The Beautiful Game.

And so it ends. After a US loss to Belgium that included a meme-making defense by Tim Howard, and a complete 7-1 evisceration of the host nation by the eventual winners in the Semis, Germany wins the World Cup 1-0 over Argentina, on a beautiful strike by Mario Gotze in extra time. “At some point we’ll stop celebrating, but we’ll still wake up with a smile.”

All in all, a really entertaining World Cup. And perhaps it’s because I reside in DC and spend time on Twitter, two of the most futbol-happy environments around stateside, but this felt like the year soccer might have finally broken through in America for real. Time will tell, I suppose. In the meantime, I should do a better job of supporting the MLS. Valar Futbolis!

Many Words. Such Modifying.

“Of course, since none of the five main doge modifiers (much, many, so, very, such) are ever found with verbs in canonical English, all of them are candidates to modify verbs in doge: for example, much eat, many eat, so eat, very eat, and such eat would all work for doge speak. Other modifiers such as quite, rather, and even lotsa are also found more rarely in doge, under similar principles of mismatch.”

Wow. Such knowledge. Many Smarts: Linguist Gretchen McCulloch explains the grammatical principles of Doge. “What light. So breaks. Such east. Very sun. Wow, Juliet. What Romeo. Such why. Very rose. Still rose. Very balcony. Such climb.”

Trust Elvis…Except in Bed.

History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats (except in bed): A tumblr of Elvis Costello lyrics turned into fortune cookies. Your science-fiction twin probably got a better one.

A Mean Fender Corgi.

“People who play bass with their fingers look like they’re tickling hairy dogs.” And, lo, a meme was born: Because of, y’know, the Internet, Bassists tickling dogs. It’s heartening to see that Daft Punk opted for a traditional K-9.

The Tao of Steve.

“Graduates from College — Gets Hired.” In the Burgeoning Meme department — and as a counterpoint to the recent trolling of the youth of today in TIME — experience the wit and wisdom of Old Economy Steve. “Fights Universal Healthcare at All Costs — Bitches About $5 Medicare Co-Pay for Viagra Refill.”

The Place Beyond the Weetabix.

Hey Girl, one of America’s most memeable stars has gotten memed again: Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal. Clever, clever — I’m surprised no one’s thought of this sort of thing before.

You’re Blowing It, Campbell.

Ehrmagerd: Since everyone needs a laugh or two today, Mad Men and Community‘s Allison Brie re-creates favorite Internet memes. Given her two-show stardom, You Had One Job doesn’t work here. But doesn’t her cheesy name make Brie perfect for an Xhibit recursion? Yo dawg, I heard you liked Brie…

You Had One Job!

You Had One Job!: A collection of some of the funnier iterations of this particular meme. Seems like you could get sizable mileage out of this one in the political department also.

Secrets of the Supercut.

“Many supercuts provide hard evidence of the existence of tropes long suspected but never quite proved: imperiled characters fretting that they have no cellphone signal; high-tech investigators asking their imaging software to “enhance“; action movie toughs girding for battle by announcing, “We’ve got company.” But what motivates the supercutter to slog through hours of footage to compile these minute observations? And what distinguishes the masters of the form?“

In Slate, old friend Seth Stevenson surveys the practice and methodology of supercuts. At the very least it’s both funny and instructive to see how many times, to take the example of ST:TNG, Worf gets denied and bad things happen to Geordi.

Let’s Do Lunch.

This has been languishing in the bookmarks: Awesome People Hanging Out Together. By “awesome,” read “famous” a lot of the time — but still, very fun to peruse.