The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of A Helpful Morning Routine

Dateline: Monday, 5:45 am-ish. I’d left my yoga pants on the bathroom floor overnight.  As I picked them up I shook them, as moiself  would with any article of clothing before putting it on, to get out the wrinkles or whatever, and a spider    [1]    made an athletic if somewhat startling ( to moiself ) exit from one of the pant legs, where she had apparently spent a restful evening. 

Or perhaps she was preparing me for a yoga pose: the Utkata Konasana variation known colloquially as,  spider pose. 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Just Wondering…
(But Not Enough To Follow The Link For The Ad)

Dateline: Tuesday morning, 5:37 AM. After finishing the last of my  New York Times word games I went on to another word game:  Waffle.   After finishing the daily word waffle, an advertisement popped up on my phone screen.  The ad consisted of graphic of a black spider with long spindly legs, along with the phrase, “Way to stop spiders.”

Although I quickly scrolled past that on my way to the waffle royale,   [2]   I was distracted by, and kept thinking about, the ad’s grammatically imprecise teaser:

Way to stop spiders.

 

 

Huh? Way to stop spiders?  As in, *a* way or *the best* way to stop spiders, as opposed to a slang-ish congratulatory phrase one might confer upon an exterminator:

( Duuuude, way to stop spiders! )

And if it’s the former, “stop spiders” from…what, exactly?  From merely existing?  From getting inside your house?  From…

* building their webs across the armrests of your TV chair?

* weaving their web in the corner of your living room and successfully reproducing so that when their egg sac hatches around Christmas time dozens if not hundreds of baby spiders burst forth and land on your Christmas tree?    [3]

* registering to vote?

* taking Black jobs?

* crawling inside your yoga pants and startling you in the morning (ahem)?

* inviting their spider friends over to sample and then critique your steamed mixed veggies with Indonesian style peanut sauce?

* going down the rabbit hole of political psychosis and weaving tiny red hats instead of webs and screaming at you at the top of their thin, quavery, high-pitched arachnid voices, “Oh look, Karen, it’s another bleeding heart woke liberal!” when you open the door and shoe out a fly that had gotten inside your kitchen instead of squashing the fly with a rolled-up issue of last month’s  The Atlantic ?

Like I said, I didn’t follow the link, so I guess we’ll all just have to speculate.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Olympic Reflections

As previously noted in this space, I love watching the Olympic Games, both the summer and winter versions.  I saw many outstanding performances in these summer games; among my favorites was the men’s 5000-meter race.  I found moiself,  much to my surprise and embarrassment, shouting at my TV screen ( “WTF?!?!?  WT effin’ F is he doing – how can he just do that?!?!!?! “) as I watched the Norwegian entrant, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, with less than 600 meters left in the race and seemingly hemmed in by the other runners, shift into a gear that the other runners – including the four ahead of him – did not seem to have.  And he looked so casual while doing it; it’s as if he suddenly reminded himself, Oh, sure, you betcha, it’s time for me to get in front.  And as the other runners gasped and flailed with effort, Ingebrigtsen just…ran faster.

 

“To do: Check the lefse and pickled herring supply when you get home; get a new setdesdal sweater for cross country ski season,
hmm, what else was on the list – oh, yah, win the 5k….”

It’s a two year wait until the Winter Games in in Italy, and four years until the next Summer Games in Los Angeles.  I’m in the process of withdrawal, from not having the luxury of sitting in the comfy chair ® for hours during and after dinner, clicking a few buttons on the remote to decide among a plethora of volleyball games or rugby matches or kayak races or fencing/skateboarding/BMX biking/gymnastics/track & field events to choose from.

Alas and yep, the games are over now, so it’s time to thoughtfully consider some of the existential issues brought up by such an amazing series of athletic contests complain.

 

 

Is it just my imagination, or, as indicated by their behavior before/after/during their events and also by what they said during interviews preceding and following their events, that the self-opinions held by many Olympic athletes has exceeded the heights of years past?

Robust egotism should be neither surprising nor unexpected from athletes who devote years to pursuit of excellence in honing what are essentially it’s-all-about-me pursuits and skills.  Still, according to a study I just made up, the literal and metaphorical chest-thumping on display in the 2024 Summer Olympics was 48% greater than such displays in previous summer Olympics.

Some of those immodest exhibitions I blame squarely on the influence of social media in all aspects of young(er) people’s lives (the ages of the vast majority of the Olympic athletes are between 20 – 30).

And although the Games are already a spectacle of Olympic proportions…

 

 

(sorry) …but it seemed that for many of the participants – who were perhaps keeping in mind their post-athletic careers hawking athletic gear and junk food – you can never have too much showtime.

 

 

Of particular annoyance to moiself  was how the athletes were introduced in too many certain venues, such as when entering the aquatics center or track and field stadium.  The booming voice from stadium PA system would announce name of the individual and/or team members competing in the next event, followed by the athlete(s) strutting through the entrance to the stadium field, pausing to perform flirty and/or self-aggrandizing versions of I’m-ready-for-my-selfie!/I’m-number-one! poses and gestures

Uh, hashtag, SpareMe.

Now, I don’t know exactly who is to blame for this – the host country’s Olympic organizing committee?  But isn’t this something that, even if it was “foisted” upon the athletes (“BTW, this is how we’re going to introduce you”) couldn’t they just have refused to go along with the peacock-ish preening and simply given a wave of acknowledgement to the cheering crowds?

So many of the entrances seemed to have been coordinated, as in choreographed, exhibitions.  I’m all for athletes   [4]   having fun in the moment, but the prancing and posing seemed anything but spontaneous.

 

 

I mentioned previously in this space about having watched the Olympics Opening Ceremony.  Full disclosure: I watched less than half of it – I mostly just saw the flotilla of athletes cruising down the Seine, followed by that mesmerizing metal horse – and missed the vocal performances and some of the other presentations that some people found controversial.  The closing ceremonies have always held little interest for me (bbbbooooooorrrrrring), and true to self, I once again didn’t watch them, although for a brief moment moiself  considered doing so.  My customary lack-of-interest was stoked when word was leaked that the Hollywood poster boy for refusing-to-age-gracefully-or-intelligently,    [5]   Tom Cruise, was going to be featured in a stunt symbolizing the passing of the Olympic flame to Los Angeles.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought(s) Of The Week     [6]

“In the end, I am just a guy wearing spandex that turns left really fast.”
( Canadian Olivier Jean,   [7]   short-track skater,
2010 Olympic Gold Medalist in the 500 meter relay )

“Curling is not a sport.
I called my grandmother and told her she could win a gold medal
because they have dusting in the Olympics now.”
( Charles Barkley,   [8]  American former basketball player and verbal raconteur )

 

 

*   *   *

Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I hated it when the NBC Olympic coverage team apparently thought it was equally exciting for viewers to watch celebrities watch an Olympic event –

* here’s Seth Rogan watching the Artistic Gymnastics Women’s All-Around Final!
* And Martha Stewert at the same event!
* Mick Jagger is at the fencing competition!
* See Spike Lee cheering for the US women’s water polo team!
* Bill Gates spotted at the Tennis Men’s Singles First Round match!
*wow – Elizabeth Banks, Judd Apatow, and Leslie Mann watch beach volleyball!
* Look, it’s Jason and Kylie Kelce at Women’s Rugby 7s!    [9]

–  as it was to watch the event itself.   [10]

 

 

*   *   *

May you not try to stop spiders (from anything);
May you be mistaken for a celebrity when watching a sporting event;
May you never challenge Charles Barkley’s grandmother to a dusting race;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] I have been finding a lot of spiders in the bathroom recently, but have not found a nest or remnant of egg sacks or any kind of entry point.

[2] “the premium daily treat.”

[3] This happened to us some twenty plus years ago.

[4] For anyone!

[5] which moiself  blames on, among other factors, Cruise’s combination of a Hollywood doctor’s plastic surgery expertise, and Scientology.

[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.  No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[7] I don’t actually know if Jean is a freethinker, but with a refreshing perspective like that, he probably is.

[8] Same with Barkley re his worldview status.  But he slams Christian conservatives re their bigotry, and that’s down by moiself.

[9] These are…”name” people?  How can I be impressed by their attendance when I don’t know (or care) who they are?  I remember a quip from comedian Jay Leno, something along the lines of, “You’re not a celebrity unless my mother knows who you are.”

[10] There were several times, when watching the NBC coverage (MH and I also had other coverage with different schedules and announcers, which is what we mostly watched) when action in a game or other event was missed when the cameras cut to show celebrities in the crowds.