By Jingo

I have a hard time with the Olympics. Some of it is just fucken cool. But it's painfully obvious that, while most of the athletes are there for the best of reasons sincere (if nationalistic), the thing is a boondoggle that's not of any real value to improving the world condition.

Unfortunately, so's the World Cup. So suck it. Bring on my bread and circuses.

There are some things that are self-evident. One is that my local nation is better than yours. It just is. Especially, in this season, if you're my friend from Canada, for whom I shall not make up a name, so that when Purple sends him this post through the Faceybookz in an obvious effort to discredit me and Obamacare, I can pretend that I have lots of friends from Canada and it's not actually about him.

Another piece of self-evidentia is that even though my local nation is better than yours, especially if yours is Canada, other nations are not to be disrespected (unless they're Canada). For example, the skip of the British womens' curling team is pretty hot, as are a number of Russian women hockey players, some Italian skater chick I happened to notice because Ilse is obsessed with figure skating in all its forms (a million deaths are not enough for Porcelain Face) in addition to unicorns and the Olympics in general, and, also according to Ilse, Henrik Lundqvist and some guy on the Norwegian mens' curling team. Note the absence of anything Canadian on my Hot List. And hers. I said note it, bitchez.

By the way, if you're concerned that I'm not getting to the point, don't be. There isn't one.

Specifically not to be disrespected: the Russians. You wouldn't know it from watching the endless American rainbow fairy tale that is NBC's coverage of these Olympics (and every Olympics), which spent the entire opening ceremonies telling us how Russia equals Soviets equals bad and brutal and horrible and Stalin, and did we by the way mention Stalin? Of course, they did a really shitty job of reconciling that to guys in spiked coal-scuttle helmets who torment Russians, as well as reconciling math concerning a certain major conflict between said guys and Russians. Nor would you know it from the world journo community, which appears to be convinced that Russians are shitting in its water and feeding it cockroach borscht.

I thought the Russians did a really cool pageant about their history and culture. Was it an obscene waste of money? Of course it was. See Rule One. But their pageant was every bit as awesome as every other country's Olympic opening pageant, and a damn sight better and more entertaining than the pasty white (and Anglo) pageants thrown by the last two pasty white (and Anglo, despite the vague mists of froggification and First Nationsization that Vancouver 2012 tried to pimp, and you are totally not getting a break from me at all in this post, you fucking Canadian fucks) nations to throw such galas.

Full disclosure: Tschaikovsky innately trumps anything Anglo. Suck it, we lose.

I've been fascinated by the Winter Olympics since I was a kid. Especially the hockey, which was my first true sports love. So I have this jingoism problem. You see, in a hockey sense, I really, really hate some other countries that, on the face of it, probably don't deserve it. I'm looking at you, Sweden. And you, Finland. The very notion of disliking Sweden or Finland for any reasons beyond spoiled fish in skunk mustard sauce or their craven national behaviors in the aforementioned major conflict should be a pretty serious clue that I have a serious need for antipsychotics here (and in case you don't know: Sweden was a neutral that profited from sales of war materiel to both sides, while Finland sided with the Germans, because they were terrified of the Soviets, until the Soviets kicked their asses and made them change sides).

Subsequent Olympics have only exacerbated the problem. When Vladislav Tretiak was revealed as one of the torch-lighters in Sochi, I recognized him and almost involuntarily hissed, to Ilse's great puzzlement (fucking GenXers, and fuck also my generation's upbringing with hammers and sickles populating our duck-and-cover dreams). I cursed vividly when I saw today that the Czechs (minus the Slovaks) will be the United States' opponent in the quarters. And you will have no trouble guessing who I detest first and best among hockey nations.

This is difficult, because who I detest second and second-best among mens' hockey nations this time around is us. There are maybe 6 guys on the US Olympic hockey team who don't make me want to slit my own throat in disgust. But my country's laundry is what it is. Contrast Sweden, whose hockey team I've hated since I was about 7; it includes three of my favorite Olympians (Backstrom, Marcus Johansson, and the aforementioned suave, debonair, and blindingly awesome King Henrik Lundqvist, if you're curious).

It gets worse. Of course I despise the Canadian mens' team. But I reserve the most spittle for their womens' team, who fundamentally cheated to beat the US women in group play (which doesn't matter--the final will be US-Canada). It appears I have a bit of a problem with Canadian women playing goal-scoring sports. But I'll just try to stick to nationalism here without hauling out the misogynist artillery.

Friend Jim has done his best to provide fine and healthy counsel on my larger sports hate problem (but ask him about Duke). My jingoism transcends even my routine homerism. Therein, of course, lies the rub when I try to make sense of the Olympics. Best for me to just eat the bread and roll with the circus, I think. And to play Civ V or FM when my television is showing Ilse her tiny ice ballerinas.

France 1-2 Sweden

Gratz to Sweden for hanging tough after going down to 10 players after the adorable but otherwise despicable Josefine Oqvist fouled the crap out of Sonia Bompastor after a clean and successful challenge, then tried to kick her in the head after Bompastor tried to get Oqvist's pudgy little Nordic body off of hers. The Swedish players' reaction was admirable--they went up a goal on the porous French defense. The Swedish fans' reaction was predictably shitty, jeering and whistling every time the blameless Bompastor--who intelligently took advantage of the whiny Oqvist's tendency to lose her shit over small stuff--touched or approached the ball. It's not surprising, really--when you think about it, it's a nation of self-serving assholes, possibly even more so than our own, and it's not really any wonder that their national teams (hockey and soccer) are bags of brutish, abusive, cheating shit. This was highlighted by the fans' reaction to Oqvist's perfectly correct dismissal, while the American referee Kari Seitz--who has been uneven throughout the tournament--allowed Sweden two obvious penalty handballs during the course of the game, and allowed the Swedes to break Louisa Necib's knee on a vicious challenge with no foul called. Sorry, folks, merely getting the ball does not make knee-to-knee contact okay, even if it's incidental to the challenge, and especially when the challenger is inserting a foot and leg between the ballholder's legs.

You can rightly say a lot about France as a nation of cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and that's fair. I like their food, I think some of their women are adorable, and I think that their national character is shit. Of course, I love their womens' football team. Go figure.

Now let's turn to the unaccountably more reputable Sweden. During the war that counted, the Swedes managed to retain their independence and remain unoccupied in their zeal to outcollaborate the French and supply the Germans with the wherewithal to imperialize the world, while making much hay out of their humanitarian concern for the Jews, of which they saved many thousands while supplying the Nazis with strategic materiel and denying the Allies much-needed support in Scandinavia out of concern for their own profit-engorged skins. So, y'know, fuck Sweden.

But serious congratulations to them nonetheless--it's not easy to get a winning goal after your team has taken a red card, and Marie Hammarstrom's winner was indisputably lovely. That the Swedes couldn't get a winning goal against the French before that is a bit of a mystery--once again, the French couldn't get it together when it counted, though players other than Bompastor showed up for a change (Elodie Thomis was outstanding, and Elise Bussaglia has howitzers for feet--both feet). Sadly for France, none of them, save Bompastor, was in defense--Laura Georges was wretched in the center for the second straight game, and Corine Franco made me wonder what the fuck the big deal was about her being too injured to play in the Cup up until this game. The downturn in Swedish attacking play against Japan and France is a bit odd, but unlike in the Japan game, they managed just enough this time, and under far more adverse technical circumstances.

So congratulations, Sweden, well done, and fuck you.

Fuck you also: Kate Markgraf, who is remarkably dimwitted for a former national team player, and Adrian Healey, who shows with each broadcast why the appallingly horrible Ian Darke is still the right choice (given the available pool) for ESPN's first string during this event. Your paired ignorant logorrhea made an otherwise interesting game--even one involving the Swedes, who I actually despise even more than the fucking Germans--well nigh unbearable. Fuck you.

National Pride

Ethnologically speaking, I am a mutt. My great-grandparents were German, German, German, German, Welsh, Scottish, English, and German (there are rumors of an Irish person in the woodpile immediately preceding, but we discount them). I've found stereotypical things to like about all of my varied ancestries. Scotch whiskey, for instance, and a pathological need to make trains run on time, sometimes by herding them together and shouting at them, if need be. Likewise, my penchant for popping off cap-and-ball firepower at wogs hardly makes me proud.

To the extent I've any nationalist sentiment, I try to direct it toward the country my forebears adopted in stages over the course of the 19th Century, to the extent that doesn't conflict with fundamental human and pacifist impulses. While I've no sympathy for love it or leave it, I'd rather be here, all told, than elsewhere, particularly if elsewhere is a place of crushing poverty or periodic wars against the Rus, the Tatars, or the (shudder) Gauls.

But I'm fond of the places from which my people came (England excepted--our favorite family toast on the paternal side is "Up the Queen"), and Wales is no exception. Given my dualism about nationalism, imagine my delight when I encountered this little number about the Wales national football team, which apparently doesn't know its own national anthem.

"We have been given the Welsh version and the phonetic version. The lady who is singing the national anthem this Saturday gave us a lesson. We all had to get up and sing it on Sunday night."

An English-born Welsh team player whose name probably doesn't matter

Funny bits abound. For instance, "the lady" in question is Miss Wales. Who's singing the national anthem at Wales' upcoming match against England.

I can tell you that the English anthem is easy--we stole it and called it My Country 'Tis of Thee, and good on us. Germany's anthem is officially called Song of the Germans, but any fool knows it is, as it has always been, Deutschland Uber Alles. I've no idea what Scotland's national anthem is, but I'm pretty sure it tracks closely with my present masthead (yeah, I know, you didn't notice).

So I've some empathy for these English-born gits who don't know the anthem of the country they've flocked to, by birthright, for soccer succor because they couldn't make the English team. Welsh is, after all, a funny language, the most dominant letters being "l" and "y", each of them often doubled. I've got family who are sorta into the Welsh thing, and I've no clue how to pronounce "Gwegllyyllanfairgyygwychll," although from the available clues it appears that it might sound something like "Up the Queen."

Yes, I've decided to post more often, even when I don't really have something to say. Love it or...well, don't.