Per Diem

My final is approximately five and a half hours on top of a day in front of me.

I am not ready.

I'm tired of organic chemistry and the endless amounts of sadness the subject brings to me.

I guess the only thing to do now, other than the necessary studying, is to blog about the Olympics.

I find it disgusting that NBC, its affiliates and the mainstream media in general all love to milk or create Olympic stories of triumph. It's not that I, born and raised under the red, white and blue, don't enjoy a good underdog story as much as the next American. Hell, we were founded by underdogs, and my ancestral roots find themselves in the most generic of American underdog refugee stories. My family and my history bleeds underdog. So no, I'm not quite anti-American. It's not that I don't enjoy these stories. It's just that we are shifting our attention too much on the sweet triumphs of our athletes when the Olympic games should be about the unity of all countries.

Is it really necessary to have a Medal Count on the front page of Yahoo!? Why are we so preoccupied with the numbers, counting our way to superiority? We may have more medals than any other country right now, but what does it matter? A bit of national pride, yes, but I get the feeling that all this medal counting and Americans-as-the-underdog storytelling is just setting us apart from the rest of the world. We are in no way the underdogs. Americans are brimming with athleticism and dominance. Our economy allows us to be.

Most other countries don't have enough food to feed their people. How can they be expected to dominate as wholly as we have? Plus, China has WAY more gold medals than we do. So no, we are no longer the best, nor, I suspect, shall we be the best any time soon in the Summer Olympics.

Americans make everything about winning. These awards are supposed to show how diverse the athletic world can be, with many countries winning various medals. We aren't SUPPOSED to win gold in everything. We aren't SUPPOSED to be competing ONLY with the Chinese communist bastards. We need to back down from this idea that we are the big dogs, especially since we're competing in THEIR homeland.

That being said, Shawn Johnson is the cutest being to grace the earth since Togepi hatched.

On another, equally important note. The South Ossetians want OUT of Georgia, but do they want IN to Russia? Russia's just as bad as we are in terms of asserting dominance. In fact, they are exactly as bad as we are.

1. America went over to Iraq to "spread and establish democracy" as we do periodically, to our economic favor. Under democracy's guise, we went over and toppled a probably bad regime. Russia claims it is doing something along those lines. They claim they want justice for the South Ossetian people. However, what Russia really wants is to reclaim its international dominance, its pride in being a world power. They are saying that they won't take shit from Georgia, the lowliest of former provinces, who, by the way, tried to assert ITS dominance onto a de facto state.

Actually South Ossetia, which is technically a province of Georgia on the Russian border along the Caucasus, governs itself, along with huge monetary aid from its Russian sugar daddy. It isn't internationally recognized as an independent nation, but it sure as hell acts as one, hence "de facto." Georgia recently tried to take it back, and Russia said, "No-no. Bad girl. Don't pick on little South Ossetia. We have to roll in with our tanks now to do some "peacekeeping."" To which America said, "No-no. Bad boy. Don't pick on little Georgia. We're gonna nuke you if you come near that oil line."

Ah, war. <3

2. What Russia did had equal severity as America's War on Terror in Iraq. We have more power, so we can wage war across continents. Russia could too, but they did the equivalent of a war abroad. They went across the border to assert their power. This is the same as California rolling tanks into Baja California and saying, "It has the name "California" in it, so it's ours!"

Yeah, California is the shit, but we're just happy to be part of America. Likewise, Russia should just be happy to be part of a world where peace is still possible. The world's gotta stay united, as these Olympic games remind us, as we face the problems of the future. Namely, I'm scared of the return of the dinosaurs. If we aren't united when they arrive, how will we stave them off? They have hella T-Rexes! And we only have Christian Bale to save us!

Lordy, I'm tired.

Best comment gets a prize.