The World Cup is so thrilling, I can't seem to work

	People around the world are glued to World Cup action. AP

I don't want to work today. Or for the rest of the month. And really, my boss should be OK with that.

The World Cup is on.

The head of Verdi, one of Germany's biggest unions, says I should have off. He started lobbying employers to let their employees off early months ago.

If my boss gives me off, I'll save him from having to pay an insurance premium. There's a Dutch company issuing policies to employers who are bound to suffer significant increases in people calling in sick.

Makes sense. In 2004, during the European Championships, absenteeism in Holland rose 20 percent.

It's dangerous to force me to divide my attention right now. Researchers are so sure pulling people away from their TVs could be scary, they're getting blood samples from every heart attack victim over the next month in Germany. They're looking for stress hormones that clot blood.

During the 1998 Cup, on the day and the day after England lost to Argentina in a penalty shootout, heart attacks in England increased by 25 percent. I bet they were all people who suffered enormous stress because their evil bosses made them work.

Heck, I nearly had a heart attack on Tuesday.

A group of reporters were in the Mets clubhouse, very pleasantly, very unobjectionably watching final minutes of the England-Sweden match. Then Jay Horwitz, the Mets' PR man, herded us all out, saying it was time for batting practice. And in the 20 seconds it took to wrap around the couch, walk past Willie Randolph's office and get out in the hallway where the security guard's TV was, Sweden's Henrik Larsson scored.

Of course, I only know it was Larsson who knocked a ball in off a throw-in because I read it on the world's best sports site (brown-nosing never hurt, right?) once BP was through and I climbed up to the press box.