A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

HANS, HANS, HANS! WE'VE BEEN FREW THIS A DOZEN TIMES. I DON'T HAVE ANY WEAPONS OF MASS DESTWUCTION, OK, HANS?: Don't look now, but the top-ranked Brazilian World Cup team ("side") is tied zero-zero ("nil-nil") with the dead-last-ranked (among World Cup qualifiers) North Koreans after the half. I'm of two minds about this, because on the one hand it's North Korea, and on the other hand the soccer team appears to be representing not the North Korea of the real world and nuclear brinksmanship, but rather the North Korea of Team America. Witness these posts from ESPN's live blog:

The following is pasted directly from Soccernet's coach profile of Kim Jong-hun: "It has been suggested that North Korea leader Kim Jong-il gave the coach advice on how to reach the World Cup. Kim Jong-Su, the general secretary of the North Korean FA, has said the Dear Leader gave 'in-depth guidance' on how to develop the game in the country and the coach himself has claimed he received regular tactical advice during matches, apparently using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye."

[PRK Coach Kim on a striker bizarrely disqualified for being registered as a goalkeeper]: "He (Kim Myong-won) was a striker and now he's registered as a goalkeeper. He is really a goalkeeper but he's really fast, so we switched him to a striker. But this World Cup, he said he wanted to be a goalkeeper again."

So, to reiterate, on the one hand I'm not accustomed to rooting for the PRK. On the other hand, they're completely loony and 151-ranking-slot underdogs.

And while I'm in the process of posting this, Brazil goes up, 1-0 ("jibber-nil").