Utrecht fans wanted to kill, or practically none, were actual Jews. They would actually understand at the moment that they were killing a lot of Catholics, Protestants and some Muslims, and I suppose the odd atheist and freethinker; but as they killed these non-Jews, they would just be thinking of them as if they were Jews. They knew they really weren't Jews.

(The Smith story says that most real Jews, even lovers of Ajax, won't go near a game or team event, they are avoiding Live Ajax like the plague. Most violent antisemitism comes to Jews as a surprise; no reason to set an alarm, take the trolley and buy a ticket.)

But also this is not good for Soccer. Or Amsterdam. Or Randstad. Or the Netherlands. Or the Benelux Countries. Or Europe, Eurasia or the Human Race, or Earth, or our entire Solar System. By now it probably has also made A-4 of The Milky Way Weekly Clarion.

Is this like a Heavy Denial thing -- a story So Ugly (though fortunately causing no deaths -- a sub-fatal Soccer Fiesta of Jew-Hating and Threatening) that, given the slightest chance to duck it and not hear or see much about it, everybody takes that option and does the Three Monkeys thing?

That's human. I recognize that. Very human.

I only know what I know about it completely by Bizarre Euro Travel Accident & Coincidence, and a helpful young hotel clerk.

On USA national TV news, this never happened. 60 Minutes would love this story -- shocking, horrible, disgusting, miserable, shameful, real scary -- and entirely about Europeans, a Celebration of Euro-Scum. For an American audience, it would be like watching Someone Else do Real Disgusting Things, we have an alibi on this one. It would be like a shower under a waterfall in a rain forest on a stifling summer day, only disgusting.

Am I just really Serendipitous and Geeky? Well, this is, after all, a Sports Story from VSPN, and

It's Sports Time on Vleeptron!
All the Sports from Vleeptron!
We've got the latest Qx'ii scores!
All the games from the Dwingeloo League!
Bear-baiting, fish-shooting, cockfighting too!
Bare-knuckle boxing from 1902!
A fifth of our Sports all take place in the Zoo!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!

That's just the way we like our Sports on Vleeptron. It's probably me, and not Earth.

I haunt Europe's train stations and ferry ports and see a lot of Footie Hools. (They travel in groups of about 30 or 40 or 50 or 60.) Astonishingly, with the USA's mega-violent Team Sports (which build character), we don't really have this phenomenon, thousands of drunks who blow all their money on all the cheap travel they can afford, and afflict themselves like Ostrogoths on distant cities whose only crime is having another team in the same league. I saw a guy at a college Bowl game who had had all his teeth specially drilled, gilded and enameled so that when he smiled broadly, his teeth said:

S O O N E R S

But we don't seem to have Footie Hools yet.

A Negative Space Blessing: A Good Thing About America because we don't have much of it yet.

Let me make it clear about Vleeptron. Yes, we have fish-shooting (the season is currently: ON) and bare-knuckle boxing, I admit that.

But we don't have Hate. We don't. Really. We evolved beyond that in 46209 AV. No war. No violence exept on the playing field with people wearing uniforms, and even that -- we don't get into that aggressive physical checking and fouling crap.

We select our star athletes for their grace, agility, talent and sportspersonship. We are still Huge on that old-fashioned sportspersonship. Like the night Joe Louis went down to the hospital to see Max Schmelling and asked him if he was feeling okay or needed anything. It happened in the movie about them. Until convinced otherwise I prefer to think it's true. They were indeed pals for life and often helped one another out, which was often quite difficult as they were from different races, different countries, and in opposing armies during World War II, and they had met twice on purpose to pound the living crap out of each other with their fists.

We love tennis on Vleeptron. There's a huge statue of Arthur Ashe in the Plaza Centro de Ciudad Vleeptron, and at the Akira Kurosawa Zeta Beam Drome, there are No Entry Persona Non Grata posters of John McEnroe, if he shows up we relieve him of his cash and traveller's checques, make him withdraw 60000 Vþþties from the ATM, pour old motor oil all over him, shove him into the kiosk and send him to Singapore. We call that Behavior Modification.

Here is some more stuff about Ajax that I know and that Smith guy doesn't.

Amsterdam Arena is one of the first of a new generation of Euro Soccer Stadiums designed specifically to reduce Fan Violence. All over the stands there are giant mirrors. Just as an Utrecht Fan is about to disembowel a pretty little girl in an Ajax t-shirt, he looks up and sees himself in the giant mirror, is overcome with remorse and shame, and drops his assegai. That's the theory, anyway. I don't know how well it's worked out in practice.

I would love it if Real Amsterdamers left Comments about The Mirror Theory and anything they think is interesting or educational about one of the finest football clubs in Europe. You can even try to explain The Offsides Rule to me. (My pal Uwe in Berlin said: "I can't explain it. But I know it when I see it.")

I really would hate to be in Ajax's Addidas.

This kind of shit doesn't go on on Vleeptron. Our most beloved FC, the fans call them The Detested Snrvz, even though not a single Snrv is playing on the squad right now, and win or lose, the whole fucking Dwingeloo League throws them a big fresh-caught (not shot) salmon barbecue after every game. I bring the Icelandic salmon with me on the Zeta Beam each time I go, it's a big hit with the Detested Snrvz, the salmon is packed in dry ice.