Blame It On Rio

So I’ve been watching the Olympics this past couple of weeks.  Or trying to.  What with all the commercials and commentary and human interest pieces designed to get chicks to sit down and watch sports I think I might have seen a long jump.  And dressage.  Dressage.  Don’t get me started on stupid Olympic sports <coughcough rhythmicgymnastics coughcough>.  What kind of person is it that devotes years of their waking spare time to dance around with a little rubber ball?  And why isn’t Prancercising an Olympic sport?

Not to get on a rant here, but I’m about done with the Olympics—and it’s not just because I don’t know whether or not to capitalize the ‘the’ in front of it.  I alluded to the main reason for my apathy in the above preceding and foregoing paragraph, but more and more I am finding the Olympics downright unwatchable.  Thank you, various networks of NBC.  I’ll bet you didn’t know the Olympic theme had words.  Cue the tympani… Continue reading

Do You Hear the Singing Swiss?

swiss flagLike it or not, the Swiss are in the news again.  And I know what you are thinking: Winter Olympics already?  It may come as a shock to many of my American readers, but I have it on good authority that some nations exist and do stuff even when the Olympics are not going on.  The Swiss are a perfect example.

Last week Switzerland announced a contest through which they will choose a new national anthem to replace their current “Swiss Psalm,” which in turn replaced the English tune, “God Save the Queen” in 1961 because they eventually realized that 1) they were not English; and b) they didn’t even have a queen. Continue reading

Doping Ice Fishermen Is Snow Joke

So I’m cleaning out my birdcage the other day and I ran across an article in the New York Times regarding an event here in my neck of the woods that got me conTIMplating why it’s called ‘neck’ of the woods and not ‘hip’ of the woods or ‘spleen’ of the woods and why it’s even in the woods in the first place.  Said event was the World Ice Fishing Championships held last week on the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir (French for ‘large, old, nondescript body of water’) located in the greater Wausau, Wisconsin Metropolitan Area.

Fishermen from eleven countries (counting newcomers Japan and Mongolia) paid their own considerable fares to get to Northern Central Wisconsin, known as “The Northern Central Wisconsin Capitol of the World” because at no other location can one find so much of Northern Central Wisconsin. Continue reading

Poor Sports

So I’m sitting in front of the TV the other day watching The Hobbit — I mean, The Muppet Show — I mean, the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics, and I couldn’t help but think that perhaps Salome had squandered her wish on John the Baptist when she could have saved us all some horrendous agony by asking for Matt Lauer’s tongue on a platter. Continue reading