CHINESE TAKE OUT

Sorry for the lack of posting last week Readers.  I can't say I have a good excuse, but you should probably know I'm using my puppy dog eyes, so really, how could you stay mad at me? 

That being said, I do feel much more energetic after the long weekend and plan a full posting schedule this week. Still, I probably shouldn't to commit to anything, not because I'm afraid of commitment, I believe that's currently in the 'debatable' category, but because a wise man, I think it was Schopenhauer, said, "your ego should never write checks your body can't cash". Maybe not, I tend to get my Nineteenth century German philosophers and 80's movie stars confused all the time. You'd be shocked how many times I mistook Hegel and his dialectics for the German terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Sorry Georg Wilhelm!

Anyway, I missed Valentine's Day and the start of the Olympics, two topics ripe for abuse and that kind of saddens me. I'll leave Valentine's Day alone for now because I'm still in shock that in Japan women are expected to give men chocolate and receive nothing in return.  I know Japan's been taking a lot of crap lately, what with Toyota's accidentally setting land speed records left, right and tree, but I think we need to acknowledge their ingenuity for a moment.  Sure, they eventually created a holiday on which men have reciprocate a month later, but it took over forty years for it to catch on. The best we could do was deny women voting rights for 144 years, how did that save me any money?

What? Too soon?

Speaking of things that come to soon, I don't think I ever realized how young most Olympians are until this year. I don't mean to say that it makes anything they do more impressive, I still have no idea why cross country skiing and target practice were combined.  It's like a bad infomercial product - it's a toothbrush and a caulker! - it's just now I kind of feel bad for inventing a game where you win by picking the athlete who falls, crashes, or otherwise humiliates themselves most (By the way if you want the rules feel free to ask me in the comments section. It makes figure skating surprisingly watchable). Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the Games, now that my conscience has sucked the freude from their schaden, is listening to the announcers sing the praises of foreign nations training regimens, in particular, China. I was watching the pairs figure skating last night (double the amount of falls), when I heard the announcer wax on (wax off!) about how dedicated the Chinese pair was to their training, whilst apparently forgetting about the whole Communism/child abuse/human rights violations thing.  The putative gold medal favorites, he told the story of how they (were) moved out of their homes when they were children, I think he said 8 years old but I can't confirm it right now (Knowledge drop: If you type Chinese and Zhang into the google search box, you don't narrow the field all that much).  Anyway they were both living in these special athlete dorms (one for boys one for girls) when they met and got paired up.  Eventually they got married and here's the kicker, they still live in the same dorms.  The announcer, I imagine China owns his home loan, was trying so hard to play this up as a positive, went so far as to say, "Zhang and Zhang are among the most dedicated athletes at the Games, they're a married couple, but to further their success they still live in the athlete dorms in China, only seeing each other at meal times and during training."  Of course, now that Mr. Zhang fell, I doubt she'll be seeing him at all.  I'd like to see him spin that in 4 years. "Zhang and Zhang are skating for China, not to be confused with the Zhang and Zhang from Vancouver 2010.  After Zhang's fall, the Chinese goverment executed her husband  in order to pair her with a more competent skater, what dedication!"

P.S. Yes, I realize that I gave Zhang's new husband her surname.  You wanna make something of it?