See how deep the rabbit hole goes .....

http://stochasticreview.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/jokes-for-capitalist-world-crisis.html

So in an earlier post I speculated about the meaning behind Macdonald's choice of 'Everybody wants to Rule the World' as the backing music for their Olympic advert. However, even more worrying information had recently come to light as I inspected this adorable video of Mo Farah and Usain Bolt celebrating their victory together.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19229542

So we now have two extremely recognisable athletes making Mo's recognisable victory sign. Which, to a suspicious and slightly unhinged mind, looks a little bit like the trademark 'M' of MacDonald's. Britons across the country are now associating that sign (and the food chain that spawned it) with the emotion of watching Mo storm home to his second gold medal.

Coincidence? I think not. Those sneaky corporate dogs.

Olympics come to an end

So the Olympics will be wrapped up this weekend. I must confess that I had difficulty remaining interested for the whole two weeks despite a lot of initial enthusiasm. However, I'm very proud of our model tally. Coming a solid third is a distinct success for a tiny island off the coast of Europe. My uncle who lives in Hamburg says the Germans are spitting mad about British success and I can see why. Economically, politically, culturally there seems to be little special about us but we can still pull off a victory like this. [Ends patriotic gushing].

Also Bristol balloon fiesta this weekend. Anyone in the West Country should definitely come along to watch - it's always a great show!

[Edit] - And what a victory for Mo Farah this evening! His pacing was dynamite.

[Edit, Edit] - What this Olympic needed to sum it all up was a heavy weight Ukrainian boxer from Simferopol doing a celebratory Cossack dance around the ring. Thank you very much, Oleksandr Usyk!

Don't feed the Orcs

http://www.sbnation.com/london-olympics-2012/2012/7/28/3197979/boring-olympic-opening-ceremony-should-bar-london-from-hosting-again

Wow, this seems to have provoked a response! An American journalist takes the Olympic ceremony apart piece by piece and says what he thought about it. I wouldn't comment on this one if you paid me but I would really like to frame the comments section. An amazing amount of raw hostility condensed into a single thread (and with a much higher literacy than most Youtube comment threads!).

First golds for Team GB

Glad to see some golds for GB today. I've not really been following it, despite having a generally unproductive day of trying to work on my dissertation. However, I did see the men's rowing final. That was a really good race - I was jumping up and down when Britain pulled ahead of Germany but it wasn't meant to be. Still it could have been worse, we got the bronze and a lot of boats were catching up with us by the end.

I hope this means we can forget about the 'Chinese swimmer doping' story now. If that had happened to a British athlete we would have been tearing up the carpet and foaming at the mouth. People do beat their personal bests and there wasn't a shred of evidence that anything untoward had gone on. The Chinese athletes are under just as strict a testing regime as anyone else and they are putting on one hell of a show so far.

Still, what can you expect when you have that many news-hungry Journalists cooped up in one city. I'm just glad they're still finding time to cover Syria and haven't sidelined foreign news entirely.

First day of the Olympics

Bit of a disappointment about the cycling, eh? I was quite amused by the commentators take on it though. They were trying to push the idea that the other countries strategy was to team up on Britain even though Spain were leading. Fair enough. Maybe they were. But it isn't in the rule book that teams have to stick to a standard strategy. If other countries did decide to marginalize Britain it was their choice to make. For Colombia, Kazakhstan and Norway it was a strategy that reaped rewards.

As for that bloody interviewer. If somebody asked me, 'So everybody was against Britain today weren't they?', after I'd won an exhausting cycling race I'd probably react with a similar level of incredulity to that poor Kazakh cyclist.

Olympic gag reel

I rather enjoyed it! Being Bristol-born it was nice to see Isambard Kingdom Brunel play such a big part in the proceedings. That even got a cheer from the mysteriously dull crowd at Millenium square. However, rather than having him quote Shakespeare I think one of his own quotations would have better summed up the proceedings: "Everyone around me seems mad, stark raving mad. The only course for a sane man is to keep out of the way and stay quiet." (NB Highly unreliable - can't find it on the Internet and don't remember my original source).

Glastonbury Tor turning into the Dark Satanic Mills was evocative if mawkish. I did like the treatment of the other kingdoms of the Isles too. They each got their own spiel before the event started (ending with a rugby victory? Really? Had none of the organisers heard of the Highland Games? Hurling? Gaelic football?). However, they were then forgotten in the highly suspect whizz through British history which seemed to bounce from 1918-1945-1964 with nary a hitch and no thought for inconvenient details like decolonisation or the secession of the Republic of Ireland.

Still in the end the Chinese Olympics had set a high standard for mass organisation. There was no way we could compete with that so nice to see something that was silly, eccentric and had Mr Bean in it. It certainly summed up Britain better than a lot of ceremonies might have.