More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea

“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.” - Dave Barry

Which recently went by in a column chock full o' amusing aphorisms written by that delightful fellow, Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle.

It's a pithy reversion of a very old thought that goes something like, "You can judge a man by how he treats those who are powerless against him."

Nod, nod, yes of course... Alright, let's hit a practical example. Iago and Cassio. They're peers, pretty much; certainly, there's no power relationship as clear-cut as boor/waiter. And yet, Cassio is powerless against Iago's assassination of his character. Lies told under a cloak of secrecy... Who can defend against that?

Thus, Iago gets to be known as "possibly the most heinous villain in Shakespeare."

Yay! Olympics!

Man, I love the Olympics. I like watching the parade of nations, seeing who they are and how they choose to dress... It was neat how almost every numerous delegation (even the Chinese!) included more than one race of people. I don't remember that from years past, but it could be that I just wasn't watching for it.

I really like watching the swimming. Clear, clean, no chance of people getting hurt or failing due to accident. Also, I remember back when I was young, and I did that stuff... To some degree, I know personally how it is.

When I was quite young, I kicked ass in the suburban swim league. When I got older, I lost some grace, or everyone else caught up; but there were a few years when I was still a valuable member of the team because I could do butterfly, and almost no one else could. Couldn't do it fast, or anything, but...

So they'd put me on the relay doing butterfly, because the other girl who could do butterfly was also an excellent swimmer in all stokes, and could in particular whup us all in freestyle. Basically, my job was to "not screw up and disqualify the team", which was, in itself, often sufficient to win. Butterfly was tricky, and then there were the teams where someone would miss touching a wall, or would touch with only one hand where two were required, or someone would go off before their teammate touched the wall... We could almost count on at least one team being disqualified.

And then I'd get to win for myself in backstroke. I kick ass at backstroke.

I didn't regret leaving, though. As you got older on the swim team, you got to come to practices earlier and earlier in the morning, until I reached the oldest, crack-of-dawn group. Our job, so far as I could tell, was to warm up the (frigid, out-all-night-in-the-open) pool with our body heat so that the younger kids could swim in comfort later. Somehow, cozy sleep in a non-chlorinated environment finally won out. ;)