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(26 MayMay 26, 2006)
FIFA announced new regulations earlier today intended to curb hooliganism ahead of the World Cup next month, including stadium bans on machine guns, machetes, attempts to cure HIV by raping things, and fans who live in substandard housing, as well as introducing weight class restrictions for all traveling fans. While the South African government has made strides both immediate and immense in reducing the number of soccer fans who live in substandard housing by rendering said fans homeless, it's the weight class regulations that having been drawing the lion's share of the Three Lions' attentions.
"The maximum allowable weight for foreign fans entering Word Cup match venues is 147 lbs., the upper limit of the welterweight class in boxing," said acting FA Chief David Davies. "Hell, our fans can eat 147 lbs. of chips. Each. In one go. While driving a car. With. Out. Stopping. To. Breathe."
"The association of morbid obesity with violent tendencies, or of Englishness with either trait, is completely unfounded and wholly biased," said Nigel Havensham, a Professor of Sports Medicine at King's College, Cambridge. "Why, if the FIFA heads were here right now, I'd explain—quite articulately, I feel confident—to them the error of their mistake, by smashing a bottle of lager over their heads. After drinking it dry, of course. Waste not want not!"
147 lbs. is the equivalent of roughly ten and a half stone, a unit of measurement both more familiar to the technologically backwards English as well as more convenient to the South Africans who, since granting a temporary moratorium on adultery for the duration of the World Cup, have found themselves at somewhat of a loss as to "what to do with all these fucking stones we've piled up." As one event spokesman put it: "You should look like a stereotypical African. You should be completely emaciated and—if not black—wearing kevlar and accompanied by a team of well-trained bodyguards. Also, you should smile often and dance and act like something magical has happened every time some opens a bottle of Coke. An email scam wouldn't hurt, either."
England fans aren't the only ones feeling hard hit by FIFA's calls to be "African-skinny" to gain entrance to World Cup venues. Poland's complaint that the only Poles even remotely thin are "the heroin-addicted sex slaves working in English brothels" has drawn sharp rebuttals from English quarters, who point out that brothels in Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man also "employ" heroin-addicted sex slaves from Poland, with the Polish critics and their English counterparts naturally smashing chairs over one another's heads and setting parked cars on fire to prove their respective points, while the Egyptian playersfans search frantically for their wallets.
"It's like a comic book, it's so violent," said Poland fan Milos Vrcyhahwzch, whose team isn't even playing in the World Cup this year. "I could definitely see drawing it that way."
"I could see! that! too!" said England fan George Andrews, while punching some random person in the face. "Every time an England fan has an epiphany, you could draw a light bulb over his head in one of those little thought balloon thingamajigs. Then you could draw question marks over all the Poles' heads. Har har!"
Questions marks drawn over the heads of many—Polish or otherwise—by FIFA's decision to make the "double fatty with cheese" crowd stay home (or do a pub crawl, or a kraal crawl, or whatever), taking with them, well, anyone taller than 5'3" with an even remotely healthy BMI, were meant to be erased by a FIFA press conference earlier today:
"I haven't had an incredibly terrible idea—well, gone public with an incredibly terrible idea—since, oh, suggesting that MLS switch to a winter schedule or that Hannah Ljunberg play all her matches in a g-string [that latter was actually quite a good idea –eds.]," said FIFA President and Gambino Crime Family associate Sepp Blatter. "Usually I just throw them out there so I'll make headlines for something other than corruption. This time was no different, except that they listened to me. What the hell? Anyway, 's done now, can't be undone, boo hoo hoo."
So you now recognize the utter futility of life in general and sports-related press conferences in particular. Despair!
Americans were hardly affected by the regulation, as no one in America over the age of ten actually cares about soccer; convenient, you might say, as no one in America over the age of ten weighs less than a welterweight boxer... or a bear about to enter hibernation, for that matter.
Hope is not completely lost, however, for England fans who wish to travel, support their team in person, and beat the shit out of "perfect strangers" for no reason beyond having a different language and culture. "I figure I can weigh 300 pounds and still enter the country," said one England fan, who wished to remain anonymous. "As long as I leave a hundred pounds with an immigration official. Get it? Get it? ... What, should I wink again? Man, I am so gonna cave in Balki Bartokomous's skull. Whaddyamean 'fictional character'? And single quotes go on the outside, ponce!"
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