Olympic confessions

I was talking to the guy in the desk next to mine at work today about some of the follies we're meant to deal with, and I said: 'Don't you think that some of the issues here [i.e. in Alice] are a little kooky? As in, not particularly Big Picture issues. It makes me feel as tho I'm living in one of those hokey ABC dramas about quirky people in a country town.' 'Oh yeah. Like Dr Who,' he said. 'Dr Who? That's a rather lateral association!' 'You know, a time warp,' he said.

Today I saw the word 'tacticle' in a report written by the police. This misspelling pleased me: an appropriate combination of 'tactical', 'tactile' and 'tentacle', I thought. The tentacle of the law. That's rather nice.

Apparently the Olympics are over. I was rather surprised when they started, to be honest. I'd forgotten that this was The Year and Now, and then I woke up to Warwick Hatfield or whatever his name is, talking about medals. Though I like the Olympics and all the excitement of being in a country who wins things and the opportunities for the admiration of the athletic body (tho not Thorpie, sorry: he doesn't do it for me), I did fall to wondering, quite early on, if there was something a bit unseemly about us winning so many medals. I mean, we must win the highest number of medals per capita of any country, surely. In my wowserish way, I was wondering what this said about us as a nation, and then the women's rowing team opened their mouths and well, said what they said. (I know they trained hard and it was the Olympics -- but come on, it's a boat race, after all!) Sigh, remember the good ol' so-long-as-we-beat-NZ days, when we often just had a tally of 4 bronze and a silver? Where did it all come from?

Continuing in my left-liberal wowserish way, I took a brief look at the HDI (lying conveniently on my desk) ... 3rd highest incomes, 3rd highest life expectancy at birth, 4th in health status...I guess it's not surprising we're so good at sport, given that we're so healthy (tho fellow OECD top rankers Canada, Sweden and Norway don't do so well at the Olympics). Imagine if there were Olympic medal tallies for science. The arts. Culture. Human rights. I don't reckon we'd do so well there.

Speaking of left-liberal wowsers, I saw Farenheit 9/11 the other night. It was okay. Not as good as Bowling for Columbine...and it didn't get past some of the flaws of B for C, either. Just as well George Bush has a dumb mug to match his brain. MM mightn't have gotten as much mileage out of him otherwise. Thought MM was a little jingoistic at times, but I imagine the film was being pitched at the swinging, possibly traditionally conservative Democrat voter (and besides, he's an American after all).

Lenny Houdini has extricated himself from his Hare Krishna collar. He unbuckled it and left it in a neat spiral in Jessie's faux-leopard skin cowpat. Collar-wearing definitely seems to offend his masculinity. He's definitely no SNAG (probably a bit of a Ralph).

Comments

[Nick]

Our overall medal tally represents one medal (of any colour) per 408 000 people. Just ahead of Cuba which also does rather well at 418 000 folk per medal.

The best country in the world by this measure is the Bahamas (total population: 300 000, two medals).

Yes, the Canadians sucked. (The Norwegians and the Swedes save up their efforts for the Winter Olympics).

Ironically, it was the Montreal Olympics where we won zero gold medals that lead us to TRY HARDER NEXT TIME. Among other things, we created the Australian Institute of Sport which ches through $100 million per year (or $400 million per Olympiad). Which comes out at a bit less than $10 million per medal.

But hey, I love it that we came fourth. I was on the edge of my seat when we briefly took over the Japanese for third only to be overtaken by the late-blooming Russians...

[elsewhere]

Some impressive calculations there, Nick...perhaps the theme song needs to be changed to 'So long as we beat Japan!' And I'd like to think that somehow all that burning round the backyard pretending to be Olympiads added to the better part of the Australian sporting psyche during our lean years...