Hundreds of posts later, a change of address, a busted bandwidth or two and a bunch of new on-line friends and here we are.

To celebrate, I’m posting my blogroll so you can have the points on Technorati:

• 1, Splotchy
• A Box of Nothing
• A Cup of Coffey
• A Slack Woman
• American Idolatry
• Archive - Gifted Typist Blogspot
• Archive - Slack Woman
• Bad Tempered Zombie
• Bliss and Bile
• Blowing sh*t up with gas
• Blue Conversations
• Boingboing.net
• Buttercups
• Chancelucky
• Clusterfucknation
• Coaster Punchman’s World
• Cool, hip, London social media guru
• Cormac Writes
• Daily Dose of Imagery
• Flying buttresses
• Funniest man in British radio
• G4G Grammar and English Warriors
• Girl with Moxi
• Grammar Girl
• Halifax graffiti blog
• http://lorelle.wordpress.com/
• Jane Austen Jr
• Little Typist
• lots better than your blog
• Monkey Muck
• Novel Readings
• Passion of the Dale
• Reflections in the snow-covered hills
• Reject the Koolaid
• Tanya Espanya
• The Anti-Socialist
• The Guardian
• The Language Log
• The Popeye
• The World According to Zed
• What I like about the Universe
• What I like about the Universe
• Write Procrastinator

See Herald column here

Talk about the big one.

Talk about getting a hook in your finger.

Talk about using a harpoon to do your fishing next time.

Stand by for the cliche headlines: “Bolt of lightning” and “Bolt out of the blue” and “Lightning Bolt strikes twice.”

Bolt is a dream name for a sprinter and a headline writer.

You have to wonder: Did he become a sprinter because of his name?

And what about these people with names that match the jobs? Were they influenced by their names?

Mr. Bill Headline is a bureau chief at CNN news.

David Law is a lawyer.

And what about Dr. Needle, the doctor.

Or Dr. Jeff Butcher, the orthopedic surgeon.

There’s a Mr. A. Bugg who teaches computer programming.

Or Anna Udder who is a lactation consultant.

Gary Alter is a plastic surgeon

And Wilma Mankiller who is the first woman chief of the Cherokee First Nation

Dr. Payne is an anesthesiologist.

In Canada, there is a John Tory who is a leader of the Tory party.

But this achievement goes beyond medal count and speed.

It’s done things for the hetero-man hug.

It’s refreshing to see the man hugs after 4×100 IM that won Phelps his 8th medal.

So real. So genuine. So uninhibited.

Finally, men are loosening up and openly expressing hetero-man joy and affection.

Maybe Phelps is more than King of the Swimming Pool

Maybe he’s King of the Hetero Man Hug too.

We are a nation thirsty for Olympic medals.

The other night I heard the CBC sports desk deconstructing the swimming. Our medal hope didn’t win a medal.

Why? The dolphin kick, they said.

Sorry people, but don’t blame the dolphin kick. Or the athletes.

It’s the funding, stupid. Not the dolphin kick

In Canada, we don’t fund our athletes well enough to win medals in swimming. But we want them to win.

Australia has a smaller population than Canada but they always win more medals. Why? Because they fund their athletes.

If you fund your athletes, they will win medals.

I don’t buy the argument that Canada is uncomfortable with success. Canadians love hockey success. Canadians like to feel good about themselves.

Canadian politicians are asses if they think their athletes will deliver the “feel good” factor to a nation starved for medals.

Give them the funding and they will give you the medals.

Simple as that.

But women who play beach volleyball have to wear crotch-hugging, butt-bifurcating bikinis.

Why do women have to wear skimpy bikinis to play the same sport men play in shorts and t-shirts?

Or put another way: why don’t men have to wear butt-bifurcating, grape-smuggling speedos?

Well, the reason is that the organization that regulates the sport of beach volleyball restricts the maximum size of the women’s beach volleyball uniform. Women are required by law to wear those bikinis.

Is this rule advancing the sport of beach volleyball? Ha!

This is rule calcifies sexist attitudes that view women’s bodies as an objects to be looked at, drooled over and fantasized over.

Save that for the porn sites

The Olympics are about sports, not sex.

I go to their blogs; they come to mine.

They are Tanya Espanya and Trixie, the artist formerly known as Jacy.

We post. We comment. We laugh. We cry.

Then we email. Then there’s a meet-up planned in Toronto, and my brother-in-law drops me off at the designated meet-up location.

“And you’ve never actually met these people before?” he says with trepidation.

“Well, we’ve met on-line,” I say.

“But you’ve never met face-to-face.”

“Um, no.”

My brother-in-law doesn’t look convinced. He drops me off. “Good luck,” he says. “Take care.”

He thinks I’m going to meet axe-murders - weirdo axe murders who blog in the basement in their pyjamas.

They don’t actually butcher me with axes, but they do butcher me with their sense of humour, their beautiful baby and their wicked wit.

Next thing you know we’re real friends.

And now they’re are here, at my cottage, taking over with their beautiful baby, their laptops and their love of disco music from our youth.

They know my family now, our habits, my pet cat Cheddar.

IT’s all too much.

How did this happen?

Can we say that without being hauled up before a Committee on UnCanadian Activities?

Well, we’re saying it anyway. And others have said it too. Plenty of others.

Were those get-ups Olympic-opening-ceremonies chic? Ah, no.

Try bowling alley chic. Not offense to bowling alley goers. Those shirts would be fine for a bowling alley.

Look, we know you’re athletes and you need sweat-wicking athletic wear and cotton caps to keep the sun off

And we know you didn’t design the uniforms or choose to wear them. It isn’t your fault.

We know that.

But we also know this: the opening ceremonies is a time to showcase cultural dress, country colours and national creativity.  You don’t dress athletes in practical sweat-wicking jock wear and painter’s caps AT THE OPENING CEREMONIES OF THE BIGGEST OLYMPICS IN HISTORY!

You just don’t.

Even Malawi had classier national uniforms than Canada.

What were you thinking, Canada?

From now until Aug 24, it will be All Olympics All the Time. I’ve been waiting for this day a long time.

And now it’s here.

I support protests around human rights, bloated budgets, smog, and rampant commercialization replacing the Olympic spirit. And I do happen to think that the Olympics and politics are inseparable.

How could they not be linked? The athletes wear the national flag and receive funding from governments. To say politics and the Olympics are not connected is naive.

It’s too bad that Canada’s government rolled over on this opportunity to issue a verbal protest at least. Even George W did that - before he flew to China to attend the games.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper protested by not attending. As much as he would like to think this will make a statement on the international stage during one of the biggest international events there is, Canada’s silent protest will be a mere bleep on the international radar, if it’s noticed at all.

Sorry Stephen, but the rest of the world just isn’t that into you!

But now it is time to watch the games. And the artistry. And the culture and history. You do learn a lot about the host country, even if it’s through a filter of authority approval.

It won’t change my opinion of China or its ways. And watching is not tacit support.

It’s just time to appreciate the event itself and its participants who aren’t guilty of human rights abuses.

Is is possible to have one’s cake and eat it too with the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

I mean, you wouldn’t expect the “boyz in bluez” of that era to be happy about women’s fight for equality. Women’s equality wasn’t exactly in the best interests of your average Dudley Do-Right. If anything it was just going to be an irritation.

These women were just a bunch of “sweaty uncombed women,” as one Dudley charmingly put it.

No, the real threat wasn’t the women, but the possible infiltration by Trotskyists, male Trotskyists.

The RCMP spied on women’s groups out of fear of Communism, not feminism. They didn’t take women seriously, because they were, well, just women.

The beautiful irony is that it was the women’s movement - not Communism - that created the greatest social change and ferment of the 20th century.

And Dudley Do-Right’s narrow-minded sexist view blinded him to this social revolution in the making. Maybe that myopia made the difference for women in Canada.

Maybe we should all get together and thank the dull-witted Dudley of the day. Had he been more on the ball, he might have been successful in oppressing these “sweating uncombed women.”