World Cup's First Game is Given Away by the Ref:

Brazil played Croatia today in the first game of the 2014 World Cup.  However, the referee was the only winner.  The referee gave a penalty kick to Brazil when no penalty had actually occurred, which resulted in a 2-1 lead for Brazil.

After this, Croatia managed to score a goal and tie it up, but the referee decided to annul that goal by calling a foul that did not exist on a striker who innocently went up for and won a ball with a header versus the goalie.  He didn't do anything to the goalie, he got to the ball first, and yet still somehow it was a foul.

Brazil then scored a third goal on a counterattack due to Croatia having to move everyone forward in order to tie up a game that should have already been tied up, 2-2, or actually given Croatia the lead, 2-1, if not for the referee.  That goal also never would have happened if the referee hadn't interfered with the score earlier.

I have no idea who would have won if the referee hadn't been playing.  It was 1-1 before the referee intervened and decided to win the game for Brazil on his own initiative.  Maybe Brazil would have won fairly even without the ref's intercession, but all I know is that this game was a wretched start for the most anticipated sporting event in the world.

To make matters worse, the referee was Japanese.  You would not normally associate this guy with corruption or playing favorites.  And yet, like usual, soccer is determined not on the playing field but due to random whistles of the all-powerful, non-reviewable ref.  Without instant replay to determine whether a foul really occurred, or if the 'fouled' player was just taking a dive in the hopes of getting a call, the game will never be fair.  A sport without fair play is like steak for dinner except you're only served green beans.  It's just a mockery of everything the game stands for.

Every other sport has instant replay, and thus every other sport has fair play.  It's only soccer that remains a corrupt, referee-decided joke.  Will the entire month consist of fixed games and fixed results from the beginning of the tournament until the end, or is it just Brazil, the host nation, where the fix is in?  I'd like to know if this event will ever be worth watching or if it will just be Pro-Wrestling from beginning to end.  The refs should just inform us in advance whether they intend to throw the game or not, so we can turn off our televisions ahead of time.

Meanwhile, E3 came and went without any major announcements.  The new generation of consoles, the WiiU, PS4 and XBOne still don't have any games.  I feel bad for all the fools who purchased a console on day one, considering all its good for is as a doorstop for the first couple years.  Might I suggest that new consoles delay being released until there's a game from every major franchise ready to release on it?  For instance, WiiU shouldn't come out until it has a new Zelda, a new Mario Kart, a new Smash Brothers and a new Mario game ready to play on it.  Then it could in the remaining time make a Donkey Kong game, a Fire Emblem game, whatever.  But at least have the basics ready or else why should anyone buy the dumb thing?

Meanwhile, Iraq simply gave up half its territory without a shot fired to a bunch of terrorists, and now the rest of the world is gearing up to fight for Iraqi's sake yet again.  What a bunch of worthless cowards.  I hope the terrorists chop all their heads off, as a lesson to people who won't even stand up and fight for themselves when they outnumber the enemy 15-1, have far better equipment and years of training.  If you won't fight then, when will you fight?  To hell with all of them.

Maria-sama ga Miteru didn't have any good books after Crown of Roses, so I guess I can see why a new season of anime was never approved.  Quite simply, nothing ever happens and the story is just boring after that point.  Oh well, Crown of Roses was good, so reading the series was still worthwhile.

Final Fantasy Type 0 has a fansubbed release.  This would be great, except the real-time play system pretty much requires a psp-equivalent controller to properly control your characters.  A keyboard cannot sufficiently control the dozen or so buttons you need to have ready access to at any moment.  Half the virtue of console gaming is the controller, which gives you a much better interface with a video game than PC's have to offer.  As a result, PC's can only play strategy type games where you make slow, measured decisions from menus, like civilization or Heroes of Might and Magic.  Your other option is a game with only a few buttons, like Starcon 2, which can be managed even with a keyboard.  Once your complexity creeps too high video games simply can't be played on PC.  PPSSPP accepts Xbox360 controllers, but if you own a PS3 like most sane individuals, that doesn't get you very far. . .

For the same reason, machine-translated visual novels don't work because the most critical aspect, the decisions you must make yourself, aren't translated by the machine.  Unless you just want to blunder through the game randomly, that won't get you very far, so it looks like the emulating of this world of games is just as far away as the effective emulation of PSP games.  Sigh.