As I type, the tiny little whores are finishing up their uneven bars competition, and Nastia is stalking around looking like someone took a dump in her hair, probably rightfully so, given the inanity of the minutae involved in Olympics scoring, which once again makes me want to erupt into a ridiculous rant about non-objective Olympic events, and which also makes my wife sigh and wander distractedly over to the whiskey bottle.

Every year I tell myself I won't watch the Olympics. Every year it's a stupid lie to myself; I always watch. What the hell do you do with shit like gymnastics? It's not like Michael Phelps, where the question is easy: who got to the end of the race the fastest? It's not like ping-pong or volleyball where it's: who scored the winning points first? With gymnastics and so many other sports, it's: who was more awesome? Which is obviously where it gets sticky and fraught with all kinds of nonsense, and where I start to go crazy.

I curse the Olympics even as I watch. What other bizarre pageantry-laden event could actually find me agreeing with that foaming, manic werewolf Bela Karolyi as he hollers thickly about the laughably underaged Chinese entrants? GO, BELA! I think to myself. Then I remember: He is a raving madman. What's wrong with you? Indeed.

What other international circus of madness could possibly persuade me to watch--as I did earlier today--something as comprehensively stultifying as a rowing competition? Not to take anything away from those fine competitors, but who wants to watch rowing? If it's all about a bunch of people rhythmically pistoning away for ten minutes and grunting with effort, I say let's see some Olympic group masturbation. In 2012, we can make it happen: ten-man Come on A Cracker. Non-medalists have to eat the cracker.

I was talking with the wife about this a little bit, and I guess here's what gets me about the Olympics, maybe what some would call the Olympic Spirit^TM. It's this: say you're an Olympic-class swimmer; say you're from Greece, or Georgia, or Cyprus. Wherever. Repeat that to yourself for a moment: you're Olympic-class. You can kick everyone's ass you know, everyone in your own country. Hell, you can kick the ass of everyone in the world except for maybe a dozen other people. This is how good you are: you're better at what you do than everyone in the world except for a vanishing fraction of a number of people. You're essentially a superhero when it comes to this one thing, this one exceedingly specialized talent that you've spent years and years honing to perfection. Again: hardly anyone on the planet is even remotely as good as you at this thing you do. In this example, swimming.

So there you are. Nobody else in the three or five or ten million of your home country's populace can touch you in the pool. Literally: you'd just fucking swim away from them while they paddled like drowning dogs in a notional game of Marco Polo. You secretly think to yourself: We should make Marco Polo an Olympic event, because I would kick everyone's asses. Frankly, you're ridiculous.

And so, of course, you go to the Olympics. You travel halfway across the goddamn fucking world, because in your insane, wildly circumscribed, strange world, you're practically untouchable. A dozen people can do what you do, and that is: swim like a crazy motherfucker with a turbine lodged up your ass. And you look over and see Michael Phelps. And you realize: you are dead.

So here's what it's come to. After years--decades?--of busting your ass, you're about to be utterly demolished by some goddamn freak who eats nineteen dead dogs before he even gets out of bed; this bloody mutant who looks like his hands were grown in a vat; some infuriating yokel whose heart vomits oxygenated blood into his system like Chris Holmes after a distillery tour.

Realize that barring something like a freak stroke or a lightning strike that there is nothing you can do about this. All you can really do is stare hopelessly at this gormless nincompoop and know despair. You're going to get your ass handed to you, probably on a tarnished platter, maybe with a rancid maraschino cherry lodged in the asshole if Phelps is feeling nice. After all this, all you can do is maybe hope to be in the same frame as him as he trounces the fields, and probably not, since you're from Cyprus after all, and so are not worthy of any of NBC's precious film. You're about to be carved up badly; everyone knows this. This is what you've worked for: ignominy.

What do you do? Well, you get in the fucking pool, don't you? Hey, everyone loves a Cinderella story, right? It could be you! Right?

Nah. It's not going to be you. You get into the pool anyway. You bust your fucking ass, too--it's amazing, really: you swim the meet of your life. You get demolished, of course. It isn't even close. Nobody is surprised. In fact, nobody cares about you at all. Nobody even mentions your name.

Years you spent doing this. You're one of the best in the world. Nobody cares. You're a footnote at best. You're done, by the way; your event is over. You're peeling off sheets of dead, chlorine-toxic skin while Phelps is over there getting sucked off by some NBC flack, his eyes pinwheeling goonishly in his sockets; later, he'll fuck a bunch of Swedish racewalking entrants while eating a pizza.

You might get to say hi to LeBron James, maybe. A year from now--no, a week--, you'll be forgotten. Were you even remembered? You don't know. Four years later, hey . . . why not try again?

I love you for doing this.