Because I read so much news, I've had to give out my email address to just about every surviving newspaper in the western world. They make you do this by emailing you your secret password, or your session id, or some URL hidden so deeply within the bowels of the site that the Minotaur would be left dazed in admiration.

So I get newspaper spam. Usually junk, from the Strib or the Post or even the LA Times. Today, though, this:

Play Telegraph Fantasy Euro 2004

Wow! A chance to tell the Telegraph your fantasy about how Britain and New Europe defeat the EU Constitution. Be detailed. The writer of the best fantasy will win a chance to personally receive Chirac's surrender.

Or maybe it's kind of a continental Price is Right. Pick the value of the Euro against these 5 currencies, and tell us how much a hamburger, a 1-liter Vichy Water, and a Belgian bureaucrat cost in Euros. Then price your Showdown Showcase in Euros without going over, and you win a Newly-Freed Country!

No. It's about metric football, a sport about which I care even less than auto racing (see below). What's worse, the Brits are playing Fantasy European metric football. I don't suppose there's such a thing as Fantasy Cricket (although maybe the fantasy there is that the match ends). Still, they play plenty of metric football on the islands. The only teams most Americans have heard of are Manchester United and Arsenal. Maybe the Telegraph really is going all Euro-enthusiast on us.