Bad News

"We shaved our heads and disguised our gender so as not to affect the readings."

The results are in: Greenpeace workers report that large areas of the Russian wilderness have become digital. A spokesperson: "And the biggest problem is that we really don't know what it means, or who to blame. And also, I suppose it would help if we knew how to work this equipment. Does it look like I'm holding this right? Look at that, it's been reading 1.22 since I took it out of the box."


And speaking of the countryside, I caught some of the opening Olympic ceremony. It looked like the good people were in harmony with the lambs and grass... but then the men in the top hats came and everything got Dickensian. The people were still there but their attentions had turned from perching butterflies on their pinkie fingers to working large levers to turn useless gears for the top hat crowd. Obviously this was the one percent. I wouldn't have been surprised to see them pull clubs from their waistcoats and set to pummeling the hoi polloi. "For sport good sir, We do it in jest!"

There's a bit of Ché's t-shirt in all that. Here you've got this huge organization enforcing their trademark, negotiating rights and licensing, floating bonds, signing contracts... And then they farm out the creative control to Joseph Stalin. (ok, not Stalin, I heard it was the director of Slum Dog Millionaire, but I don't know who he is and am too lazy to consult wikipedia) I'm sure it's all harmless. Revolutionaries don't watch opening ceremonies, or care what rich directors have to prove. "Look, I have an assistant whose only job is to fetch scented water with ice flown in from a glacier, but I know the people. Hell, I feel their pain, in theory."

So anyway, I'm going to go downstairs and run the tivo backwards to bring back the idyllic countryside. I want to see if I can spot the plague or the cholera. Maybe I just missed it.

Let the games begin.