Olympic events I have seen (with commentary)

I do not like to stay up late and I do not know what the schedule for the various olympic events is. Also, I've noticed that, on my little guide associated with my cable service, there are two channels with big green bands that say, "Summer Olympics." This gives me very little to go on. The result is that my olympic experience has been somewhat random, not unlike the rest of my life, some might point out.

So, the random olympic events I have enjoyed are as follows: swimming (400M IM), women's beach volleyball, women's archery, dressage, featherweight boxing, men's and women's team gymnastics, synchronized diving, men's whitewater canoing and men's basketball.

I'm going to remark on my most memorable events, starting with the most surreal. Dressage, according to Wikipedia, is "a path and destination of competitive horse training, with competitions held at all levels from amateur to the Olympics." When I turned on the dressage competition, I thought that the horse and rider were warming up, until I heard the cheers and applause and some scores came up on the screen. This sport has a rider that wears a very fancy outfit and involves a lot of what I might call, "prancing about." There's a fancy "arena" with letters and markings and the horse and rider sort of scoot around, in, when you watch more than one rider you realize, turn out to be very precise ways. According to Wikipedia,

"The standard dressage arena letters are A-K-V-E-S-H-C-M-R-B-P-F. (There is speculation as to why these letters were chosen. Most commonly it is believed because the German cavalry had a 20 x 60 meter area in between the barracks which had the letters posted above the doors). "

I find this sport to be very strange. I only believe that it's hard work because the fancily dressed riders were all out of breath at the end of each performance. Strange.

Next up, women's archery. Fascinating. Korea won. Apparently there wasn't a doubt in anyone's mind. The Chinese women behaved in a very relaxed and jovial way during the final round. The bows are enormous and they bring the string back against their mouths, which makes me imagine that I would be anal about keeping my string clean. The Korean women had very child-like accoutrements. Shoulder guards with pink panda bears, etc.

Finally, I would like to talk about the gymnastics floor exercises. I feel very unhappy about the people who step out of the boundary. This is judged as a heinous crime with a penalty that is all out of proportion with the difficulty of the rest of the performance and I disapprove. I guess, when things are so close to perfect, there has to be some way to separate people. Maybe it's time to add flames and carnivorous animals to this sport. Also, I would like to make a big fuss about how good Yang Wei is.

OK, now I've lost interest in my own post, so, surely that's a sign. I have work to do.