Tag Archives: olympics

Beijing and other asshattery…

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It won’t be a surprise to anyone who’s been reading these posts regularly that I haven’t been watching the Olympics. Whatever the gene is that drives people to watch sports on television is one I just don’t have. I don’t hate them, it’s more like I don’t even think of them at all when left to my own devices. It’s impossible, of course, to avoid the coverage that the Olympics and other sporting events get in the media. I mostly tune those out, but occasionally something seeps through.

What little I’ve picked up about the Beijing games doesn’t fill me with regret for my general indifference to the sporting world. A winter Olympics with no snow. Athletes falling out with the Great Plague. The inevitable doping scandals. Participants using burner phones… and China just generally being China. It all reads more like bad reality television than something worth spending much brainpower on.

Based on the amount of breathless coverage everything in Beijing is getting, my opinion clearly isn’t shared by many… or maybe the Olympics are a convenient excuse not to have wall-to-wall coverage about the deteriorating state of the world and divisions at home. That’s more observation than accusation. There’s plenty enough shitshow to go around whether you want to watch the Olympics or any of the other asshattery filling the airwaves and webpages of 2022.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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The hardest aspect of writing What Annoys Jeff this Week isn’t finding the three things that have agitated the shit out of me during the last seven days, it’s the culling through the multitude of life’s little indignities to arrive at the three that best sum up the week that was. As ever, it’s a precarious balancing act between my liberty to speak and my willingness to deal with the consequences of those words once they’ve left my brain and shown up on the internet. In that spirit, I proudly present you with the 110th installment of What Annoys Jeff this Week.

1. Failure to communicate. Nine times in ten I don’t mind when something I’ve bought and paid for is backordered. As long as I know it in advance or it’s communicated to me as quickly as possible after the order. What you shouldn’t do is wait for two weeks, fill the balance of the order, and only then let me know that the one widget I needed to make it all work is backordered indefinitely. Some people would probably shrug it off, but for me it’s a sure guarantee that I’ll repackage the whole thing, return it at your expense, and never conduct business with you again. When you fail to communicate with the customer, at least when that customer is me, everyone loses.

2. Being not quite sick. There’s a murky line somewhere between feeling well and being sick. I’ve found astride that line for the last two days. With an obnoxious cough, a turbulent stomach, and a general feeling of malaise, I’ve mostly crashed through the mid-week period feeling vaguely out of sorts and enjoying the attention span the Almighty gave to the average walnut. It’s not the recipe for doing great and wonderful things. In fact it’s most likely the recipe to make sure foolishness and asshattery lurk around every corner.

3. Anything to do with the Winter Olympics or the Super Bowl. So there rest of the world doesn’t respond with a visceral sigh when someone mentions either the Olympic Games or the Superbowl. I’m sure there are even those reading this now who are beside themselves with anticipation of the great and exciting things to come. As for me, my disinterest has been driven to a state of outright hostility by the sheer shove-it-down-your-throatedness of media coverage of both of these events. I’ll leave the rest of the world to their excitement. As for me, I’m not a bit interested in any of it… until the summer games… or the world women’s volleyball championship. Whichever comes first.

The need for speed…

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Before drifting off to dreamland last night, I was flipping through the channels and landed on one of the NBC stations showing the Olympics. Not what I’d normally watch, but all I was really looking for was some background noise, so no worries… Until I heard the color commentary refer to the sport I was listening to as “race walking.” Even in my addled state of near-sleep, I was conscious enough to realize that made as much sense to me as “speed sleeping” or “ass sitting.” So, I just had to see this Olympic sport in all its late-night televised glory.

Sure enough, it lived up to its billing. The contestants were walking rapidly around the track… out of the building and around the block… for 20 kilometers. All I can say to that is WTF? Is there some kind of massive movement afoot to launch speed walking as a major sporting event or was this just the ChiCom’s plot to leave us utterly confused and defenseless? I’m not saying I could do what they were doing as I’m fairly sure my knees don’t bend that way, but still, is race walking really what we need in a sporting event that’s going to be beamed around the world?