Confession of an innocuous mind: this trip notice really should have been posted last week. Would you believe me if I said that a giant crocodile swallowed my one and only clock? Blast it all? Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs? No? My god but these are cynical, disbelieving times. Needless to say, I've now returned from said vacationary romp, and shall be attempting to get my web-bearings in the following few days. Once I figure out how to extract Sinatra's hat from the belly of that blasted crocodile, that is.

Ah yes, the Olympics: a wow-oww event.

Although not so much a sports fan as an occasional sports fan, I usually find myself somewhat roused to sporty fanship every time the Olympics come around. That's probably because the Olympics have a wildly artistic bent to them, what with all those bodies and all that teamwork moving about in dancelike motion, while the world puts their squabbles aside (so the media loves to say, anyway) in the quest for athletic harmony. Even the occasional sports fan has to admit that there's something very poetically optimistic about that.

Truth be told, however, the pessimist in me also gets to revel in the Olympics. Every time some poor buff sap dislocates an appendage or bends in a way no sane person should be allowed to bend, my inner pessimist gives out a hearty "YEESH!" There's an awful lot of insane bending going on at the Olympics, and it makes my more pessimistic skin regions crawl. (And not in a good crawling way. Not even in a flexible crawling way.) Sure, I'm intrigued by the bending. I see the sportspersonlike value of the bending. Heck, I might even shout "Go you!" when I see some of this bending going on. But that doesn't make it right, sportsfans. Hooking your knees around your earlobes can't possibly be right. And don't even get me started on, say, the splits. A lot of you out there in the foggy wilds of the world can do the splits, but have you ever stopped to think about whether or not you really should? As in, should such a disturbingly flexible thing be allowed? I mean, wow. Oww. What kind of poetically athletic reaction is that?

On the other hand, the ancient Greeks couldn't have been all that flexible. Take the Parthenon. (Please? *drum riff*) That was one rigidly-columned wonder of the ancient world, and now it's looking rather dislocated. In fact, Athena's skin must be doing the crawl.

Oy. Long see, no time.

Been traveling around in Colorado and Montana for awhile. They certainly have some beautiful scenery there, including ridiculously beautiful blue skies and ridiculously huge herds of buffalo. I was quite suprised about the buffalo, actually, due to those tales of nineteenth century idiots who drove the great plains bison to near-extinction by shooting at them from train windows. (Where's Greenpeace when you need it, man? Not invented yet. Man.) Turns out that the bison today represents a great success story for environmental protectionism, and thus the bison is back in a big way. Yessirree, the buffalo roam once more. Not that I'm asking you to gimmie a home with them or anything. The range is pretty and all, but those deer and antelope play far too rough.

Deer: Shaddup, ya horny antelope!
Antelope: Oy, I'm JUMPIN' 'ere!

Guess the antelope are grooving to Sid Vicious these days, too.