Tag: olympics (Page 2 of 2)

Dear Rio,

Hi. How are you? Feel free not to answer that question. I’m fine.

Let’s get to the point, Rio: explain yourself. You failed to keep a pool clean enough for people to swim in, Rio. The world knew about your seas, which you have been dumping raw shit into for decades now, but this was a pool. Newly-constructed, in fact: an artificial body of water within a controllable environment, and you managed to fuck that up.

I mentioned my Uncle Arty before, Rio: he and my Aunt Barbara had a pool when we were all growing up in New Jersey, and that sucker was pristine. You could eat off my Uncle Arty’s pool. And, Rio, my Uncle Arty is a good man–raised four boys and sent them to college–but he’s not Einstein; if he could do it, then you can, too.

Failing that, perhaps you could have called the pool guy, Rio? Three out of every four vehicles on a South Florida highway at any given time is a pool guy’s pickup truck. There are also a lot of Brazilians in South Florida. Perhaps one is a pool guy, and you could have had him do the job as a favor, out of patriotism or something?

Did you forget to stop at the pool supply store? Was the bucket of chlorine too heavy and your shoulder hurt? Did the filter get clogged up with endangered tree frogs? Was the pump stolen? Did the Joker sneak in and poison the water? Was the Aquatic Center built on a graveyard with a shitty foundation that cracked and now there’s corpse-juice seeping up into the pools? Is voodoo, or whatever the Brazilian equivalent is, involved?

Help me understand, Rio. Help me understand how you fucked up something this unfuckupable. Please tell me the fact I’ve missed; otherwise, this small incident must be read as representative of mind-blowing incompetence of a depth and breadth never seen before. You drop the doohickey in the water, you add some stuff, you keep the filters clear, and you make sure the pump is working; there is a small bit of math involved, but it is not taxing.

It’s an indoor pool, so you don’t even need to skim leaves off the surface. Jesus, Rio.

Anyway, Rio, I hope it doesn’t come across like I’m rooting for disaster. I’m not; I’m rooting for you; there’s still time for a comeback. But you have to get your shit together, Rio. And then, when you have the shit all together, don’t throw it into the pool.

Sincerely,
Thoughts on the Dead

Some of these headlines are true, some of ’em aren’t: see if you can tell. (Obviously, you’ll be able to tell most of the time, but it’s still a fun premise.)

• Russian judo champion shoots mugger in face.
• South Korean pistol-shooter kills mugger with judo.
• Water in Rio rivers and oceans so dirty that ingesting three teaspoons will ensure infection.
• Brazilian teaspoons discovered to be poisonous.
• Local gangs recruit and train spider monkeys, give them guns.
• Australian athlete’s housing found to be constructed from nothing but Speedos and good intentions.
• British swim team’s suits stolen
• Jamaican hurdlers’ pants stolen.
• Spanish fencers stolen. (They’ll turn up.)
• Japanese gymnast racks up $5,000 bill playing Pokemon Go.
• Olympic Village flooded.
• Olympic Village on fire.
• Olympic Village evacuated due to terrorist threat, Vietnamese pole vaulter’s room robbed.
• IOC demands that no photos, GIFS, Vines, Snapchats, Instagram Moments, or Periscopes show the condition of the Village.
• IOC constructs Faraday cage over Olympic Village in an attempt to control media, but of course it doesn’t work and is stolen immediately.
• Australian swimmers are using snorkels. (In the pool. This one’s real, and let’s step outside the joke for a second and really think about this one. They’re in a pool. The YMCA can keep a pool clean, but the Rio Olympics have made it clear that dumping chlorine into a body of water is beyond their capabilities. My Uncle Arty had a pool when we were growing up, and he kept it clean. Maybe Rio should have called my Uncle Arty about this. What the fuck, Rio? I understood that your poverty and crime were problems that could not have been fully solved by the Olympics, but keeping the pool clean was doable. The Grateful Dead–in their wildest dreams–never approached levels of bush league like this.)
• Finnish Horse jumpers are using snorkels. (That’s a sex thing, though.)
• Canadian gymnastics coach robbed at knife point.
• Trindadian trampolinist robbed at machete edge.
• French kayaker hits submerged sofa, capsizes, eaten by piranha.
• Tennis venue runs out of food at 11 am.
• Velodrome runs out of food at 9am, and also they forgot to build the velodrome.
• All the sailboats have been stolen, every single one.

Also there’s this:

BLOCK: He’s been shocked to find there is no coffee for athletes in the village apartment buildings or at the sports venues.

NEMR: I asked. They said we are only limited to Coca-Cola products. So…

BLOCK: You’re kidding me.

NEMR: No. Yeah, that’s what they told us in the venue. – NPR, 8/4/16

And now I feel even better about my boycott of this shitshow. Prisoners of fucking war get coffee. If you’re watching, then enjoy yourself, but I don’t want to any more.

(Due to the Time Sheath throwing a tantrum, this post from August 21st, 2016, is being published today. Everyone here at Thoughts on the Dead sincerely regrets the inconvenience.)

• Terrible what happened to all those gymnasts.
• I’m sure Michael Phelps will turn up.
• Never saw a death squad in a velodrome before; it was incongruous.
• Right now, there’s a lot of stigma attached to Zika babies, but there’s going to be a shit-ton more real soon, so perhaps there will be campaigns for awareness and tolerance, and that is a good thing.
• Speaking of Zika: it mutated so fast, didn’t it?
• The rowing events were fun, until the arrival of the sharks made out of living sewage.
• They mutated fast, too, huh?
• Was it Day 10 when the shit sharks learned to walk on land and started running around the beach biting people with their mouths made out of doody?
• Bob Costas did not know what to say.
• I am glad that the Russians were not caught cheating, but I am sad that all of Brazil’s laboratories mysteriously burned to the ground; I do not think those things are related.
• The most shocking day of the Games had to be Day 6, when we all awoke to find the Aquatic Center had been stolen.
• Almost, but not precisely, exactly no tour buses were caught in the middle of a gun battle between rival gangs; that’s pretty good.
• While there was quite a bit of suspected cannibalism, there was no proven cannibalism; that’s really good.
• Carmelo Anthony was mugged by the Mayor of Rio on camera; that was not good at all.
• I’m glad the Kickstarter to fund the Closing Ceremonies succeeded.
• Let’s do this again in four years!

• Armed Dressage, which combines riding fancy horses while shooting arrows at stuff
• Frolf.
• Whipping Wet Nerf Footballs At a Shirtless Fat Kid Until He Cries.
• Lazer Tag. (They should absolutely play Lazer Tag in the Olympics, just to see how the Russians cheat at it. They would put tape on the sensors, and stick mirrors to themselves; it would be hilarious.)
• Naked Pole Guy Vault.
• Ancient Pentathlon. (Getting subjugated, inventing math, horse jumping, dying at age 40, mutton.)
• Medieval Pentathlon. (Burying children, dying at age 30, horse jumping, enduring a small ice age, spelling “medieval” correctly.)
• Future Pentathlon. (100 meter shazbot, robot horse jumping, 5-dimensional table tennis, , scalping mutant surface-dwellers, memes.)
• Anathlon. (No events.)
• Sand Polo. (The camels would not cooperate, and the swimmers had nothing to do.)
• Balloon Volleyball, which was played once in the 1960 Rome games; the first point of the first set of the first match of the first game (West Germany vs. USSR) is still being played today, despite neither of the countries existing any more and most of the players having died.
• Snorkelball. (It’s like European Handball, but snorkels are duct taped to the athletes’ faces, and the rules expressly permit jamming your thumb in opposing player’s snorkels to suffocate them. Olympic officials have been investigating for years whether or not this is a real sport, or just something an intern made up and inserted into the “Proposed Events” list because she was bored.)
• Goodminton. (Like badminton, but moral and helpful.)
• Fencing. (Not with swords. The other kind.)
• Motorboating. (Not with boats. The other kind.)
• Whale Hunting.
• 100m Settlers of Cataan.
• Dildo Javelin. (NBC is begging the IOC to make this an official event; in slow-motion, it’s possibly the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. More so if you put the right music under it, such as the Theme from Chariots of Fire.)
• Emotional Hurdles.
• Bocce. (Discontinued after someone kept pooping on the court.)
• Pokemon Go.
• 4×400 Human Centipede.