My war on commentary

Unless you have been living under a rock, or you are a member of Hermits United, you will know that the Olympics are currently on, right here in my northern hemispherean home of London.

Despite endless complaining leading up to the event, everyone seems to have embraced it wholeheartedly. My house mates and I got together to watch the opening ceremony. I found the whole affair a bit dull, best bit being the Mr Bean scene, but it was nevertheless fun. I was the only one to push through right until the very end so I feel I deserve some kudos for that (come on, you kind of have to, the whole point is the cauldron being lit.) The expected transport-apocalypse hasn't hit either, with trains being way emptier than they normally are. Either it's going to go absolutely nuts next week or the British are just psychotic scaremongers. I'm leaning towards the latter.

I've been enjoying all the sport. Having grown up in a house that's very sport-friendly, I'm used to watching pretty much all of the Olympic events. The tv was always on in our house during times like these, so it's a bit weird for me having to set up my laptop and then choose what I want to watch... but you know, such is life. I had a lovely day at Abbi and Paul's on Sunday, just camped out on the couch watching all sorts of random things - from table tennis and badminton to judo, gymnastics, beach volleyball and water polo. Fun times! 

Somehow, in all the madness, I have turned intensely patriotic. This is worrying. I have always been rather against all kinds of overt patriotism and nationalism, mainly because I think it's vulgar and just causes trouble. In the past, I've always been pretty apathetic about all this support-woo-my-country-is-awesome business. But apparently moving to the other side of the world completely negates all my arguments. Suddenly, I care. A lot. I even get defensive when people start knocking the team. I am completely baffled by this change of heart. 

I keep an eye on twitter for most of the event news, but the only thing I've been following religiously is the swimming. I feel like I have been culturally brainwashed into caring about it. Thing is though, I was introduced to Australian Olympic swimming madness during the golden era of Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett, so now I just expect that all the time. All of the medals! I want them! Sadly, we don't really have sure-fire winners like that on the team anymore, but somehow I keep hoping anyway.

Unfortunately, swimming appears to have been assigned the world's worst commentating duo. It's a miracle Tweedledum and Tweedledee manage to find their way to the commentating box each night, they're so incompetent. They are constantly getting mixed up by what's happening in the pool, retell the same tired anecdotes a thousand times and fawn over Michael Phelps to an embarrassing degree. When the US team won the 200m freestyle relay, I though for sure they'd be heading down the the podium to propose to the guy. Just take a look at my twitter stream between 7.30pm and 9.30pm and you'll see just how much they annoy me. They frustrate me so much, the only thing that ends up running through my head is that scene from the Simpsons where Ned is bugging Apu about the octuplets. Shut up! SHUT UP!

So, on that note...

Music: Shut me up - Mindless Self Indulgence