the ocean

I'm not one to "pile on" to criticism, unless Sarah Jessica Parker is involved, but I do have to say these winter Olympics have been hard to unreservedly enjoy. As regular reader(s?) of this blog know, I love Olympic weirdness, like sports no one cares about the other three years and fifty weeks of each four-year period and human interest stories about athletes whose parents died in combine accidents or something. But you know what I don't love? People who make bizarre claims that they accidentally ingested performance-enhancing drugs by sharing a glass with someone, which strikes me as roughly equivalent to the "pregnant from a toilet seat" theory. You know what I also don't love? Having the only live footage be late at night and early in the morning, when it conflicts with my Murder, She Wrote reruns. I am perhaps the least spoiler-averse person I know, but even I don't see much point in watching a curling match at 2 PM when the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Unlike with a Murder, She Wrote rerun, since those frequently change on a second or third viewing. I think they're still adding new footage.

Which is not to say there haven't been some good aspects. I find it very therapeutic to watch people snowboard or ski over strange obstacles, which I can't help but view as kind of a metaphor for life. And it kind of makes me feel hopeful to see people enjoying themselves in such cold temperatures, since that has not really been my experience of things once I passed the age of sledding down the hill by our house until near the point of gangrene. Also, I like the Olympic mascot. Yes, I assume he is a communist, but he is still a panda, and they are cute, although deadly as I understand it. There are always tradeoffs in life.