Man, what wouldn't Brian Boitano do, that's what I'm sayin'
Dick Cheney had another heart attack, wot? One more, and he wins the washer-dryer combo.
The entries I mean to write keep getting pushed back by other things. There's more to say about Olympics, though I tend to shoot my entire commentary wad on those with all the incoherent three line emails I trade back and forth with the Conjunction all day. In fact, I think I'll just do my commentary entirely from our emails. (I think it tends to be pretty obvious which of us is speaking at any given time. If something's funny, assume it is probably one of the others talking.)
>In the meanwhile I am totally rooting for Daisuki Takahashi, who is totally the nephew Chairman Kaga refuses to talk about because he stole his favourite coat and devoted his life to ice-skating instead of cooking death-matches.
>Oh my God, why isn't there a manga about this? Flidget, we have to concentrate our amazing Olympic mental powers and make this happen. He can have a crossover with Tom Daley! Cherry blossom petals everywhere! THE LIVING SHANGRI-LA TOWER OF VANCOUVER BLOWS UP!!! GLORIOUS!!!!!
>I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO DISCUSS TOM DALEY WITH YOU ANY LONGER, MADAM. HAVEN'T WE DONE ENOUGH?!
>Through some peculiar turn of events, Bode Miller managed to win a bronze medal yesterday, and act like a completely normal person in the interview. I personally blame some version of kryptonite-- clearly it transformed him into some strange Bizarro Bode, where he answers in complete sentences and without making references every third word to being drunk or having sexual congress with a moose.
>I think this is all a ruse. He's lulling the American media back into liking him again so he can get maximum coverage for when he flashes the Governor-General and causes a three-way international incident. (Seriously, have you seen her? She is a hottie.)
>I'd hit that so hard, whoever could pull me out would become the King of England. Bode will win my heart forever if he does this while hanging his medals on his junk.
>…are there any more medal events he's in? It seems like a waste for him to only be whirling a bronze around his meatshaft.
>He's in a few more. They keep delaying the races. Actually, I take it back about Bode. He's still in there: "You don't want to go the Tonya Harding route of winning medals," Miller said. "If you wanted just strictly to win medals, you could go through a whole long start list of racers and just go to their house in the offseason - break a leg here, pull out a shoulder socket there - and you'd probably have a whole bunch of medals."
>I did see the Russian guy skate. The one who was all, "I think people hate me. This is because I have all the medals and do this all for fun now. Ha ha, look at my gigantic car and equally gigantic cock. You would not think I could do a quad-loop-triple-toe with a cock as big as mine."
>I mean, I'm happy for Daisuke too, but still. Well, maybe he can make up with Kaga when he serves as a guest judge and the secret ingredient is edible gold leaf.
>Guys, guys. Dudes. Guys. Some sympathy for Plushenko. He's now gotta go back to Russia and explain to Putin how he somehow failed to win at his sissy flouncing sport that doesn't even have bears that chase you across the ice in it. I'd be pissed too.
>Yeah, you're right. I wouldn't want to face an angry Putin either. They're totally going to send him to the gulag. Of course, I would pay enormous amounts of money to see Putin in a typical ice skater outfit. The sequins! The glitter! The splashes of blood from where he leaped across the ice and slit the judges' throats with his ice skate blade when they only scored him second place!
>But a thought! A marvelous thought, it occurs to me! Weir speaks Russia, yes? He is big fan of Russia. Wouldn't it be the most glorious team-up ever? Who'd ever dare tell Putin that they don't allow similar pairs in the Olympics?
>Did you hear? Putin has apparently decided to be merciful, and is on Plushenko's side. He sent him a telegram saying "your silver is worth gold" and how proud he is. IOC better watch their back, is all I'm saying. Putin is going to come to their houses in the night and perform unspeakable acts of Russian revenge. Bears will be involved.
>All I want to do now after watching the men's half-pipe and the awesome Japanese snowboarders (who didn't hit a run without incident but still had GREAT presence) is write a manga about (at least) three Japanese girl boarders who try to make their Olympic dreams come true.
>…I bet Bode Miller looks at the snowboarders and cries to himself at night. He is totally in the wrong sport.
>Also, I was surprised the guy running commentary could manage to say so much with Shaun White's balls in his mouth the entire time. Jesus, guys, USA rah rah rah, I get it, but damn.
>I am sorry but I love your snowboarding team, just for their team flannel. It's a pity that the BBC news website only makes video available to UK users, or you could hear what it sounds like when the commentator sucking Shaun White's balls is doing it with an English accent.
>I want to let Johnny Weir redesign Shaun White's wardrobe.
>I love how all of the snowboarding outfits are just stoner plaids and manky hair. None of them look better in the mug shots. I would love to see Weir in White's outfit. Everyone in the Olympics should have to do Outfit Swap Day.
>ALL the snowboarders are totally stoned in their mug shots. It reminds me of that Kurt Cobain and bear picture. "Do do do I'm Shaun White. Is that a fucking bear?"
>I swear to God, the motto for International Snowboarding is "what?"
>There's actually a really cool article about the snowboarder uniforms here.
>I like how we got our first medal via what was essentially legal cheating. GO TEAM UK!!
>Guys, guys, we are forgetting the most important thing: Bode Miller skis again today in the Super G. Let the endless succession of G-spot jokes and his ability to find them begin!
>Veering back to Bode Miller, I am glad he's having a good Olympics. I think he should celebrate this by getting blind drunk next Friday, turning up epically hung-over to the men's Slalom on Saturday and ending up falling down while skiing, somehow forming a massive human snowball and running down all the other athletes except one.
And thus - Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong for the Gold! And also the Silver and Bronze.
>Abominable Snow Bode. Katamari Bode. Bode got drunk one night, destroyed all the stars, and now he has to roll up Olympians to make the night sky again. Figure skaters make for a very bitchy katamari. Eventually, Bode is rolling up nothing BUT liquor stores. Or we can make Tiny Japanese Skater into the Prince.
> Goofy Figure Skating Faces, via my sister. Really I should be impressed that Plushenko's spinning so fast he's acting as his own personal G-Force simulator, but mostly I giggle to see his nose get kinda smushy.
>I see your goofy faces and raise you Weir and Lambiel doing pairs skating together. Also, everyone knows I am sort of creepily obsessed with swimmers. Michael Phelps is over in Vancouver, posing in bobsleds and all manner of things.
Really, "two man bobsled" is still the best euphemism ever.
>I want to write about a 'two man bobsled', Bode Miller and that dude with the unfortunate soul patch. It was obviously meant to be.
>Dude, that's Odd-Couple Hell, right there. Awesome. I still think Daisuke should have to roll athlete katamaris. If you can roll Bode Miller into a katamari, you win the game.
>Phelps is probably thinking that bobsled would make an excellent bong.
>Poor Michael. It's like the Dick Cheney face-shooting thing. You get caught with one bong, and suddenly no one remembers your fourteen Olympic medals.
>WHY IS ICE-DANCING EVEN A SPORT?!
>I think because it's an excuse to have double the amount of crazy costumes on ice, y'know? Themed crazy costumes.
>Why ice dancing? Ice dancing makes Mondays bearable.
>The compulsory programme is dozens of people dancing the same routine to the same music, one after the other after the other. I gave up after about four pairs. Y''know what would make it more interesting? If they all danced the same routine to the same music AT THE SAME TIME. Everyone loves a sport with collisions.
Speaking of which, the BBC just made a Miller Time joke about Bode Miller.
>Not only should they all have to dance at the same time, they should have to do it on the same rink where the short-track relays are happening! Like, sixty people on the ice at once. More teeth knocked out than a Russian hockey game!
Speaking of which, it is just not a hockey game unless I turn on my television and immediately see Alex Ovechkin plowing into some dude headfirst. I wonder if he's reached double digits on concussions yet.
Speaking further of which, someone better go to the border and check to see if Canada is aiming nukes at us right now, after last night's Canada-US hockey game. (The Washington Post couldn't decide whether to give more attention and page space to Bode Miler's gold medal in the super combined, or to the US winning the US-Canada match-up. So they split the difference with a huge "MILLER CLAIMS AN OLYMPIC TRIFECTA" headline, and underneath that is a big picture of the hockey players celebrating. The articles are off to the side somewhere. So to the casual eye, it looks like Bode Miller switched to hockey, which is probably a really apt career choice for him, when you think about it. I can see him being very happy there.)
At any rate, the ice dancers have the free program coming up, which is when a lot of them really bring the crazy in costumes. You know what? I want Bode Miller to do every single sport. His interpretative dance will involve him lifting his partner with one hand, and opening a beer bottle with his teeth at the same time. Miller time indeed.
>Bode Miller: Curling would be just epic. Unless you ended up curling a passed-out Bode down the ice.
>Bode Miller: Curling would have to require frequent breaks to mop the various… fluids off the ice.
I was watching the ski aerialists last night. Basically, I love how the entire mentality of the Winter Games is something like, "Do we have a sport that involves ice or snow? Awesome. Okay, let's add some required factor or elements that make a neck fracture 80% more likely."
It's like that ski moguls thing. Skiing down a steep slope covered with lumps of ice and snow at breakneck speed likely to make you need a knee replacement by the age of 25 isn't enough. No, then they decided to add ramps where the skiers have to do tricks in midair. Or the biathlon. "Let's add GUNS."
>Whatever you do, don't let them watch the Top Gear Winter Olympics Special. They'll get ideas.
>I have never even seen the show, except for Twig showing me youtube clips, and I already know this is the grandest idea that could ever happen. I assume there's also the risk of catching fire.
>Ski aerialists? Is that where they have to launch themselves like, 300 feet in the air, do 27 forward-back-side flips and then land perfectly straight, breaking both kneecaps? I swear to God last year, I heard someone's pelvis shatter.
I think it's worse in the Summer Olympics though, with the difference in men's and women's gymnastics. Men get the rings, the horse, the parallel-- all nice, (relatively) safe activities. Women get the spine-breaking balance beam AND the throw-yourself-at-the-vault-full-speed-good-luck!
>Oh, oh, oh, I forgot to mention this in the last email but Plushenko? The Russian skater guy? He has reached new levels of "Fuck you all for not giving me the gold" and has listed his silver Vancouver medal as PLATINUM on his website
Douche move or not, that takes serious balls.
> My further thoughts on the last few emails? "What's that puck thing called in curling? 'Cause that's the position Bode Miller would play."
ALSO THE BIATHALON IS MY FAVOURITE SPORT EVER UNTIL THEY COMBINE MORE SPORTS WITH GUNS. They should actually combine the Triathalon with the Biathalon. Give the Triatheles a ten minute head start and the Biatheletes paint guns.
>Olympic skier known as the "spam king".
I bet Bode wanted to be known as the spam king.
>In a couple years, Bode will totally be the spam king.
"Dear Sir, I am Bode Miller of America with a proposition for you. I have come into possession of some Olympic medals and require aid smuggling them out of the country. I totally did not steal them. Also, I have a huge penis."
>By the way, tickets for the London 2012 Olympics go on sale next year. Anyway, so there are tickets. Let me know. More importantly, as usual it'll be staffed largely by volunteers. If you want to cause a security breach, let me know.
Okay, apparently some of you missed this so . . . here's Sinead and John Kerr, British ice dancing siblings pair, and their lift from the original programme.
One of the British figure-skating couples is training mates with Johnny Weir. I'd like to think it's these too, because she'd just be bench-pressing him.
>Everyone is a witness. I have it in writing that Flidget is not only enabling, she is encouraging me to commit a highly planned series of Olympic felonies, possibly to be supplemented with charges of lewd and lascivious behavior.
I love that link. Johnny Weir also really impressed me with his response to the derogatory comments the Quebec commentators made about him. And the figure skating world is so weirdly incestuous, with sharing coaches and partners and relatives. In fact...
Someone needs to write the Utena AU now where they're all figure skaters, and Anthy changes partners to skate with whoever wins each Rose Skate, until Utena comes along and breaks barriers and costume rules all over the figure skating world (which is really hard to do, mind you) by skating dressed in princely clothes. And probably someone pulls a pair of magic skates out of Anthy's chest at the beginning of each tournament, and there's a shadowy controversy over the fact Anthy also skates with her brother, Akio Ohtori, and how their interactions on ice for the romantic numbers are a little too realistic. (Akio's probably juicin' as well. I'm just sayin'.) Kozue could lift Miki in their number together. Juri would have won gold if Shiori hadn't hired someone to try and kneecap her.
Akio and Touga regularly get into slap fights over who gets to do the "Sex Bomb" number.
>Did anyone watch the women's figure skating? I am happy Yu-Na Kim won, and deservedly. Though every time the camera cut to Mao Asada, I was terrified for Yu-Na's safety. Mao totally looked like she was going to cut a bitch, and she could barely smile through her TOTAL SEETHING HATRED. Seriously, she looked like she was going to plant the blade of her ice skate in Yu-Na's back as soon as the camera moved away. Anyway, I thought you guys might like to start Friday with an example of the true way to fight in hockey. Slapping
>I FINALLY WATCHED BODE MILLER SKI. I didn't mean to but I was on the phone with my sister at the time and wasn't paying attention, it just happened. I think I cursed him. Retroactively, considering the video was two days old by that point. But he ski-ed as drunkenly as he always had in my imagination, which was very satisfying.
. . . How do you even become an aerials athlete? How did this even become a sport? (I have this question about a lot of things. For example, the early history of competitive figure-skating is surprisingly murky.)
>Maybe modern figure skating began with hockey players who just couldn't take it anymore? Except I bet that skating perfect 8's was probably popular before hockey was, the whole renaissance thing of holding court on the Thames one it froze over, etc.
I'm sure the Russians had something similar. Then again, bludgeoning friends with sticks is also a tradition for many northern societies...
ThorneScratch: Yeah. Did you know apparently Lysacek is supposedly dating the blonde gold medal gymnast girl from the summer Olympics? It is a painfully PR-looking matchup, but hey, I'm sure there's a lot of flexibility going on.
twigcollins: And grading. He gets a 10% increase in score for complex maneuvers at the end of the performance.
ThorneScratch: Also, Bode is all.... mature now. It confuses me.
twigcollins: He has a gold! He's all growed up. Now we need to release him back into the wild.
ThorneScratch: I know! Hopefully he doesn't lose it in a poker game with the Swiss or something. "Uh. Shit."
twigcollins: All golds will naturally make their way back to Phelps' pile.
ThorneScratch: Like salmon spawning upstream. It is their natural home. When he sits on them, he will be able to tell if one is missing, and from which event.
twigcollins: It's like electrons. The Phelps particle has 67 of them. The Bode has one, occasionally none. It wanders around, bumping into particles at random.
ThorneScratch: Trying to shake the other particles down for weed. Eventually, it passes out in a completely different dimension.
Little brother came home from Korea today, after spending nearly two years there with his fiancée, teaching English to small, impressionable Korean children. He looked (and smelled) exactly as one does, after flying fourteen hours straight with a fiancée and a very angry cat. He's sleeping now; I just looked in on him. He's been six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than me since high school, but he's still my baby brother. Oh, siblings. I am very fond of all three of mine, despite the fact it's taken over two decades to get to that point.
On a less heart-warming note, stress at work continues to be absolutely batshit insane, and some days I come home from work and have to stand in the backyard and swear at the sky for a good half hour. (This has the added benefit of keeping the neighbors out of my stuff.) If it weren't happening to me, I could find it almost funny-it's like life has become an excerpt from Fear in the Workplace.
After a marathon bitching session on the phone, it was suggested to me by someone who will remain nameless (but we all know who she is, seriously) that I (or, should I not be up to the task, recruit some other obliging soul) should stealthily leave a small amount of urine in the corner of the CEO's office each day, after she goes home at three. "No one will believe you're actually doing it, and eventually she's going to notice!" was how it was brightly framed. While surprisingly pleasant to contemplate, I think the basic mechanics of this plan may need some refining.
I've never actually gone about full throttle office sabotage before; it's rather a lot different than the wordless Cold War spite-exchange I experienced in junior year of college. Has anyone else done this? Would they like to share their secrets to an eager ear?
The entries I mean to write keep getting pushed back by other things. There's more to say about Olympics, though I tend to shoot my entire commentary wad on those with all the incoherent three line emails I trade back and forth with the Conjunction all day. In fact, I think I'll just do my commentary entirely from our emails. (I think it tends to be pretty obvious which of us is speaking at any given time. If something's funny, assume it is probably one of the others talking.)
>In the meanwhile I am totally rooting for Daisuki Takahashi, who is totally the nephew Chairman Kaga refuses to talk about because he stole his favourite coat and devoted his life to ice-skating instead of cooking death-matches.
>Oh my God, why isn't there a manga about this? Flidget, we have to concentrate our amazing Olympic mental powers and make this happen. He can have a crossover with Tom Daley! Cherry blossom petals everywhere! THE LIVING SHANGRI-LA TOWER OF VANCOUVER BLOWS UP!!! GLORIOUS!!!!!
>I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO DISCUSS TOM DALEY WITH YOU ANY LONGER, MADAM. HAVEN'T WE DONE ENOUGH?!
>Through some peculiar turn of events, Bode Miller managed to win a bronze medal yesterday, and act like a completely normal person in the interview. I personally blame some version of kryptonite-- clearly it transformed him into some strange Bizarro Bode, where he answers in complete sentences and without making references every third word to being drunk or having sexual congress with a moose.
>I think this is all a ruse. He's lulling the American media back into liking him again so he can get maximum coverage for when he flashes the Governor-General and causes a three-way international incident. (Seriously, have you seen her? She is a hottie.)
>I'd hit that so hard, whoever could pull me out would become the King of England. Bode will win my heart forever if he does this while hanging his medals on his junk.
>…are there any more medal events he's in? It seems like a waste for him to only be whirling a bronze around his meatshaft.
>He's in a few more. They keep delaying the races. Actually, I take it back about Bode. He's still in there: "You don't want to go the Tonya Harding route of winning medals," Miller said. "If you wanted just strictly to win medals, you could go through a whole long start list of racers and just go to their house in the offseason - break a leg here, pull out a shoulder socket there - and you'd probably have a whole bunch of medals."
>I did see the Russian guy skate. The one who was all, "I think people hate me. This is because I have all the medals and do this all for fun now. Ha ha, look at my gigantic car and equally gigantic cock. You would not think I could do a quad-loop-triple-toe with a cock as big as mine."
>I mean, I'm happy for Daisuke too, but still. Well, maybe he can make up with Kaga when he serves as a guest judge and the secret ingredient is edible gold leaf.
>Guys, guys. Dudes. Guys. Some sympathy for Plushenko. He's now gotta go back to Russia and explain to Putin how he somehow failed to win at his sissy flouncing sport that doesn't even have bears that chase you across the ice in it. I'd be pissed too.
>Yeah, you're right. I wouldn't want to face an angry Putin either. They're totally going to send him to the gulag. Of course, I would pay enormous amounts of money to see Putin in a typical ice skater outfit. The sequins! The glitter! The splashes of blood from where he leaped across the ice and slit the judges' throats with his ice skate blade when they only scored him second place!
>But a thought! A marvelous thought, it occurs to me! Weir speaks Russia, yes? He is big fan of Russia. Wouldn't it be the most glorious team-up ever? Who'd ever dare tell Putin that they don't allow similar pairs in the Olympics?
>Did you hear? Putin has apparently decided to be merciful, and is on Plushenko's side. He sent him a telegram saying "your silver is worth gold" and how proud he is. IOC better watch their back, is all I'm saying. Putin is going to come to their houses in the night and perform unspeakable acts of Russian revenge. Bears will be involved.
>All I want to do now after watching the men's half-pipe and the awesome Japanese snowboarders (who didn't hit a run without incident but still had GREAT presence) is write a manga about (at least) three Japanese girl boarders who try to make their Olympic dreams come true.
>…I bet Bode Miller looks at the snowboarders and cries to himself at night. He is totally in the wrong sport.
>Also, I was surprised the guy running commentary could manage to say so much with Shaun White's balls in his mouth the entire time. Jesus, guys, USA rah rah rah, I get it, but damn.
>I am sorry but I love your snowboarding team, just for their team flannel. It's a pity that the BBC news website only makes video available to UK users, or you could hear what it sounds like when the commentator sucking Shaun White's balls is doing it with an English accent.
>I want to let Johnny Weir redesign Shaun White's wardrobe.
>I love how all of the snowboarding outfits are just stoner plaids and manky hair. None of them look better in the mug shots. I would love to see Weir in White's outfit. Everyone in the Olympics should have to do Outfit Swap Day.
>ALL the snowboarders are totally stoned in their mug shots. It reminds me of that Kurt Cobain and bear picture. "Do do do I'm Shaun White. Is that a fucking bear?"
>I swear to God, the motto for International Snowboarding is "what?"
>There's actually a really cool article about the snowboarder uniforms here.
>I like how we got our first medal via what was essentially legal cheating. GO TEAM UK!!
>Guys, guys, we are forgetting the most important thing: Bode Miller skis again today in the Super G. Let the endless succession of G-spot jokes and his ability to find them begin!
>Veering back to Bode Miller, I am glad he's having a good Olympics. I think he should celebrate this by getting blind drunk next Friday, turning up epically hung-over to the men's Slalom on Saturday and ending up falling down while skiing, somehow forming a massive human snowball and running down all the other athletes except one.
And thus - Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong for the Gold! And also the Silver and Bronze.
>Abominable Snow Bode. Katamari Bode. Bode got drunk one night, destroyed all the stars, and now he has to roll up Olympians to make the night sky again. Figure skaters make for a very bitchy katamari. Eventually, Bode is rolling up nothing BUT liquor stores. Or we can make Tiny Japanese Skater into the Prince.
> Goofy Figure Skating Faces, via my sister. Really I should be impressed that Plushenko's spinning so fast he's acting as his own personal G-Force simulator, but mostly I giggle to see his nose get kinda smushy.
>I see your goofy faces and raise you Weir and Lambiel doing pairs skating together. Also, everyone knows I am sort of creepily obsessed with swimmers. Michael Phelps is over in Vancouver, posing in bobsleds and all manner of things.
Really, "two man bobsled" is still the best euphemism ever.
>I want to write about a 'two man bobsled', Bode Miller and that dude with the unfortunate soul patch. It was obviously meant to be.
>Dude, that's Odd-Couple Hell, right there. Awesome. I still think Daisuke should have to roll athlete katamaris. If you can roll Bode Miller into a katamari, you win the game.
>Phelps is probably thinking that bobsled would make an excellent bong.
>Poor Michael. It's like the Dick Cheney face-shooting thing. You get caught with one bong, and suddenly no one remembers your fourteen Olympic medals.
>WHY IS ICE-DANCING EVEN A SPORT?!
>I think because it's an excuse to have double the amount of crazy costumes on ice, y'know? Themed crazy costumes.
>Why ice dancing? Ice dancing makes Mondays bearable.
>The compulsory programme is dozens of people dancing the same routine to the same music, one after the other after the other. I gave up after about four pairs. Y''know what would make it more interesting? If they all danced the same routine to the same music AT THE SAME TIME. Everyone loves a sport with collisions.
Speaking of which, the BBC just made a Miller Time joke about Bode Miller.
>Not only should they all have to dance at the same time, they should have to do it on the same rink where the short-track relays are happening! Like, sixty people on the ice at once. More teeth knocked out than a Russian hockey game!
Speaking of which, it is just not a hockey game unless I turn on my television and immediately see Alex Ovechkin plowing into some dude headfirst. I wonder if he's reached double digits on concussions yet.
Speaking further of which, someone better go to the border and check to see if Canada is aiming nukes at us right now, after last night's Canada-US hockey game. (The Washington Post couldn't decide whether to give more attention and page space to Bode Miler's gold medal in the super combined, or to the US winning the US-Canada match-up. So they split the difference with a huge "MILLER CLAIMS AN OLYMPIC TRIFECTA" headline, and underneath that is a big picture of the hockey players celebrating. The articles are off to the side somewhere. So to the casual eye, it looks like Bode Miller switched to hockey, which is probably a really apt career choice for him, when you think about it. I can see him being very happy there.)
At any rate, the ice dancers have the free program coming up, which is when a lot of them really bring the crazy in costumes. You know what? I want Bode Miller to do every single sport. His interpretative dance will involve him lifting his partner with one hand, and opening a beer bottle with his teeth at the same time. Miller time indeed.
>Bode Miller: Curling would be just epic. Unless you ended up curling a passed-out Bode down the ice.
>Bode Miller: Curling would have to require frequent breaks to mop the various… fluids off the ice.
I was watching the ski aerialists last night. Basically, I love how the entire mentality of the Winter Games is something like, "Do we have a sport that involves ice or snow? Awesome. Okay, let's add some required factor or elements that make a neck fracture 80% more likely."
It's like that ski moguls thing. Skiing down a steep slope covered with lumps of ice and snow at breakneck speed likely to make you need a knee replacement by the age of 25 isn't enough. No, then they decided to add ramps where the skiers have to do tricks in midair. Or the biathlon. "Let's add GUNS."
>Whatever you do, don't let them watch the Top Gear Winter Olympics Special. They'll get ideas.
>I have never even seen the show, except for Twig showing me youtube clips, and I already know this is the grandest idea that could ever happen. I assume there's also the risk of catching fire.
>Ski aerialists? Is that where they have to launch themselves like, 300 feet in the air, do 27 forward-back-side flips and then land perfectly straight, breaking both kneecaps? I swear to God last year, I heard someone's pelvis shatter.
I think it's worse in the Summer Olympics though, with the difference in men's and women's gymnastics. Men get the rings, the horse, the parallel-- all nice, (relatively) safe activities. Women get the spine-breaking balance beam AND the throw-yourself-at-the-vault-full-speed-good-luck!
>Oh, oh, oh, I forgot to mention this in the last email but Plushenko? The Russian skater guy? He has reached new levels of "Fuck you all for not giving me the gold" and has listed his silver Vancouver medal as PLATINUM on his website
Douche move or not, that takes serious balls.
> My further thoughts on the last few emails? "What's that puck thing called in curling? 'Cause that's the position Bode Miller would play."
ALSO THE BIATHALON IS MY FAVOURITE SPORT EVER UNTIL THEY COMBINE MORE SPORTS WITH GUNS. They should actually combine the Triathalon with the Biathalon. Give the Triatheles a ten minute head start and the Biatheletes paint guns.
>Olympic skier known as the "spam king".
I bet Bode wanted to be known as the spam king.
>In a couple years, Bode will totally be the spam king.
"Dear Sir, I am Bode Miller of America with a proposition for you. I have come into possession of some Olympic medals and require aid smuggling them out of the country. I totally did not steal them. Also, I have a huge penis."
>By the way, tickets for the London 2012 Olympics go on sale next year. Anyway, so there are tickets. Let me know. More importantly, as usual it'll be staffed largely by volunteers. If you want to cause a security breach, let me know.
Okay, apparently some of you missed this so . . . here's Sinead and John Kerr, British ice dancing siblings pair, and their lift from the original programme.
One of the British figure-skating couples is training mates with Johnny Weir. I'd like to think it's these too, because she'd just be bench-pressing him.
>Everyone is a witness. I have it in writing that Flidget is not only enabling, she is encouraging me to commit a highly planned series of Olympic felonies, possibly to be supplemented with charges of lewd and lascivious behavior.
I love that link. Johnny Weir also really impressed me with his response to the derogatory comments the Quebec commentators made about him. And the figure skating world is so weirdly incestuous, with sharing coaches and partners and relatives. In fact...
Someone needs to write the Utena AU now where they're all figure skaters, and Anthy changes partners to skate with whoever wins each Rose Skate, until Utena comes along and breaks barriers and costume rules all over the figure skating world (which is really hard to do, mind you) by skating dressed in princely clothes. And probably someone pulls a pair of magic skates out of Anthy's chest at the beginning of each tournament, and there's a shadowy controversy over the fact Anthy also skates with her brother, Akio Ohtori, and how their interactions on ice for the romantic numbers are a little too realistic. (Akio's probably juicin' as well. I'm just sayin'.) Kozue could lift Miki in their number together. Juri would have won gold if Shiori hadn't hired someone to try and kneecap her.
Akio and Touga regularly get into slap fights over who gets to do the "Sex Bomb" number.
>Did anyone watch the women's figure skating? I am happy Yu-Na Kim won, and deservedly. Though every time the camera cut to Mao Asada, I was terrified for Yu-Na's safety. Mao totally looked like she was going to cut a bitch, and she could barely smile through her TOTAL SEETHING HATRED. Seriously, she looked like she was going to plant the blade of her ice skate in Yu-Na's back as soon as the camera moved away. Anyway, I thought you guys might like to start Friday with an example of the true way to fight in hockey. Slapping
>I FINALLY WATCHED BODE MILLER SKI. I didn't mean to but I was on the phone with my sister at the time and wasn't paying attention, it just happened. I think I cursed him. Retroactively, considering the video was two days old by that point. But he ski-ed as drunkenly as he always had in my imagination, which was very satisfying.
. . . How do you even become an aerials athlete? How did this even become a sport? (I have this question about a lot of things. For example, the early history of competitive figure-skating is surprisingly murky.)
>Maybe modern figure skating began with hockey players who just couldn't take it anymore? Except I bet that skating perfect 8's was probably popular before hockey was, the whole renaissance thing of holding court on the Thames one it froze over, etc.
I'm sure the Russians had something similar. Then again, bludgeoning friends with sticks is also a tradition for many northern societies...
ThorneScratch: Yeah. Did you know apparently Lysacek is supposedly dating the blonde gold medal gymnast girl from the summer Olympics? It is a painfully PR-looking matchup, but hey, I'm sure there's a lot of flexibility going on.
twigcollins: And grading. He gets a 10% increase in score for complex maneuvers at the end of the performance.
ThorneScratch: Also, Bode is all.... mature now. It confuses me.
twigcollins: He has a gold! He's all growed up. Now we need to release him back into the wild.
ThorneScratch: I know! Hopefully he doesn't lose it in a poker game with the Swiss or something. "Uh. Shit."
twigcollins: All golds will naturally make their way back to Phelps' pile.
ThorneScratch: Like salmon spawning upstream. It is their natural home. When he sits on them, he will be able to tell if one is missing, and from which event.
twigcollins: It's like electrons. The Phelps particle has 67 of them. The Bode has one, occasionally none. It wanders around, bumping into particles at random.
ThorneScratch: Trying to shake the other particles down for weed. Eventually, it passes out in a completely different dimension.
Little brother came home from Korea today, after spending nearly two years there with his fiancée, teaching English to small, impressionable Korean children. He looked (and smelled) exactly as one does, after flying fourteen hours straight with a fiancée and a very angry cat. He's sleeping now; I just looked in on him. He's been six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than me since high school, but he's still my baby brother. Oh, siblings. I am very fond of all three of mine, despite the fact it's taken over two decades to get to that point.
On a less heart-warming note, stress at work continues to be absolutely batshit insane, and some days I come home from work and have to stand in the backyard and swear at the sky for a good half hour. (This has the added benefit of keeping the neighbors out of my stuff.) If it weren't happening to me, I could find it almost funny-it's like life has become an excerpt from Fear in the Workplace.
After a marathon bitching session on the phone, it was suggested to me by someone who will remain nameless (but we all know who she is, seriously) that I (or, should I not be up to the task, recruit some other obliging soul) should stealthily leave a small amount of urine in the corner of the CEO's office each day, after she goes home at three. "No one will believe you're actually doing it, and eventually she's going to notice!" was how it was brightly framed. While surprisingly pleasant to contemplate, I think the basic mechanics of this plan may need some refining.
I've never actually gone about full throttle office sabotage before; it's rather a lot different than the wordless Cold War spite-exchange I experienced in junior year of college. Has anyone else done this? Would they like to share their secrets to an eager ear?