olympics is my sweet sweet crack

Well the completely and utterly expected has finally happened. Remember all that stuff I said about the Olympics? As predicted: complete bullshit. The Olympics isn’t too much sport, nor too many sports, and there is absolutely no chance of my boycotting anything in it. I’m done for. I may never sleep again.

I spent last night huddled in the green tv glow in my terry robe, clutching my tumbler of diet coke and promising myself just one more race and then I’ll go to bed. Just one more. One more can’t hurt, right? A person only needs five hours … four hours sleep. Right? That’s all the guy in The Firm slept for and he outwitted the mob.

Then all of a sudden they were replaying Stephanie Rice winning gold and I had to watch that. Then I kind of had to watch our boys in the rowing, because it’s not fair to neglect them, is it? It would be sportist. And sexist. And gymnastics … well look I just really like gymnastics, ok? I love how gymnasts are just so … gymnasty. Their whole bodies are shaped for nothing but gymnastics. They’re human bonsai; modern and socially acceptable demonstrations of the victory of determination and conditioning over human genetics. You can’t look away any more than you could look away from those gory pictures of freshly unbound Chinese feet in history books at school.

So instead of focussing on work (and thankfully instead of scratching imaginary bugs through my skin) I’ve been reading the Olympic schedule for the day and jonesing for more. Do you know what I had to miss to go to work today?

Swimming finals, synchronised diving and equestrian events.

EQUESTRIAN EVENTS. Is there anything I love more? No, no there isn’t. Needless to say I am pissed. It’s the cross-country too, bitches, and there is no other event with as high a probability of someone falling face-first into a pool of murky river-water as the cross-country. Not even steeplechase, and you can quote me on that. I already missed out on watching live dressage yesterday thanks to Channel Seven and itis unnecessary broadcasting of some inconsequential and unimpressive bottom-of-the-table AFL game, and all I have to say is there are no hats in AFL. It cannot hope to compare with an event where men and women in blazers and sixties riding helmets prance on horseback in diagonals.

It’s magical. Like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. I’ve decided I really enjoy watching humans defy the natural order of things. I also like seeing ponies with their hair all done up and their hooves all shiny. It’s like the horse formal. I wonder if any of them shag in uncomfortable positions in a horse trailer afterwards.

And, yes. I am an angry addict when I don’t get my fix. Wanna make something of it?

Do you know that diver Matthew Helm has vertigo? I shit you not. He stands on a 10 metre platform and dives through a fear of heights. And I AM MISSING IT. You’d be angry too.

Plus what if some of the Americans turn up to their events in their ridiculous newsboy caps? I will be devo. If a yank wears a lame Kangol hat and no one makes a bitchy joke about it, what’s the point?

So in case anyone else is feeling as bitter and yearning as I am today, I’ll leave you with possibly the greatest piece of photoediting I have ever seen. This is what you call JOURNALISM.

The Sydney Morning Herald Olympic Gallery of Shirtless Men. Bravo, Herald. Bravo.

[pics: Getty Images / smh.com.au]