As the Olympic ceremonies get underway in Beijing and some guy I've never heard of bears the torch for Canada, I believe it would be topical to weigh in and deliver my version of "Olympic Fever." This is far from the typically witnessed conditions of blubbering emotion, rampant nationalism and irrational interest in sporting events that have been otherwise ignored for the past 1,444 days since the last games. No, the symptoms I'm experiencing are more along the lines of those caused by the Ebola virus; vomiting, diarrhea, generalized malaise, and internal bleeding.While the question that all of society has been pondering over the last several months has been "Should so-and-so boycott the Olympics in communist China?" I find myself dwelling on an entirely different postulation; Am I the only person in the world who doesn't give a shit about the Olympics or their perceived political ramifications?
According to the media, I'm supposed to gain some sort of self-worth if someone born in New Brunswick stands on the podium with a shiny medal for fencing. I guess nothing says "National Pride" more than diverting funds from the arts, social programs, and battling climate change towards athletics and beating the snot out of underprivileged banana republics that can't afford the same luxury. Go, Canada, bring home the gold! Let's show Honduras who the Man is!
Additionally, I fail to comprehend how people with otherwise no affinity for women's archery, team dressage or men's 68kg, 700-metre indoor bobsleigh jump (sure, that one's not real...but it should be) can suddenly become captivated by the insufferably boring minutiae of these and other "sports." Don't try to persuade me you're a huge fan of the women's 400 metre individual medley throughout the year because it's about as convincing as Mary-Kate's claim to have had no involvement in Heath Ledger's death. I know you did it, Mary-Kate, you fame-mongering whore.
My one goal for these Olympics is this: to watch even less of the coverage than I did for the last Olympics in Greece. Scoff if you must but this is far from an easy feat when you consider that the longest uninterrupted viewing session I partook of in 2004 was about 90 seconds of Bjork's warbling 412-minute "We are the World"-style opening musical number.
With that in mind I aim to view, over the course of the entire games, less than one minute of actual footage, be it the opening/closing ceremonies, inevitable and ceaseless terrorist attack speculation or sporting events both live and "highlights." This excludes, of course, anything that might be considered a "blooper," ranging from painfully face-planting hurdlers to errant javelins through the skull (one can only hope).
With media coverage as intense as it is and moronic general populace banter at an all-time high, this will prove to be an extremely difficult undertaking. I feel I'm up to the challenge and, accordingly, have a few projects I'm willing to pursue as exciting alternatives to the tedium of the games. These include but are not limited to writing love poems to Glenn Beck, vacuuming the floor with my tongue, organizing my collection of self-bootlegged "Danger Bay" VHS tapes or dangling my scrotum inside a blender, hitting frappe and downing the resulting ball smoothie.Wait, this just in, breaking news....Beijing is smoggy!! Enough already. You can glue your eyeballs to your Sony plasma screens for the next 15 days if you want. I'm going to hit the beach and bring home my own version of the bronze. I'm not even going to train.
