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Happy first day of the Beijing Olympics, y'all!

(<--the folks on Mount Olympus, discussing the day's race results)

Are you thrilled to be knowing that the games are afoot? Will you spend all weekend watching the chills, thrills, and spills of international competition? Are you betting on the outcomes of any of the matches? A little table-tennis gambling, perhaps? A wager on how many lil' balance beamers are going to take a digger off the 4-inch-wide-post-o'-doom?

As a public service, I present to you the rundown o the list of 'sports n' competitions' that are going to be sported and competed at this year's Summer Orympic Games (Also? klikable!):

Aquatics
Archery
Athletics
Badminton
Baseball
Basketball
Boxing
Canoe / kayak
Cycling
Equestrian
Fencing
Football
Gymnastics
Handball
Hockey
Judo
Modern pentathlon
Rowing
Sailing
Shooting
Softball
Table tennis
Taekwondo
Tennis
Triathlon
Volleyball
Weightlifting
Wrestling

Um...canoeing? Really? Somebody's going to watch a bunch of campers doing the tippy test or something? Do people WATCH canoeing?

And wait, is that FOOTBALL I see? Like football-football, or Futbol-football? On the one hand there would be muscly men in tight pants, which is totall whee territory, and on the other hand there are half-nekkid mens running around all sweaty. Win-win, I say.

Also, the super-general 'athletics' is an interesting sport of choice, don't you think? What the heck is athletics, anyhow? Well, a little (30 second's worth) research reveals that 'athletics' is really track and field in disguise. And I quote from the IOC's page:

Athletics is, in many ways, the embodiment of the Olympic motto, "Citius, Altius, Fortius", meaning faster, higher, stronger.

Athletics (or track and field) is about running faster, jumping higher and throwing further than your competitors. The ancient Games at Olympia began simply with foot races, only occasionally complicated by dressing the runners in infantry armour or making them carry soldiers' shields. Today, athletics remains one of the most popular Olympic sports. From the 100m dash to the 42.195km marathon, from the hammer throw to the high jump, it contains many of the Olympic Games' blue-ribbon events and many of the highest-profile competitors.

So kids, when you say you're an athletics supporter, you're talking track and field. Now you know! Personally, I'm kind of hoping for an accidental javelin-izing of someone's foot, because nothing says 'competition' like blood-n'-guts.

On another note - why haven't javelins been replaced by some dumbed-down version of stick-hurling, much like "Jarts" were replaced by some way less fun after a few kids really DID poke an eye out? There have been numerous judges, photographers, and other athletic combatants that have been speared by this instrument of warfare. Someone should petition the IOC to make the javelin-tossers heave something a little less deadly than a many-foot-long metal-tipped SPEAR through the air, don't you think?

Also....shooting. Something should be done about the shooting. Take away their bullets and put 'em in from of some loud-ass arcade game where there's simulated blood spatter (see note above about the blood-n'-guts thing) or virtual big game to hunt, couple that with a maelstrom of noise typical of a Chuck-E-Cheese on a Saturday afternoon, and THEN see who can kick some targety ass. Prolly not Muffy and Skip from the club with their fancy ear protection and their scopes and their kid gloves and their posh Hamptons accents. Hells no...it'd be some 13-year-old kid with an attitude problem and anger issues. Come on, man, let's make the Olympics less Hoity Toity and more hoi polloi! That'll bring in the ad dollars!

Just don't lose the equestrian stuff. Everybody likes pretty ponies.

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Y'all have a good one, no matter what your favorite obscure summer olympic sport might be. I'm out!