The Sleeping Bear

The 2008 Summer Olympic Games kickoff in a couple days. Sweet. Because there’s nothing I like more than hearing about how so-and-so overcame the odds of a deformed claw hand to become an Olympic hero or how  such-and-such an equestrian  fell off her horse, broke a nail, yet still got back on to finish the course, showing true Olympic spirit. It’s that overhyped “overcoming the odds to be an Olympic athlete” storyline that sucks me in every time. Well, that and then watching these greatest of all athletes get caught cheating, relishing the national outrage and getting the chance mock them as they quickly fall from grace. 

So anyway, I decided to do some Olympic prep so I could figure out who would be my pick for  hero turned villain this year. I fired up my naked lady machine, headed over to Wikipedia and studied the events on tap for this year. 

And you know what I learned? Badminton (rhymes with sad kitten) is an official Olympic sport. Badminton? Isn’t that the thing that’s kind of like tennis with a net and some rackets, except they use something that looks like a cross between a bird and a superball? If we want to go all LSAT on it, it’s to tennis like whiffleball is to baseball. 

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m sure all 6 people over the age of 12 that play badminton are excellent athletes. After a breakfasts of raw eggs (including the shells), badminton athletes probably get in a quick triathlon before heading over to the badminton court for a rousing match of “hit the fake birdie”. 

So I fired up Google to see who the best badminton player in the world was, knowing he surely had to be some hulking Brock Lesnar wannabe. What’s that, you say? Top men’s seed Lin Dan is 5’10”, 160? Hmmm…maybe my first impressions about what I’m now calling “The Mint” are wrong. Maybe these dudes are a little less athletic than I thought. Ah ha! But wait! What’s his nickname? Powerful Dan! It says it right there on Wikipedia. He must be one of those wiry strong Olympic athletes.

Heck, like the Beckhams, Lin (or do I call him Dan? These Chinese names confuse me), has a tumultuous relationship heating up the Chinese dailies with fellow badmintoner Xie Xingfang (yeah, she likes his shuttlecock, if you know what I mean). Plus, Dan is known for his fiery temper, something rare in a Chinese state where obedience is the norm. 

But Lin’s all about Lin. He wears T-shirts with his own picture on them. He attacks opposing coaches with his racket. He yells at referees with zeal. He’s a bad boy. Heck, why shouldn’t he be, he’s the best badminton player in the world. If you were the best tiddlywinks player in the world, it’d go to your head, too. I mean, this is badminton, baby. You know the old saying – “Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be badminton players.” Cause they’re hell on wheels. 

That’s why I say Lin’s earned the right to be the ultimate badass. Hell, he’s been smacking that s-cock down opponents’ throats for nearly four years, being ranked number one in the world longer than most Hollywood marriages stay together.  Damn it, he’s won back-to-back world championships. Think about it. Back-to-back badminton world titles. Facing the best of the best, he beat them all. The girls swoon at the mere sight of his wiry frame, no doubt.

And that’s why I’ve added badminton to my Olympic Tivoing. Wait, I don’t have a Tivo. But if badminton and Lin hit my screen, I may just watch it for like 4 seconds until turning the channel to a real sport like the fourth quarter of a preseason NFL game. Here’s to you, Lin, you put the “Bad” in badminton.

I’ve come to the conclusion that rabbits are the dumbest animals on the planet. Move over single-celled amoebas, cause the rabbits are hot on your pseudopod. Heck, lemmings look like geniuses when compared to rabbits – sure, they follow the crowd to their death over a big cliff, but at least they care for their young before they do that, thus perpetuating the species.

My neighborhood is full of rabbits – big dumb rabbits. My first encounter with the voracious stupidity of rabbits occurred shortly after we moved into our house. We immediately got ourselves three dogs (because I love the smell of dog piss in the morning). And the rabbits immediately reproduced and bore their young as close to my dogs as possible.

And by no means are my dogs geniuses. One is an inveterate poop-eating circler (she walks in circles for hours on end, wearing a path in the yard). The other is deaf and blind. The third has a rock fetish and likes to hump inanimate objects. But they are smart enough to smell young rabbits and pick them up, inadvertently killing them in the process.

Which is exactly what they did the first time they encountered baby rabbits. And it wasn’t hard for them to encounter them, since the idiot crack-whore of a rabbit mother had laid them down in a den against the house. Needless to say, three burial mounds later, the baby rabbit mortality rate was 100%.

Ok, so surely the rabbits, trying to keep their species alive, decided to not give birth in my dog-infested yard. Ummm, think again. The next year, my dogs encountered a baby rabbit near the chain link fence separating my yard from the neighbors. Seeing the dogs and being a rabbit, he took one hop – headfirst into the middle of the metal chain-link fence post. When he keeled over and the blood started running from his nose, I knew it was time to dig another mound.

But the stupidity continued. A couple years ago, I noticed my garage was pretty rank. Like ranker than normal. Like Jeffrey Dahmer’s fridge rank. So I searched around and lo and behold, there was a baby rabbit. In an advanced state of decomposure. Didn’t need to dig much of a hole for that bad boy.

This past spring, the rabbits decided to tempt fate again, this time, dropping their younguns in the middle of one of our flower gardens. Well, the dogs had no problem sniffing them out, and by the time we noticed our deaf, blind dog happily playing with a dead rabbit, the body count was up to 7.

So I’m thinking surely they can smell the dog shit and urine all over the yard and will cease planting their offspring in harm’s way. Yeah right. On Saturday as I watered my garden, I noticed the ground start to move. Had Satan finally escaped the clutches of hell? Were some Hollywood mega-worms springing from the depths to eat me? Nope, just some baby rabbits whose mother was too busy whoring it up to give them a chance at survival. To date I don’t think the dogs have discovered them, but it’s only a matter of time until the neighbors see me digging in my backyard again. No wonder they think I’m creepy.

To put this in perspective: Humans have very few predators. But if my wife repeatedly had her young in the tiger cage over at the Como Zoo and then ran off to fornicate with the next dude that walked by, folks might not think too highly of her. But from my experience, that’s the rabbit way.

There’s a reason god gave rabbits a short gestation period, copulation-induced ovulation and post-partum estrus. They’re dumb as a box of rocks. Want proof? They eat their own shit. Seriously. Sick f’n bastards.