Olympic Time Warp

I live several miles from the nearest cable and I just can't justify $60/month for a dish. What I can get right now with rabbit ears is fuzzy and somehow over the last year I've just gotten out of the habit of watching it. 99 percent of my "TV" viewing is watching DVDs these days and mostly I'm happy with that. But then comes the Olympics, one of the few sporting events I actually care about watching, and I start having to tell my Id to shut up we are not getting a dish just for the month of February.

Fortunately I have a cousin who was willing to tape a good bit of the games for me. It's sort of pot luck. I have no idea what's on the 20 odd tapes except for the opening and closing ceremonies. I did tell him I wanted figure skating so I'm pretty sure that's on there.

Because my viewing time during the week is limited I'm still only on the fourth tape so while the rest of the world is looking back on the Olympics as a done deal I'm probably going to be working my through them for weeks to come. So if I decide to throw in a comment about something that happened and for me it was today and for you it was 3 months ago there isn't a discrepancy in the space/time continuum.

Really there isn't.

It has nothing to do with it anyway.

I have a new hero now, but being me I can't remember her name. The girl who wore a large rhinestone tiara in her event, which involved skying very quickly down a short course and running over a bunch of floppy sticks, is nuts for not wearing a helmet but I'm giving her 15 out of 10 for style. I wonder if she's a Sweet Potato Princess or just one of the weird and cool.

There have been a lot of comments about how bad the games were this year and I think they have to be talking about NBC's really lame coverage and not the events themselves. What happened to the former Olympians serving as color commentators and being so excited to be back that they just make you care about just about any thing? (Although Cross Country Pursuit is a lost cause to me. ) The commentators this year were, to borrow from Zaphod Beeblebrox, so unhip it was a wonder their pants didn't fall off.

The tiara girl was a case in point. While I was squeeing and feeling a burst of girl power the two lumps covering the event were going on and on about how it showed disrespect and was in bad taste and maybe she should wear a helmet? Bite my shiney metal ass you stuck up, over the hill, has beens.

The camera work is really bad too. Too many things shown at a distance that really cried out for a close up and vice versa. Between the bad commentary and the bad camera work events that you can tell were really exciting to see first hand, like the half pipe, were somewhat less than attention grabbing.

The goat of the games has to be the American girl who took home the silver in the Snow Board Cross event. This was the first time that this event has been in the Olympics and the first time I've seen it. It's great! One NPR commentator compared it to roller derby on snow boards. In this even you are allowed to crowd your opponent and force her off the track if you can.

So, it's the final run -- the first, second, and third place finishers in this race will medal --there are, I think, five girls but there could have been a sixth I lost track of. The track goes over a series of little jumps and curving bits and they are headed out at high speed. The American early on maneuvers so she is out front and proceeds to leave everyone in her dust. Two of the girls tangle up and end up flat on their backs out of the race. One of them gets taken off on a stretcher. The Canadian girl messes up and goes right through a snow fence. As long as she can get back on the track though she can get a bronze since there are only three people left in the race so after a moment she struggles up and, with the snowboard still strapped to her feet, hops like a rabbit back onto the track to resume the race.

Meanwhile the second place girl is losing more and more ground and it's gonna be a gold for the US for sure. And then *cue ominous music* the American risks looking behind her and sees that she's got a lock on it as long as she stays on her board and keeps moving forward. She decides to do a little aerial trick at the next jump to celebrate, fails to stick the landing, and goes tail over tea kettle . The second place girl, no doubt promising the deity of her choice a lifetime of faithful service for arranging this, zips by. The American gets up quickly and starts down again but there isn't enough track left for her to catch up and she has to watch as the other girl takes the gold.

She just stood there and cried and watched as the winner's team piled out to give her hugs and nobody from her team made a move toward her for a couple of minutes. The coach assumed the face palm position and had an expression that would indicate that his ulcer just had a litter of baby ulcers.

This is the sort of thing you watch the Olympics for!

Why Cats Make the Best Roommates

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11471503/

If you don't change their liter box for a month the worse that happens is that they pee on your bed.

The Antikythera Mechanism

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1337165

I absolutely love this sort of thing. In 1900 a sponge diver found a corroded hunk of ancient junk that upon being examined with modern technology turns out to be a fairly complicated clockwork mechanism that could predict the locations off all the known planets of the time.

The article is somewhat vague in places but even if this isn't what happened here it brings to mind all those times that somebody points to something in an ancient manuscript, like Cicero's mention of an astronomical calculator or Homer talking about a minor skirmish in Asia Minor, and the "experts" very condescendingly pat him on the head for believing in such fairy tales since it's obvious that old Wasname was given to exaggeration and making things up. Then whatever it is actually turns up and it takes decades before there is grudging acknowledgment that okay, maybe he did know what he was talking about after all.

Then you have things like Otzi the Ice Man having the bad grace to show up with a copper axe a thousand years before he was supposed to have one. And tobacco traces in Egyptian mummys that had been in sealed tombs for millenia.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens one of the most inquisitive and inventive species on the planet evolved over 130 thousand years ago, maybe even over 200 thousand years ago, and is supposed to have basically sat around with its collective thumb up its butt until 9000 years ago. And even then it wasn't until the last 3000 years or so that we discovered most of the advanced stuff. Like chemistry and astronomy and physics etc.

And even though they migrated all over the world from Africa once they got where they were going they lost contact with each other and there was no contact between the Americas and the rest of the world until Leif Erickson showed up.

Riiiiiggght.

IMO the lack of fossil fuel burning transportation and vast stretches of asphalt does not a stupid civilization make. And the Dolphins are way ahead of us anyway.

Bethany Is My Friend

I was thrilled, perhaps pathetically so, to see a link to my blog on Bethany's friends list at her blog. I am validated! I exist!

I need a life.

Thank you Bethany.

Thank You Elayne!!

I now have links to blogs and other cool places down there under the archive links. All thanks to Elayne who speaks HTML fluently. Me, I know the equivalent of "Donde esta el bano?" so I might have done it without screwing up the site if I spent all weekend at it Googling for sites to tell me how. Maybe. But I wouldn't count on it.

YAY ELAYNE!!!!!

Oh. My. Cod. It's Mary Sue!

Ensign Mary Sue prepares for her one on one meeting with Commander Spock during which she will explain to him the unified field theory and how it means that once every seven years is not enough.

http://www.buycostumes.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=17443&PCatID=adultcostumes&ccatid=adultsexycostumes


Thanks to Pirate Monkeys, Inc for this link. Find more here:

http://piratemonkeysinc.com/humor.htm

A Brush with Mediocrity

Some of you may have seen Charles Van Zandt on Dr. Phil but how many of you can say that you have been lightly flamed by him? I can now and I am so impressed with his authority and rapier wit.

Yeah.

Aaaaany way for a full blow by blow account including the text of our emails head over to ULF to the Taylor Behl thread.

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=8825.1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-urbanlegends#a1

The short version is that he made a boneheaded mistake and failed to do his research before posting a column at MSNBC and got snitty when I called him on it via email. I also pointed out certain questionable ethical aspects of his column.

You would think that a nationally known "expert" and C list media personality would have a life and wouldn't spend his Sunday mornings taking pot shots at me but I guess not. It's nice to know that even the almost famous are desperate for entertainment once they've finished the comics and Dear Abby and it's too early in the day for football.

Post Tut

I meant to write about the exhibit but I was exhausted and it took until today to even want to post.

The exhibit was not what I expected and was not as good as others I have seen but had some artifacts that made me glad I went. Most of them were woodcarvings, the sort of thing that doesn't photograph well for coffee table books. Of the glittery bits I was most impressed with seeing Tut's Crook and Flail. Somehow the knowledge that I was just on the other side of a glass case from something that would gotten me killed for coming near when it was in use gave me a thrill.

The canopic jars were also impressive. They were about twice as big as I expected and the alabaster was very pretty under the lights.

The most impressive woodcarvings were those of a life size cow head, complete with a little swirl in the middle of her forehead, and a ushepti of a woman where every fold of her pleated linen gown had been carved.

I really liked a little toad too. He was perfectly preserved with a grumpy expression that was very sqeeable but I kept it inside.

The museum controlled how many people went in at a time via tickets that were only good for entry at a certain time. They packed as many people in as they could get away with though. Waiting for your own group to clear out a little didn't help much as the next group was right on your heels.

If I knew before what I know now I probably wouldn't have gone but I'm glad I did.