Ooo, that smell . . .

I had several ideas for the column this week. I thought I could write a little something about obesity, tentatively titled "Put the Fork Down!" as an homage to Denis Leary, whose line that is anyway. I wanted to write about the vital ability to recognize irony, and how its lack is crippling our youth as well as our collective sense of humor. I watched the fine and infuriating movie "Wal*Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices" yesterday, and was absolutely raring to rip into that consummately evil corporation.

But I can't do any of those. I will definitely write on those topics and any and all others that come to mind in future, but today? Today I simply can't do it.

There's too much football in the air. I can't seem to clear my head of this miasma of vicarious testosterone, and so I can't muster up the proper focus. I'll have to pick this up again sometime over the week, or maybe just let it rest this time. Sorry.

Here's something to leave you with: is there a stupider word in English than football? Not only is it the laziest of neologisms, the combination of two existing words, but those two words are two of the ugliest -- especially foot, with that terrible gobbet of a vowel when it has all the letter it needs to sound like a far more melodic word, boot -- and the combination of the two has only the slimmest of connections to the actual game! How much contact is there between the foot and the ball in that game? Utterly ridiculous. They never should have stolen the term from the sport that it actually fits, what we in America call soccer. But then, they never should have come up with the sport of football in the first place. Isn't baseball enough of a cross for us to bear?