USA - World Champion

This is a picture of the Sears Tower in Chicago. It used to be the World's Tallest Building but now it is merely 'The Tallest Building in the Western Hemisphere'. I'm not sure entirely how and when the Western Hemisphere appeared. Unlike Latitude which has a solid, scientific basis, it seems to be largely a construct based on where Longitude was discovered. Happily, for the Sears Tower, there are no plans to build a taller building in Portugal, Belize or Fiji, so it'll hold the title for some time.

Uniquely (well, almost) American Sports, two of which I'm a big fan of, have a self delusional trait which induces them to refer to the Top team each year as World Champion. You may be surrised to hear, particularly if you're still laughing at Zidane's head butt, that the current Football World Champions are the not very Italian, New York Giants. This penchant instils in the American people a belief that there is something superior about them and their society. You would hope that these kinds of exaggerations and distortions, which they are bombarded with from every media outlet, would raise objection or suspicion.Not a bit of it, rather because they're so busy trying to earn a living, the fanciful glorification of America and everything about it merely validates their existence. As an example, the current cost of gasoline is provoking a great deal of ranting on the TV media about the failure of the oil producers to rape their reserves in order to allow Mr Simpson of Springfield, Anystate,USA to spend less money on his impetus. It doesn't appear to have occurred to anyone to build cars that travel further than 30 miles on one gallon. Nor has it occurred to anyone that Saudi Arabia, for example, doesn't actually have to sell oil to the USA.

But I digress, the point of this piece is to tell the American people that they have a new World Champion in their midst. Last night, in my hotel room I held a World Championship, not just a Western Hemispherean Championship and this morning, as the USA slowly woke up, Nigel Webb of London, England became a World Champion Wanker.