no cure for the fever

the olympics have been on television non-stop. always on in the background, sometimes muted but mostly not. i cant tell if im sick of them or not. its like they are suffocating me. smothering me. i cant get anything done. i need my space but i cant escape. they are everywhere. competition on every screen on every television in every house and bar. i want to wish it away but the truth is i cant. i have to watch.

i tell myself: it only comes around 4 years. you wont have to watch after this week. i promise. only sport on will be just once a week after that, and it will be american football so you'll know the rules and not have to pay as much attention.

today while i was sitting at my desk and trying to think of which task to complete first, i turned to the tv to see just which sport was taking place. usually i dont have the tv on during the day but for this occasion, which comes every olympiad, as decreed by some unwritten law we all must adhere to, my tv is on twenty four hours a day.

but the olympics werent on it.

it was a cooking show hosted by Martha Stewart. they were baking cupcakes and Martha was smiling and there was a soft light behind her, revealing loose strands of her thin hair. first i puked a bit in my mouth, then i panicked. where were the olympics?

i scrambled for the remote and began frantically scrolling through the guide channel. where were they? what was i missing? what obscure sport was i not ignoring? hammer throw? equestrian riding? trampoline? please god dont let it be trampoline!

i got higher in the channels. higher than i'd ever been before. what are on these channels? who watches them? i was above HBO and the pay per view channels, higher than the weird educational channels and into the all infomercial channels that only old people go to. i got into the barren wasteland of wrestling package channels and eastern european news channels. still no olympics. where was it? i was freaking out!

then i saw it, on some strange extension of a news network i rarely watched. the XXX Olympics. i selected it and sat back.

ahhhhhh.

it was table tennis. USA vs. Hungary. USA was in the lead but i didnt even care who won. i was just happy i was there to see it.

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on a completely unrelated note. if you own the prince album, Sign o' the Times, play the song forever in my life. hypnotic drums and him singing a ballad over it. its my new anthem. enjoy.