Some people like sport. Some do not. Neither is incorrect. But until Big Bang Theory retakes its place as the sole TV omnipotent, the World Cup is impossible to avoid. Although thanks to good-spirited wombling Japanese fans, at least you won't trip over it's mess.
Memeworthy though the three times a day performances on the football field have been, not every sport has been completely eclipsed. American Football team the Washington Redskins have been all over the news in the States, mainly because they're still called the Redskins. Many people have had their say on the matter, some think it's a badge of honour, others think it's as racist as renaming Notre Dame the Indiana Workshy Irishmen. But really, the only opinion that matters is this.
Also preserving their place in the news in spite of the World Cup is the Royal Family, who are still having their every step covered. No seriously, every step. Another media lightning rod getting among it again is Tony Blair, much older but no wiser talking about re-invading Iraq (when is he not?) from some kind of tropical compound. And people wonder why he's not liked. Though in fairness to him, Blair isn't the only member of the Class of 2003 who are proving cognitive dissonance and chronic denial are war injuries too.
Blair's essential heir David Cameron seems to be less of the opinion that all Iraq's chassis needs is just another knock of a hammer, but the UK and the US have been taking drastic moves: bringing evil Iran back in the fold to help them fight a greater enemy. In diplomatic circles, they call that The John Connor Gambit. On the home front, David Cameron called for more assertive British values, conveniently forgetting that assertiveness was never a British value. While we all try to work out what the hell British Values even means, Labour's Harriet Harman piled riddle on riddle: when is it right to do something, but also right to apologise for something? I have no clue, but it has something to do with The Sun.
Miliband's posing with The Sun may have irked people on Merseyside, but at least he's never felt the wrath of Irish farmers, who in a protest this week put hay outside the Department of Agriculture. And if the juxtaposition of the pastoral and the edificial tickles you, then hark at this cow, I don't know, doing parkour?
I'd like to think the singer Morrissey got some joy from the picture of a cow sticking it to the man / grass, as he's had a pretty bad week healthwise. I also like to think that he'd be tickled, given his love of flowers and human misery, by the fact a couple in Ireland were trapped while out walking by a mass of rhododendrons. It's not enough to get him off his sickbed though, and he's had to cancel his American tour because of it. But fear not folks, his warmup act is honouring the date, and will play the whole concert in his stead. Who is this gent performer? Why, Cliff Richard of course!
Given Cliff's capacity for saving the day over the years, he may be called upon to cool things down with Northern Ireland's latest summer sport: taking a deckchair outside a Nigerian man's house and heckling him. Northern Ireland's slow decay into Royston Vasey won't be helped by the fact that Ulster's favourite golfer/wedding canceller Rory McIlroy has chosen his colours for the next Olympics, and they're green, white and orange. How will that news go down among the God-fearing loyalist population of Northern Ireland? Judging by the lamentable extremes this sports shop had to go to clarify the flag in the shop was Cote d'Ivoire and definitely not Irish, not well.