Let the Games Begin! The 2006 Winter Olympics

I never watch sporting events, live or televised. Welcome to never say never. What I should say is I never watch any regular sporting events live or televised with the exception of the Olympics. Any Olympics, winter or summer. Here is something where people from all over the world come together to compete in a healthy fashion (that is the idea, anyway) and then separate and return to normal life. These are amazing!

My grandparents were the ones who got me into this incredible display of prowess, physical fortitude and amazing drive that pushes these staggeringly dedicated people to show what they are made of, what they can do! It is an honor to watch this. What these individuals achieve is beyond just laudable.

I do not watch every waking moment and I do not watch every event. Especially with it televised mostly live and with it taking place half a world away, it is not possible to get it all. It is embarrassing to admit that tonight I watched some weird variation on skiing that a Canadian woman got the gold and a Norwegian woman (I think she was Norwegian but maybe she was Finnish - no, that was one of the judges. Pretty sure that this woman was Norwegian. She has the most incredible blue eyes. I wish I'd eyes like that.) The skiing competition was... interesting... but appallingly bad for the knees. As a person with one knee that had arthroscopic surgery and another that at some point will need it, I find that sports that go out of their way to create injuries that will haunt one forever are not sports I can really support. You cannot imagine the harm they were doing to their poor knees!

Another objectionable item is this sudden tendency to create all sorts of new "events" like snowboarding and such - more variations on a theme and why is this an Olympic event?! No, no, what is wrong with ice skating, luge, bobsledding and all the other oldies but goodies? I love the luge - that is one completely insane event... you really need to have a screw loose to want to do this! And bobsledding - not the safest thing in the world; I have seen people killed doing that. Ice skating - especially pair skating, where the man picks up and holds his partner by the pubic bone (whimper) is an event! Yow! But then throwing in all sorts of extras... that is just grandstanding and gouging the public for more money to see these things.

So I will watch the Olympics as I always do and weed through the stuff I don't like to see the things I do enjoy. I have scads of time on the two Replay TVs that we have (think a better TiVo) and can weed through the junk and ads very easily to see the good stuff - like the fascination of speed skaters, with those massive thighs!

Fascinating - as Spock would say...

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