Man I hate the Olympics. 
And I think the fact that I used to like them makes me hate them even more.  I mean it is still great to watch the dear old USA beat up on other countries and watch them have to stand at attention during “The Star Spangled Banner” in another totalitarian dictatorship but that ain’t good enough anymore.  Women’s beach volleyball almost makes it worthwhile… but even that isn’t enough!  Add on women’s swimming though…..
See it always bugged me that they had to be “amateur” athletes when everyone knows that anything worth doing is worth getting paid for (ahem, ahem, *donate button* excuse my cough).  And it really bugged me when I learned that the only people who ever wanted to support amateur athletics was blue blood types what didn’t want no poor guys who had to work for a living playing against them!  Plus not a one of these guys are really amateurs!  Somebody is taking care of them!
Then, oh this really steams me, the way the International Olympic Committee sues the pants off of anybody who even imagines the Olympic rings or anthem.  Come on you big-hearted, high-minded buraeucrats, you ain’t looking to make that big old pile a dough you’re denying to your athletes are you, ya jerks? 
Also all of this bull about sport transcending the worlds problems and uniting really hacks me off.  How can they say that when you just look at who they give these things to to host!  Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and now Red China!  Wait…. Two totalitarian dictatorships hold the Olympic games and then cease to be within ten years?  Hooray Beijing 2008!!!
And what is with all of these competetions?  Cut it down to two dozen competitions so somebody has a chance of giving a flying rip about what half of the athletes are up to, I say!  And hey maybe make the competitions interesting.  Sports like boxing are reduced to point contests while noble sports like Mixed Martial Arts, Demolition Derbies, Lacrosse, Bull Fighting and Competitive Pole Dancing aren’t even allowed!
Now how is it that the IOC can track down any college charity tournament that puts five rings up on a table but they can’t stop the steroid use that rages in every sport?  Come on.  I heard this year that they are actually doing inspections of the athletes naked to make sure they aren’t doping and are actually the sex they claim to be.  ‘Roids tend to make guy’s bits more ladylike and lady bits into guy’s bits.  That, to make sure about gender, was one of the mythical reasons that the ancient Greeks performed naked.  That and because they wanted to, ughhhh…. eroticise the male body. 
Actually checking them out before hand for weird stuff and tract marks is a good idea.  HEY! Even better! They could make the Modern Olympics like the Ancient Olympics and require everyone to perform naked!
No, I don’t want that just because it might make some people not want their steriod ravaged nether regions exposed to the world.  I also think it would be awesome because some of the chicks are hot and then they’d be naked.  And then they be off the air in America.  And the Olympics would lose a ton of revenue and close up.  And then we’d all win!
Unfortunately, if the Olympics did shut down there would be a power vacuum in the world of international competition.  And, as today’s strip teaches (hey I referenced the strip for once!), power vacuums will be filled, often by much worse organizations.  I’ll bet whoever would wind up replacing them would get rid of boxing and wrestling and hockey for being “bloodsports”.  Probably even make everyone stand on level ground at the awards ceremony.  Man that’d suck.
So I guess it is for the best that the Olympics are around.  At least they aren’t going to get rid of wrestling.  And who knows maybe they’ll take out the ChiComs!  If so, I say Tehran 2012!
–Bob

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Moment of truth: See here is the thing folks.  I am basically a researcher at heart.  That means I like looking stuff up and then telling folks about it.  Kinda.  Actually I only like learning things and then occasionally shocking people with stuff that I am pretty sure is now true or commenting on a subject.  I hate putting it into usable easily digestible form or actually using the info, you know like what people are supposed to do with new learning.  I know that was the reason for all of those reasearch papers in high school and college but dagnabit I passed those classes.  So why should I be required to impart any actionable knowledge I have gained in any kind of reasonable way to anyone else?!  Exactly.

The other thing is this.  I like to mull things over.  I like to think about something again and again to make sure I have digested the thought thoroughly.  I want to give my mind a chance to grind and pummel the thoughts I have until the thoughts are so small that when my brain begins to churn my thought enzymes can reduce the thoughts down to a usable, digestible sludge that will provide nutrients for my thinking.  Or maybe distillation is a better metaphor.  Yeah that’s the ticket!  A new concept is like the barley which is then expanded into a full thought like a mash.  Then when you add heat and water and enzymes and time all the sugars of the mash get devoured by the yeast (i.e. thinking) and voila!, alcohol (or a firm idea) is produced!  Cool it down and drain it and you’ve got white lightning son!  Point is mulling takes a while, but if’n ya does it right, WOOOO-EEEEE!!! Whatch you git’ll knock yer socks off!  Problem is most of the time yer old pet skunk Louis done got in the mash and messed it up with his stankin’ spray ‘fore you even knew what happened, so’s whachu gots thar ain’t nuthin but skunky paint remover.

So in undertaking this humorous blog I have been combining those two elements to achieve my results, which to remind you all again are 1.) research that is unused and 2.) taking a long time to think things through and then not using them because the idea sucks.  You may judge the results for yourself.

But I don’t want to talk about that.  No, rather I wish to share with you what I have learned about blogging from my research out on the interwebs where I have attempted to learn how to write a creative insightful not (too) dirty original blog that offends no-one and has general appeal.  And here is what I have learned.

It is impossible.

Man that would have been the sentence to go out on!  Curse that I have one or two things more to say!

Mostly everyone just links, or rages, or puts up pictures of LOLCats (ugh) and motivational posters (yeay!) or tries to be insightful when they really aren’t (finger points at self) or trips on their little thing until they have lost all joy and they slowly stop typing.  But to actualy be somwhat humorous, original, accessable, and not get censored by your partner?!  IMPOSSIBLE!

Except for this guy.  Dave Barry.  Man I hate this guy!  Look at him sitting there all smug and rich and not a failure.  I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM!

Now I know what you are gonna say. 

“Bob, don’t get so down.  Dave Barry isn’t even known for being a blogger at his site DaveBarry.com, he is known for being an incredibly famous and repected Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated humor columnist and novelist who had a sitcom based very loosely off of his life!  And even HE links like mad on his blog!”

OH How you pour salt into my wounds gentle reader!  I know all these things!  And yet his humor pieces pierce me to the very quick of my soul!  Oh how their ability to be so dang accessable and humorus to a general audience mock me!  Mock me, I say!

There is naught left to do….

except post this awesome the Onion video on making the “dream omelete.”

-Bob

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Do you realize that I know six people whose birthdays were yesterday?!  And like another dozen over the previous fortnight!

Good Gravy!  What is wrong with you people?  Did you get yourselves mixed up with the noble wildebeast, that gives birth enmasse within the space of a few days?  Good preservation instinct though, got to give you that.  Mass birth means predators will have more easy targets but within a brief period of time, thus reducing chances of multiple young being taken.  So good job you guys.  Anything to keep them filthy hyenas hungry I say.

Anyhoo, writing all of those birthday greetings reminded me of how seriously wierd it is to write birthday greetings.  I know what the idea is behind wishing people a happy birthday.  It is supposed to be something like this:

Associate: Hello Friend/Kinship-Group-Member/Person-I-Am-Romantically-Interested-In.  I have remembered that it is the anniversary of your birth.  I am so overjoyed at the fact that one day not so long ago you were born and were destined to become a shining light, a beacon if you will, of hope and joy and laughter in my life.  If not for you my life would be woefully empty.  And so for all of the things you have done and mean to me I wish all of your days, but this day most of all, to be full of happiness and luck and blessings.  Here is a token of my esteem that I hope you accept even though it fails completely to show the depths of my respect for you.  I look forward to knowing you in the many years ahead and am thankful for having known you so long already.  If there is any sorrow on this day it is that I have not known you longer and that it is unknowable how long we shall both trod this earth before we pass.  But know that I look forward to decades of continued satisfying mutual social obligation to each other.

Birthday-ee: Thank you for that sincere and heartfelt expression of affection and respect, oh great and good Friend/Kinship-Group-Member/Person-Who-Is-Romantically-Interested-In-Me of mine.  Rest assured that the feeling is mutual and that our social ties have been reinforced and strengthened by both your words, wishes, and gifts.  Truely no physical object was neeeded for me to know the esteem you hold me in.  And I to look forward to being involved in decades of continued satisfying mutual social obligation to each other as well.  For you are so important and so excellent an asociate that I have completely forgotten about my age and am now full of joy and youthfull vitality.  I thank you.

That is all well and good.  But that is not what I or anyone else hears.  I think that is because all of us know that a birthday is just another reminder to us all that we are going to lose everything we ever had that was worth having or wanted, grow old, and die unloved.  Even as I say my well intentioned birthday greetings I feel like everyone hears:

Me: Hey, how you doing?  It is your birthday?  Oh.  Sorry I forgot but I been busy.  And we both know that this doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you.  And you really shouldn’t care about this that much anyways, you selfish jerk.  Well congrats on not dying on this last trip around the Sun.  You really didn’t accomplish what you wanted to on this trip around it did ya?  That’s okay because ultimately you are on this Earth for such a short time that you never really had a chance of making a difference anyways.  Hope you won’t die to soon.  And if that doesn’t happen then I also hope things don’t suck to bad for ya before you die.  See ya.

Whenever I go to a birthday party I feel like the birthday boy thinks we are all really saying: We all know you’re going to die!  But way to cheat death for another year!  Each time we have another sheet cake with your name and candles on it is just our way to remind ourselves that you can’t outrun the Grim Reaper forever!  Now eat the cake and pretend to like the gifts and stop crying about your squandered youth and opportunities and pretend that you care about us as much as we pretend to care about you, you self-pitying crybaby.  Because there is no way you could have made it this far through this hellish day without us!

Pretty brutal isn’t it?

Isn’t that awesome!

Makes me want to post some Metalocalypse \”Dethday\” episode outtakes.  But as that is definetly a hard PG-13 for, well, being Metalocalypse, I can’t.

Brutal.

-Bob

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