I get Olympic fever each time. If I could tape my eyelids open Tom & Jerry style, I would. You do remember that cat and mouse cartoon from the early 80s, don’t you? Anyhow, a few things came to my mind while I was watching the sports orgy we call the Olympiad.

First of all… Misty May. This last week her name was the third most searched for phase on search engines. I’m guessing everyone was trying to find out if she’s a lesbian or not. If I was a bettin’ man, I’d say yes.

I mean, did you see that gold medal celebration? That straddle hug in the sand followed by that ass slap had a soft-core, direct-to-DVD porn style quality to it. Wonderfully delicious, I tell you. The whole week of Women’s Beach Volleyball, pictures of those skimpy suits dominated Yahoo! News’s Most Popular listing.

But the part I really enjoyed was watching the sports that only get TV time once every four years. I didn’t care about the men’s basketball Dream Team, even when Haiti nearly beat them. I can watch basketball 35 weeks a year. But you only get to see trampoline gymnastics at the Olympics. Yes, trampoline gymnastics. People on trampolines, jumping 40 feet in the air with a high potential to wipe out–just the type of sport I like to watch. I think the more spectacular the wipe out the more bonus points you should get.

I did feel though, that the idea behind the Silver medal is flawed. For many sports, the person who looses the Gold medal match gets the Silver. And another match gives the Bronze to a winner. In other words, the Silver medal is the loser’s medal. The person who wins the Bronze gets to tell their grandkids about how they trained hard, got to the Olympics, and beat their opponent to win the Bronze. The person with the Silver gets to tell their grandkids they got it when Sparky McToot of Crapistan beat his ass in Greco Roman Wrestling.

Here is how to resolve it. The loser of the Gold Medal match competes in another match for the Silver. Whoever loses the Silver Medal match competes for the Bronze. That would ensure each medal goes to a winner, not a looser. Yes it means more matches, but it’s better for everyone. We get to see more events, and McDonald’s get the chance to slap more logos on the screen.

Now that I’ve come down from my Olympic high, I can get ready for my next favorite sport–the political convention.

The Secret Service is investigating the online posting of personal information about Republication National Convention delegates. The probe is focused on anonymous posts to a Web site operated by the Independent Media Center, self-described as “a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate and passionate tellings of the truth.”

The most interesting part of this ‘investigation’ is that the information posted is publicly available. So, to review, the Secret Service is investigating the public dissemination of publicly available information. The rationale behind this inquiry is that the posting of this information could subject the delegates to harassment, acts of violence, or identity theft.

Apparently, the people who plan such acts are motivated enough to harass delegates, commit violent acts, and steal identities, but just a bit too lazy to actually seek out the information on their own. So, really, the Secret Service is doing us a favor by investigating the enablers of terrorist slackers who would never have the attention span to actually watch the delegates’ faces plastered across television screens.

As I walked into the theatre, I didn’t expect much. Maybe 90 minutes of a campy horror film that builds suspense here and there, paints a few violently bloody deaths, and finishes with the possibility of another film. It’s the same thing I’d expect from a WWE pay-per-view or a modern day “Godzilla versus Janet Reno” flick. Sadly, “Alien versus Predator” failed to deliver on even these most basic horror film requirements.

Instead of creating suspense around humans trapped in an ancient pyramid 2000 feet under Antartica amidst a war between Predators and Aliens, Director Paul W.S. Anderson and studio execs delivered a buddy movie. Seriously. There was even a moment when I expected to see a slow-motion, hand-holding shot. Plus, Anderson and his cronies sliced and diced so much that the virtually blood-free, PG-13-rated horror film (yes, that is an oxymoron) offered only one or two clear, quick-cut shots of dimly lit Predator on Alien smackdown.

There’s none of the suspense from “Alien,” nor any of the survival against-the-odds thrills from “Predator.” And there aren’t nearly enough Predator on Alien, jumbo-sized cans of open whup ass. This should’ve had the epic feeling of Jet Li taking on Bruce Lee. Instead, it seemed a bit like Michael Jackson fighting Boy George for an eyebrow pencil. Sure, there was some decent make-up, but I’d much rather spend the afternoon setting myself on fire.

One and one-half Llamas (out of four).

My wife’s cousins, both veterinarians, drove to c-bus and spent the weekend with us. It was fun to have some houseguests as I had an excuse to stock up on some extra beer.

But I learned something interesting. I asked them if there was evidence that pet’s of smokers have any higher heath problems. They said that there was not yet definitive proof in dogs, but that there was evidence that cats that live with smokers do have a higher rate of lung problems, including cancer.

Then I wondered. People can be pretty fanatical about their pets, treating them better than their own human children. And I wondered how many smokers, if they knew what my cousin-in-law told me, would stop smoking right away even thought they probably didn’t consider stopping for the health of their own family members. I bet there are more than a few smokers out there like that.

Do the Olympics still matter to Americans? Or do we need a Cold War enemy to make the events mean more than just being faster and stronger? Have we become so inundated with year-round athletics that the Olympics seem no more important than the World Championships? Are there not one or two athletes that the nation can adopt, like Dan and Dave, Carl Lewis, or the original Dream Team? Or is there another reason so few seem to attend and even watch the Olympics?

I don’t know the true reason or reasons, but I felt that same apathy and disinterest—until I started watching. When I saw the American softball team beat Canada with the mercy rule, I got excited. And I don’t care much for softball. When I saw some skinny, 19-year-old kid from Turkey set an Olympic and Junior World record in weight-lifting, I couldn’t wait to see the next event.

The joy and heartache Olympic athletes undergo is contagious. And I’m glad I’ve started watching. I’ll never see the Men’s 50M Rifle winner after the games conclude. The Women’s Water Polo team will never be on TV again. But right now, while the Olympics are on, I enjoy seeing athletes who, for the most part, aren’t overpaid or coddled. People who truly have a passion for what they doing and strive to be the best, no matter the circumstances.

So, maybe the ad I’ve seen during The Games is true. When people say athletes shouldn’t be role models, maybe they’re talking about the wrong athletes.

With new voting machines coming online in more and more states, questions arise about how these machines work and if our votes are safe.

While slightly alarmist in nature, Ronnie Dugger’s article, How They Could Steal the Election This Time, does raise some very good points about the technology behind the machines, and questions why not even basic error checking was included.

But articles such as this miss the BIG question: Did Florida 2000 ruin our belief in the validity of our voting system?

Now that Alan Keyes and the Illinois GOP have openly embraced insincerity when it comes to criticizing Democrats, will they perform even more hypocritical flip-flops in the future? I for one can’t wait until a couple of high-ranking Republicans decide to embrace gay marriage and then stain a couple of dresses in the Oval Office. That’d be almost as entertaining as a Bobby Brown/Whitney Houston reality show. Someone call UPN. This has to happen.

It is about time that the general media is beginning to question these so-called terrorist alerts. Up till this point, only Michael Moore and us llamas seemed to openly question if they were necessary and if they were actually politically motivated.

MSNBC and Newsweek are finally asking questions. But we asked before the democratic national convention.

Right after Kerry’s much anticipated announcement that Edwards would be his running mate, Ridge quickly made a terror alert. But Ridge could offer nothing: no dates; no times, no idea of what Bin Ladin might try to do, or where he might try to do it. So it’s a short putt to say it was to get Kerry and Edwards out of the spotlight.

Then it came again. As the democratic convention winds down and the Jonh’s head out on a 21 state campaign swing with full media coverage. Then suddenly, Ridge offers a “new” terror alert. The problem was that it wasn’t new at all – the information it was based on was nearly 4 years old, dating from before 9/11.

Now I have to ask the question, who are the terrorist? Who is trying to keep the American people in a state of fear? Karl Rove’s patsy, Tom Ridge.

These are the same people that said Bill Clinton was trying to deflect attention away from the blue dress when he ordered a bombing of Kosovo to end the ethnic genocide taking place there.

Now, one can only speculate what they will do in October to manipulate your vote.

Vote fer me or I’m stickin this where the sun don’t shine. Got dat, par’ner?

Though I haven’t officially started teaching yet, I have been living on the bucolic campus for nearly a month now. Sure, it’s summer and there aren’t any kids or even a daily routine, but I feel more insulated from the world. Like many people who work in a technological field (as I did previously), I was simply inundated with information and news. Like some node on a ganglia of desk-driving, sedentary leaches I absorbed the news, software releases, security reports and other digital detritus of the modern world. But now I am disconnected and reveling in my new idyllic environs and I am wondering if it’s some choice I made unconsciously or am I naturally and healthily withdrawing from the intoxicating ether.

It’s not that I don’t have the means to acquire the information. Certainly as much as before, I have high-speed internet access, 80 channels of digital TV, and all the radio I care to listen to, but I find myself not needing those things as much. I just don’t feel the need to be as up-to-date on the latest releases of my favorite FTP client anymore. I don’t need to know just what a piece of ignorant white trash Pfc. England is. While the cable may be blaring and my email constantly checking itself, I could be immersed, but I’m not.

It’s not that I don’t have the time. That may be the case in a week or so when the students arrive, but now my days are as free as they have ever been, but I seem to be filling them with things like walks with my dog and watching the downstairs neighbors children play on the playground outside my window. With only a little planning to do each day, I could sit and absorb the 24-hour news channels while I surf the backwaters of the web yearning to find that perfect piece of open-source software, but I don’t.

I think it comes down to my finally finding the thing that can fully occupy my mind: teaching. I simply can’t stop thinking about lesson plans and classroom layouts, writing exercises and vocabulary quizzes. It is beginning to define me and my lifestyle and I think that I am perfectly OK with that. So, I guess it’s a gentle combination of not needing to fill my brain with the endless flow of information because I am full enraptured with the subject at hand and some subconscious switchover of my internal wiring to be interested in all the new opportunities that are ahead of me now.

The truly interesting twist is that I am now feeling that pull of wanting to use and create technology instead of simply consuming it. I want to program applications, think of solutions, and refine processes instead of installing some new bauble to toy with. I want to adapt the technology around me to the open doors I am faced with in the hopes that I can create useful and thoughtful things. Perhaps that’s the real truth of it. Have I evolved to some higher level of techie? Have I made the jump from an implementer of others’ creations to some sort of creator? The teacher within seems to be coming out ready to create and mold rather than consume and regurgitate. Whatever it is, I’m liking it.

This post brought to you by insomnia.