OK, so maybe hate is a strong word. But (for the most part*) I couldn’t care less about the Olympics this year. Here are a few of my reasons:

1.) Hello, Obscurity – Let’s think about it. With the Olympics, we have the weird combination of sports that nobody watches until the Olympics show up (volleyball, swimming, gymnastics) and sports that everybody usually watches but all of a sudden are unpopular during the Olympics (baseball, basketball). I refuse to inexplicably get excited about a sport just because there’s a round piece of metal at the end of it. Badminton, anyone?

2.) Sissification – My sports watching preferences and my sports participation preferences are radically different. For myself, I enjoy participating in sports like biking and rock climbing, you know, things that don’t involve catching any objects or hitting other people. But when I’m watching sports, I like to see some violence. You know, players getting smashed and beaten and otherwise physically dominated. This is why I enjoy football so much. Sadly, the Olympics are a little weak in the contact department, unless your idea of contact is getting tapped by a fencing foil.

3.) The Benedict Arnold Effect – One of the downfalls of professional sports, I think, is the lack of loyalty that athletes have to their franchises. Back in the day, it seemed like a franchise would pick up a key player and that player would become iconic for the franchise. Think Michael Jordan for the Bulls or Babe Ruth for the Yankees. Nowadays, athletes play for the highest bidder, and it’s not uncommon to see a player go to play for his former team’s biggest rival. Sadly, this attitude has somehow worked its way into the Olympics. It’s nice to see a German dude swimming for Austrailia, but it makes me ask WTF? I mean, if selling out your franchise is bad, imagine doing that to your country. In any case, way to show loyalty, fellas.

4.) Beijing? Pt. 1 – These particular Olympics bother me because they’re being held in Beijing. How’s this for irony: let’s take an event that has stood for comraderie, friendly competition, and the indomitable nature of the human spirit, and hold it in a country that is well-known for its human rights abuses, totalitarian government, and slight antagonism to the rest of the world. Great idea guys.

5.) Beijing? Pt. 2 – Oh, and let’s not forget this awesomeness: why not hold these athletic events in one of the most polluted cities in the world? After all, these athletes don’t need to be able to breathe… right?

6.) The Anti-Bandwagon Clause – Last, but not least, almost everybody I know LOVES the Olympics. It is therefore my sworn duty to provide variety to the Olympic-loving landscape.

* The whole Michael Phelps thing is interesting to me because I love to see some trash-talking Frenchies get their asses handed to them, and I think Mark Spitz is a douche and needs to not hold that record anymore.

I’ve been thinking of buying a bike for some time, and lately I’ve gotten more serious about it. As a result, I’ve spent a lot more time looking at classified ads. This has proven to be a fairly frustrating method of bike shopping because nothing is ever exactly what you want. Either the bike is missing features or the price is too high.

Anyway, I got home from work today and decided to do my regular check of the online classifieds (craigslist and ksl.com). I clicked into the road bikes section, and all of a sudden, there she was, the bike I had been looking for, at a killer price. I could hardly believe my eyes. The bike had just been posted, so I hurried and called the poster.

Me: “Hey, I’m calling about the bike.”

Him: “Wow. That was fast.”

The bike was in Park City, so I called my brother and told him that if he’d drive from Salt Lake to Park City to Provo to help me get this bike back home, I’d pay for gas. My brother hates paying for gas, and there was no way the bike was fitting in Jezebel, so he agreed.

When we got up there, I took one look at the bike and knew that this was definitely a steal. I handed the guy a bunch of bills and he handed me the keys to the bike (lock). He also commented on how quick I was to call.  “Here’s how it went,” he said. “I walked outside, took a picture of the bike, went back inside and posted the ad, and was just leaning back in my chair after publishing the ad when you called.”

I guess some things were just meant to be. Here are a couple of pictures of my new baby:

We live in difficult economic times. Soaring gas prices, troubled financial institutions, and spiraling unemployment are creating a devastating impact on our economy. But there another, far more insidious power at work here as well: the do-gooder.

This was driven home to me today when, after loading my groceries into my friend’s car, I placed our shopping cart in an out-of-the-way location for the cart gatherer to pick up. My friend made an exasperated face and trundled the cart across the parking lot to where a lonely, mostly unused cart corral sat.

“Now, Nate,” you might say.” “She was just being nice by taking the cart to the corral.” And on the surface, I might be tempted to agree with you. “And Nate,” you might continue. “There are signs all over the parking lot that say you should clean up your cart.” Again, a valid point.

But consider this: Wal-Mart, being the corporate megalith that it is, has perfected the art of überspecialization. They have thousands of employees with a very specific job function, and that job function is cleaning up the carts in Wal-Mart parking lots. Now let’s imagine that everybody decided to pay attention to those signs that Wal-Mart places in the parking lot and starts putting their carts away. All of a sudden, there’s no work for the parking lot cart attendents. Wal-Mart, always looking to pad their bottom line, decides that they can afford to fire those parking lot cart attendents to save a few bucks, and they then get the old people greeters to go out to the corral every couple of hours to pick up the neatly-stacked carts.

So really, by putting those carts away, you’ve deprived someone of a job, and furthermore, you’ve forced an elderly person to do a job that they’re probably not equipped for (if you car about such things). So do the economy a favor. Leave your carts in the parking lot.