Well the Olympics are drawing to a close. Thank God for that. Maybe we'll get some decent shows back on TV - although Ten is making us suffer through 6 solid nights of Australian Idol next week.
Australia has - let's face it - not done as well as may have been hoped this Olympics. This can be exemplified by our cycling team: in Athens they won five gold; in Beijing they've managed one silver. Fingers of blame are already being pointed - at the Federal treasury. "We need more funding!" goes the cry from John Coates on down. Instead of admitting that maybe we're a bit crap these days, the poor workman blames his tools and wants more money. Well, maybe we could ask Stephanie Rice to chip in some of her endorsement dollars? Me, I'd like to see a Nobel prize winning tally, and demands for more funds to help Australia excel at winning the things.
EDIT, Monday: The SMH makes this point beautifully in this piece.
So what about the suprise of the games - Great Britain? I remember watching Clive James, sometime in the Nineties, ask the comedian Victoria Adams why Britain did so poorly in international sporting competitions. She replied, "I think it's because we can't be arsed, really". It seemed fitting. Britain leads the world in producing superior comedy shows and confectionery, and as I'm a big fan of comedy and sweets but have little time for sports, it was enough achievment to give to the world. But no. Now they want sporting achievement too. As long as they don't let the standard of Cadbury Dairy Milk buttons and BBC sitcoms slip, then that's fine, but it does seem like a great nation is selling out it's main legacy.
(Incidentally, why are English sweets so much better than American candy? Since living in Sydney, where shops selling foreign confectionery abound, I've taken the opportunity to try all the products I've read about my whole life but have never sampled. And whilst English chocolate makes me weep with joy, American candy is invariably disappointing, meagre, and has no flavour at all whilst still tasting bad. I had my first Tootsie roll the other day, and would rather give an elephant a rim job than go through that again).
So now it's Australians who can't be arsed. Forget what I said here, we're the fattest and laziest nation on Earth. Stand up and be proud Australia, if you can put down the pie, drag yourself of the Jason recliner, and overcome the wheezing.
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