Listography: 5 Things I DON'T Hate About The Olympics 2012

If you missed my previous posts, here are Top 5 Reasons I Hate The Olympics 2012, and 5 More Things I Hate About The Olympics 2012.

But, the Olympics aren't all bad, even to me. So, here are 5 Things I DON'T Hate About The Olympics 2012.

1). The Awesome Nails/Hair Statements. All of the atheletes have their national uniforms that must be worn at all times when competing, but they, especially the ladies, are finding some wonderful ways of showing off their patriotic spirit/personalities. There have been some iffy moments (oh Ryan Lochte, you don't need a sparkly diamond grill to be pretty), but on the whole, they have been awesome. Also, I REALLY want to visit the nail bar in the video above.

Photo Rob Schumacher, USA Today Sports

2). Animals are allowed to compete. Well, horses. But seriously, I think horses should be paving the way for other animals in sport. We could have a whole animal Olympics, really. Rabbit hurdles, guinea pig long-jump, alligator/shark swimming (seperate pools, obviously), sheep racing, squirrel gymnastics, gorilla wrestling (two gorillas, not gorilla vs human), snail racing, monkey tennis (sorry foreigners who haven't seen Alan Partridge...just laugh, it's funny I assure you), and I'm fairly certain monkeys could be trained to fling discus and javelin instead of poo, there are definite possibilities here. Obviously the Olympic Village would have to be way more segregated than it is at the moment, just for the safety of the atheletes, but I think it could work.*

3). The red button. The BBC channels (for people in other countries where it might not...) have an extra features menu, that appears if you press the red button on your remote, and allow you to view other content/programmes that are additional to what's on the regular channel. The Olympics have a menu all of their own, which essentially allow you to flick through all of the sports live, and choose which live feed you want to watch. This basically means that you can flick through and look for the most attractive atheletes (I mean...most interesting sport...), and bingo! I love this feature.

4). We actually appear to be quite good at quite a lot of it. Sadly, we usually seem to focus all of our money, attention and TV coverage in England on sports that we are profoundly bad at. Football, cricket...Football...Cricket...You get the jist. It's nice to see us actually being televised at being good at something.

5). The Opening Ceremony was actually pretty awesome. Granted, we didn't (IMO) top the giant inflatible beavers, and there were some sketchy moments, like Paul McCartney, the formation Abe Lincolns (come on, non-UK residents...When you first saw it did you think Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or Abraham Lincoln? Honestly?), and the NHS bit with the commentator reporting that "Children are often afraid of staying in hospital...Here children's book characters make it less frightening..." as a giant puppet Voldemort seemingly lifted a small girl's hospital bed up into the air accompanied by scary music and fired sparks out of his wand. But on the whole, I enjoyed it, and I have to say, I LOVED the idea for the flame, it was just beautiful.

* FYI...I am opposed to cruelty to animals/real-life animal "sports" that involve any kind of cruelty at all.

Listography: Top 5 Reasons Why I Hate Olympics 2012

This summer is going to drive me to distraction. The Olympics have been slowly seeping into everyday life since Christmas. I HATE the Summer Olympics. I hate them even more now that they are actually in my own country. Here is a small selection of reasons why.

1). The mascots are STUPID.

I refer to Fetlock and Mandible. Or Wedlock and Pimblico. Whatever the hell they are called (yes I know it says it on the picture above...But I can never remember their names during my infuriated rants, so they are more often known as Fetlock and Mandible). London Mayor Boris Johnson said that "It's hard to imagine a mascot more in tune with the times." Which just proves my point, because he's a pillock. They are vile. And the BS little story made up about their forming is rubbish. The story should read "Once upon a time, someone with a graphic design degree was paid crap-loads of money to design an Olympic mascot. Unfortunately they got drunk the night before and came up with sod all, so they had to take one of their kids' drawings of their pet gerbils off the fridge instead. The end." Also, they are supposedly made of steel. Whoever came up with that idea completely forgot that if anywhere in the UK is known for steel, it's Sheffield (check your forks, people). Does Sheffield get a mention? No.

2). We only got the Summer Olympics.

Everyone knows that the Winter Olympics gets all the cool and/or dangerous sports. Skiing. Snowboarding. Luge. Ice Hockey. Speed Skating. Bobsled. Figure Skating. Curling. (OK, I said that Winter got all of the cool sports...NOT that all of the sports were cool). The Summer Olympics is essentially school sports day but without the beanbags and hula-hoops. I'm not saying that the Summer sports don't require massive talent and skill and dedicated lives of training, but it's just not as exciting watching someone pull off the perfect long-jump as it is watching someone hurtling down a chute on a tea-tray they are essentially steering with their butt-cheeks, with death snapping at their heels (or rather, head, with them going down feet-first...). You know? I'm fairly certain no-one ever died hurdling. People DIE at the Winter Olympics (RIP Nodar Kumaritashvili). There is an actual risk of death.

3). Every other goddamn product is now being advertised in connection to the Olympics. Washing up liquid. Dog food. Laundry detergent. Chocolate. Cars. Televisions. Holidays. Supermarkets. Trains. I am SICK of hearing the word "Olympics" in relation to completely unrelated products. Unless you're selling sportswear or cures for insomnia, I don't want to hear about the summer Olympics in relation to your product, because it's not related.

4). We don't deserve the Paralympics. End of story. I know it's kind of a BOGOF deal, win the Olympics get the Paralympics free, but even so. We are flooding London, one of THE most wheelchair-unfriendly cities to traverse in the country, with legendary disabled atheletes. Who I'm sure will be fine, because they will be ferried everywhere in luxury cars in London's bus lanes. However, if they were to actually have to travel around the city like every other wheelchair-bound person, how would they find it then? They could use certain Tube platforms...to wave people off from. Could they get on the actual Tube train by themselves from those platforms? Probably not. Could they take advantage of any of the awesome shopping? Probably not, because most of the really cool shops are too old/small to have to obey current regulations, and so you can't get into/around them with a wheelchair. Some places in this country are wheelchair friendly. A hell of a lot of them aren't. "Wheelchair Accessible" doesn't mean "We've only got one or two steps" (yes, people really DO say that). It doesn't mean "You can get to the doorway, but people will have to bring you things to look at to the door." It doesn't mean "You can get in and sit down for a meal, but our toilets are upstairs, is that a problem?" Britain on the whole is pretty abysmal with regards to disabled access, etc.

5). The opening ceremony. We're going to try. Really hard. We're going to get an A* for trying. But, given the logo and the mascots, I'm guessing it will probably suck. Lets face it, Canada aced the opening and closing ceremonies. They had Bryan Adams. Michael Buble. Bobby Orr. Wayne Gretzky. Joni Mitchell. Sarah McLachlan. They had "...The always enjoyable, giant inflatable beaver...."

There is no way that we can beat giant inflatable beavers. Game, Set, Match, Canada.