beer beer beer! bed bed bed!

The olympics haven’t even started yet and I already feel overwhelmed. IT’S ALL TOO MUCH.

Literally, it is all too much. I love sport. I am a cheerleader for sports and activities of all kind. I love playing badminton. And bocce. I love nothing more than lying on the couch and watching obscure sports from around the globe. I even watch that Red Bull air plane thing when it’s on tv – which, if you’re wondering, is freaking AMAZING. It makes me wish I was a rich retired Yank so I could be in it too.

My point is not that there should be less sport in the world. My point is that even I am already sick of the Olympic games. It’s too much and too ridiculous. It is too many weeks of hype. Endless hype surrounding an interminable and mind-numbing torch relay and leading up to a bloated three-week-long spectacle of too many sports at too many arenas, too much interpretive dance, too many cutesy segments of LET’S LEARN ABOUT THE HOST COUNTRY!* and too many hours of tv a day. It’s turned into Marlon Brando and I can’t handle it.

And now, worst of all, it’s made me disagree with my beloved cricket husband, Adam Gilchrist. Now that is unforgivable, Olympics. I am officially pissed now.

You see, Gilly wants to reintroduce cricket to the olympics.

Gilly, honey, no. No, no, no. Much as I love you, this just can’t happen. And not only because if they add one more sport to this Las Vegas-esque olympics of excess, my head will implode from saturated boredom.

This Olympic validation of bullshit not-quite-olympic-sports must not continue. The definition of Olympic sport has become distended beyond all recognition. We already have table tennis, badminton, trampolining and tennis included in the Olympiad.

And my friends, I say to you all: THESE ARE NOT OLYMPIC SPORTS.

I know you train hard to play them, and it’s all very impressive, really. I know about the hours of training. The early mornings, the money, the injuries, the sacrifice, and the dream. Oh, the great Olympic dream! But that doesn’t mean they belong in the Olympics (as well as their repsective World Cup’s, World Championships, National Championships and Commonwealth Games).

Dear readers, these are … activities. They’re games. And that ‘games’ in the phrase ‘Olympic Games’? THAT’S NOT THE KIND OF GAMES THEY MEANT. Which is why there aren’t any other popular worldwide games in the Olympics.

I mean I’m a kick-ass Mahjong player, but I would never ask them to put it in the Olympics. Because IT’S A GAME BITCHES. Same reason there’s no Parcheesee, or cricket, or Bocce. Same reason there shouldn’t be any handball.

The Olympic motto is faster, higher, stronger. It’s not ‘PASS GO AND COLLECT $200′.

If I were a stronger woman I would take a stand, too. I would single-handedly honour that motto and simply ignore all the faux-olympic-sports. No volleyball, no softball. Just running, swimming, lifting stuff and shooting stuff. Possibly also riding stuff.

But I am human. I am weak. I am at the mercy of my addiction. I know that within about seven days I’ll be lying in the dark in my living room at some ungodly hour when the world is asleep cheering and simultaneously hating myself as little Davina McFrankston serves for the win in the women’s badminton bronze medal playoff. Sigh.

Beer beer beer! Bed bed bed!

* Fun fact: did we all know Leshan means ‘Happy Mountain’? Gag.