My interest in football could be described as subterranean at best, and only if I’m being generous. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the fact Vancouver is one of this year’s FIFA World Cup host cities, nor that my condo is only a half-block removed from the FIFA party zone. Anything that brings hordes of people together creates photo opportunities, so naturally I’ve been partaking.
FIFA arrived at a perfect time, since my attention is currently focused on writing and recording a new music album, which I’ll release in the fourth quarter of this year. But with Exorcism 10 also due for publication later this year, accessing thousands of people outside my front door makes it much easier to fulfill those photo responsibilities than if I had to venture far and wide.
(NOTE: my inner marketing voice demands I remind readers that, while Exorcism 10 is in the works, Exorcism 09 is now for sale in the ULTRAsomething store).
Convention dictates that I illustrate this post with a few representational photos to support the narrative… but which ones? I won’t even think about curating Exorcism images until September or October, so I haven’t a clue which FIFA photos are destined for the magazine — and since I continue to insist that every photo in every magazine be previously unpublished, choosing a photo to publish NOW means rejecting it later.
That said, since I always tend to favour photos that have more to do with the peripheral goings-on than with the actual event, I can safely assume nothing too FIFA-ish will make the cut — meaning all such shots are available for blog-duty. Besides, there are tens of thousands of people each and every day taking several hundred thousand photos of FIFA activities, so committing such banal shots to paper seems unnecessary.
But, banal as these particular examples may be, FIFA has indeed provided numerous other images that will help me build the next Exorcism, and it will continue to provide more for another week. So, thanks FIFA! If the streets could always be this easy, I might finally have time to write that electronic avant-garde opera I’ve been thinking about for the past 40 years…
© 2026 grEGORy simpson
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