I HAVE NOTHING TO ADD TO THE SUM TOTAL OF THE INTERNET TONIGHT: My brain is goo-like.

I'm worried about a string of "Hey, this post sucks" posts. Not worried enough to do something about it at this moment. I just hope my Will To Blog isn't constantly drained by this semester's drag.

GABBA GABBA HEY: I got homework to do:

--The biochem chapters I haven't read
--The genetics lab exercise in coin-flipping---literally; I walked into lab inexcusably late and it was tables of kids flipping coins as an exercise in applied probability. I had to get back to work.
--The genetics chapter to outline.
--The Netflix flicks to watch. Not homework actually, but I am sick of not knowing any movies. My cultural literacy has gone right in the hopper.

WHOOPSIE: Missed a day there. Will have to post twice--twice--in one day at some future point to get the postrate back up.

In order to get Fred Dorfenstein off my back, I would like to announce that Canada beat Finland 3-2 in the finale of the World Cup of hockey. It's the last hockey Fred or anyone else will watch for a while, unless somebody puts the new WHA on the tv.

Diana Moon thinks Bush is still on the sauce. I just thought he was just well practiced at being down-home and aw-shucksy, but the sweet booze is also likely.

If the forgeries really are forgeries, I still think it's a Rovian trick since it is Bush voters who have the most invested in Bush's National Guard service, and who would get the most out of Dan Rather being taken for a fool.

Russia ended its experiment with democracy today in the name of combatting terrorism. Well, crap.

"Well, crap" is the limit of my analytical powers tonight.

OH MAN: The first glorious NFL Sunday of the new season. I had it on in the background at work on the little black and white tv. Some things did please me:

--The Roethlisberger team won.

--The Eli Manning team lost.

--The Lions won in what looked to be a crazy game from the highlights.

Other things were just interesting, like the Joe Gibbs Redskins starting off with a bang, the Browns beating the Ravens, the Testaverde-led Cowboys going down like you knew they would. Because of my nutty work/school schedule, I'm not going to get to enjoy this season in any kind of DirecTV Sunday-obsessive kind of way. But at least there's broadcast NFL, proof the No Fun League hasn't sold out the common man quite yet.

Switching tracks: My current opinion is that the documents are, in fact, for real. I mean, why hasn't the White House bothered to deny them yet? There's no way to tell if they're fake or not. Or if the copies are copies of fakes or not. I think it's more of the "shore up the base" stuff, because people who are against Bush already know he was a crappy national guardsman. Those famous swing voters aren't going to swing over whether these documents are forgeries or not. No, the only people whose opinion could possibly be changed by these documents being exposed as being for real are the people who are on Bush's side who were very willing to trash Kerry over the severity of one (I think) of his Purple Hearts but would be feeling intensely hypocritical if their boy was exposed as an actual duty-shirker, in writing, because their support for him is somewhat tenuous as it is.

So--taking as my axiom "Who gains if they are forgeries?" and being convinced that there is no irrefutable evidence to suggest they are forgeries, I, Justin Slotman, have concluded that they are real actual copies of military documents. Read my words and tremble, ye Internet.

And now I return to mundane life, where I cannot wield a keyboard like I can in cyberland. Oh! The sad life of a blogger, Peter Parker most of the time, and Spider-Man only a few posts a day. But that spider-sense--man, it never stops tingling. It. Never. Stops. Tingling. MJ--MJ--rub my feet, MJ.....

WATCHED SOME TELEVISION TODAY: And, as it happens, I also have a blog.

The Batman: The Time-Warner mass-mind's latest Batman cartoon debuted today, on Saturday morning and everything. Unlike Batman: The Animated Series and every DC show that followed it, it does not have the distinctive Paul Dini-Bruce Timm (I think those are the guys) character design. Rather, it has the Jackie Chan Adventures character design, a show I never really cared for, but not because of the character design--it just seemed kind of a useless entertainment. I mean, animate Jackie Chan? Isn't the point of Jackie Chan that he does all this crazy physical stuff? Once you animate it, it isn't exactly impressive anymore. But anyway--I do not have a problem with the character design as such. And it's only the first episode. But there isn't much there to grab me, but perhaps I'm not the target audience. This new Batman seems to be looking for an entirely new audience; it's a complete reboot, and there's nothing there for the aging geek audience to grab onto like there was with Batman: The Animated Series onwards, save the main character.

Justice League Unlimited: "The Greatest Story Never Told." Speaking of pandering to the geeks and being in the lineage of Batman: TAS--this was the JLU episode starring Booster Gold and they tossed a ton of Giffen-DeMatteis types at us--Dr. Light, Fire and Ice, Rocket Red, Elongated Man in his purple 90s costume. So there was the geek part. I have no idea how I would feel about this show if I didn't experience the thrill of recognition watching it, the same problem I have watching the X-Men movies with the Colossus and Shadowcat bit parts. Having said that, the characterization was great, as usual. This is early, nakedly self-interested Booster, before he became Blue Beetle's sort-of straight man--actually, they shared straight man duties. So he gets treated like the unserious superhero he is for the entire episode and winds up saving the day and getting the girl in his usual unserious manner. Billy West voiced his robot sidekick and maybe that's why it seemed they were going for a Fry from Futurama as a superhero sort of thing. JLU continues to rule.

I also caught a cold, went to work, drove my grandma home, and went to the shore and ate a huge plate of food. And I still have the blog to prove it.

RANDOM POLITICAL POINTS: While I watch Boise State-Oregon State on the big blue field.

Obsidian Hilzoy: Why would a conservative vote for Bush? There isn't really a good reason.

Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum are being Reasonable People on the Bush document thing. Matt Yglesias is keeping an open mind and reopened his comments to prove it. I'm going with: 1. The documents are real. 2. The White House knew they were coming at eventually, so they made sure they had an elaborate forgery defense at the ready. My evidence for this is the fact that the White House is completely silent, while the right-wing MACHINE~! is all a-whirling. When it's something that the White House doesn't expect, as in the Plame affair, the White House is still silent, but the Machine is quieter as well. And, as the Yglesias thread points out, CBS is really not backing down.

I really like this Pudentilla comment in the Yglesias thread:

I think Rather's got more. I think he's playing chicken with Karl. I think he's playing the WH for chumps and willing to take the flack from the wingnuts and bloggers, hoping Karl will take the bait. I think Rather's got a source who won't go public unless X happens (and X if someone in the WH directly lying). If Karl bites (i.e., if the WH takes a stand on authenticity) I think rather will unload. If Karl doesn't bit, they're going to be stories every day until the Kitty Kelley book comes out. The CBS version of the stories will begin with questions about Bush's service in the TANG, not with questions about kerning.

"Kerning." And now I can be Googled for kerning.

And what's with all the Rather hate this is stirring up? At least Rather has been likable in his pomposity, unlike Brokaw and Jennings.

Boise State won by like twenty. I love it when a non-BCS team destroys a BCS team.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON: 2:15 in the morning and the most pressing political debate on the Internet involves Selectric typewriter fonts. Good night, and god bless.

RANDOM SPORTS NOTES TODAY: So deal.

--DA ranks the NBA in terms of how all the teams did in the offseason, which I guess I miss when he first did it in July. He's another Jazz fan, putting them in first place and leaving all Boozer morality questions out of it. The completely imploded Nets are last, of course.

--The Chamique Holdsclaw mystery deepens. Maybe I'm a horrible sexist pig, but when these "mystery ailment" questions started coming up, I assumed it was something gynecological that a lady would be embarassed to talk about. But since it's been going on for so long maybe it's something more mundane and drug-induced.

--US vs. Panama tonight in World Cup qualifier action. Live on Fox Sports World if you're one of the lucky ducks with it.

--Canada vs. Slovakia in hockey World Cup quarterfinals on my tv right now. 0-0 after one, which is surprising. I think the Slovakian goaltender is ON tonight, as they say.

I have reached the natural limits of this post.

USA 5, RUSSIA: And our World Cup hopes march on in a completely under-the-radar kind of way. I thought we were gonna get smoked since I knew we had a losing record but my brother told me so does Russia so it was sort of an even matchup. So we play Finland in the semis in our quest for VENGEANCE~! over the Canadians from Salt Lake City.

So I finally got home in time to watch a World Cup game. And that's all I have time for tonight. Go read McErlain for more.

I BLOG THE BODY ELECTRIC: Yeah yeah yeah yeah--big fancy blog post title, but what's it mean, junior? Well, nothing.

Tomorrow, and all Tuesdays for the rest of my life:

Histology Lab: 8 A.M.
Biochem: 9:30
Microbio: 11
Histology: 1:30
Genetics: 3 --And to give you a taste of why it's always bad to back to school as an adult, I give you Genetics 101. Your big lecture class. All bio majors have to take it but they usually take it early on, which is why this class is so huge. So it's all these young people and my ancient arse and a few of my fellow ancients. I know that--as a teacher--there are a limited number of ways of motivating a bunch of young people to try and study something that they're being forced to take, or they're too immature to apply themselves to, or they're too timid in a youthful way to embarass themselves by talking in class. Fine. That's great. But if your solution is that you throw a piece of crumpled up paper into the class and whoever it hits has to answer your questions--I mean, I don't think they teach that in educational seminars.

But my point is, I would have been so much better at dealing with this when I was younger. I would have resented it--like I do now--but I would've played along. I may have even enjoyed throwing the paper. If you get the question right you get to throw the paper next--did I mention that? Now I just recognize it for what it is: a huge imposition upon my dignity. Oh yes.

Our professor justifies himself by saying it absolves him of all blame so he's not picking on anyone, nyuck nyuck nyuck. Whatever helps you to sleep at night. Wait--that's too harsh. It's all tongue in cheek if you're googling me, Professor!

So tonight I sleep at a reasonable hour, so that I may wake at an unreasonable one.

REJOINED NETFLIX TODAY: Like a fool. I always feel like, I'll end up saving money by watching movies so I know what ones to not purchase. (And I will certainly not save money from copying DVDs. Nope. The RIAA finds that immoral.) But then I end up with wasted rental fees and movies sitting on the tv for months at a time. That's--inefficient. But--NO RENTAL FEES. Just PUT IT IN THE MAILBOX. It's so easy. And because it's easy--it's worth money! Basic economics! We create new markets by saving people time in our crazy fast-paced society. And so--it is my patriotic duty to rent movies on-line. That's it, basically.

Netflix has a lot more foreign flicks than I remember, which is good. Their recommendations, though, appear to be based on what you tell Netflix you like, and not based on what you've rented, or what it's in your queue. Which is less good. So it's hard to sort the various foreign films into discrete bits you might actually like.

So. I will fit in a few movies between the full-time school and the full-time work. Suuuuure. Hey, I have to stay culturally literate somehow.

A HORRID DAY FOR THE MID-AMERICAN CONFERENCE: Just brutal:

Boston College 19, Ball State 11
Michigan 43, Miami 10
Oklahoma 40, Bowling Green 24
Wisconsin 34, UCF 6
Iowa 39, Kent State 7
Penn State 48, Akron 10
Maryland 23, NIU 20
Indiana 41, Central Michigan
Minnesota 63, Toledo 14

A total disaster if you're a MAC fan like me and you wanted another weekend of upsets in the early going--really my favorite part of the season, before everyone gets bogged down in a bunch of tedious local rivalries no national sports fan cares about. AND before the useless conclusions to the season, with no real champion and a whole lot of whining and polling and senseless, sport-destroying controversy. But this year--nothing. Almost every MAC team got crushed by a BCS team. And Marshall lost to Troy State. Only NIU and to a lesser extent Bowling Green kept it close. (And the BC-Ball State game, but BC isn't exactly major college football either.) Now, most of these games were away games--BCS teams are far too cowardly to expose themselves to losses on foreign soil this early on--but still. Were the BCS teams just more prepared this year? Were they all worse last year? Or was the MAC better? Hey, I have no idea. I quit following college football in a few weeks anyway, when all the fun conference vs. conference stuff is over. (No American sport needs promotion/relegation quite like college football, by the way. No American sport needs legitimacy like college football, actually.)

At least Rutgers beat Michigan State.

Watching JLU tonight: How come only Siegel & Schuster, Bob Kane, and William Moulton Marston get credits for Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman? I know Siegel & Schuster had a legal settlement, and I guess Bob Kane did too. And Marston is famous enough that maybe DC would want to make obvious who created Wonder Woman. But none of those characters were even in tonight's episode. Would it kill them to have a "The Question Created By Steve Ditko" thing in there? Or "Supergirl Created By Mort Weisinger"? I guess they think it'll open up more lawsuits, but would not attributing credit preemptively defuse lawsuits?

And I thought Batman was created by Bob Kane AND Bill Finger. What happened to that? Well?

My other comics-related point: I have heard discussion within the comics blogs about the demise of the "floppy", or the 32-page traditional comic book. I am completely fine with this, as long as DC and Marvel keep coming out with these about 200-page collections that contain about an hour's worth of reading, are sub-twenty dollars, and are generally really worth the money since they generally don't leave you hanging until the next volume. Like the Greg Rucka-Klaus Janson Batman comic I just purchased--it's a great little read. I don't feel cheated by having my reading interrupted. So leave the floppies for the collectors, if you must--I understand the comics industry still depends on them--but keep up with the collections for us readers of comics.

That is all.

EMPTY NOGGIN TONIGHT: Blog suffers.

The Israeli spy thing putters along.

I am interested in how true the claims of "Arab" involvement in the hostage disaster in North Ossetia are. Why would Chechen freedom fighters ally with al Qaeda sociopaths? Their aims are pretty divergent.

Hey--that really is it, by the standard of, "Well, maybe if I mess around with Google News a little more, I'll find something else to talk about." End of post.

YOU CAN'T POLISH A TURD: And after four days of attacking Kerry and building up the firm, resolute Cheez, you're still left with this guy. The guy who just states things that sound nice. "Liberty century?" That's--that's a winner. I guess "Pax Americana" sounded too Roman.

Kerry's supposed to be talking next. People have been slagging the DNC this week for not having anybody on the airwaves afterward to slag on whatever just happens. Maybe it's too little, too late, or they were just waiting for the last possible moment to come on strong--story of the Kerry campaign.

Anyway--my political analysis skills have sort of atrophied over the past year or two, but I'm sure you know where to go to get analysis that sounds right to you. The election will be decided anyway in our great rusting Midwestern heartland anyway, where I think the economy is still pretty well fudged and the terrorists aren't blowing up Sandusky and Kalamazoo--so there you go.

Four classes in a row, Tuesdays and Thursdays. This will be a low-fun semester.

SEE--THIS IS WHY I HATE TEAM BUSH: Cheney repeated the "sensitive" thing tonight. You know--the out of context Kerry quote where he said we needed a more sensitive war on terror. It was subsequently proven that not only had the president used the s-word in the exact same way like weeks before, as had multiple members of the Bush team in the preceding year or so. And yet--he just repeated it tonight. Shamelessly. As if the point had not been proven to be utterly ludicrous.

Watch the Daily Show from tonight if you can--there was this great fake Bush biopic about Bush's heroic use of words to fight reality.

I really hope Atrios is right:

Best Convention Night Ever. People around me seem to be getting upset, but these speeches only resonate with those familiar with Rush Limbaugh's latest talking points. To everyone else it sounds like crazy bitter bullshit.

It's lie after lie, and the media won't bother to get a wee bit annoyed that the Vice President of the United States currently is wearing some burning dungarees, but it doesn't matter.

Remember, tonight's theme was "Land of Opportunity."

Matt Welch's reaction:

The crowd inside the Garden was absolutely howling for blood during the applause lines of Zell Miller's militaristic, Niedermeyer-like rant. As I watched a 45 foot image of the snarling senator on the big screen, I found myself thinking that this was the most frightening political speech I had ever seen in my life. I don't think I've ever been as uncomfortable at a political rally.

TAPPED thinks the Republicans screwed themselves by trotting Zell out there. The Corner hasn't exactly exploded with enthusiasm for it either, though they're not panning it, obviously. Insty, as is his habit, links and quotes people and doesn't really say what he thinks.

Oh, hey, look at this compare & contrast on the Zell vs. Matthews thing I missed:

Insty:

MORE: Wolf Blitzer asks him why he's angry, and why he's still a Democrat. Miller laughs at being angry, and says "I'll die a Democrat. . . . But there's nobody that welcomes a conservative Democrat in the party anymore."

Democratic spin from Tad Devine: It's the politics of fear. (It must be: he looks afraid.) Jeff Greenfield: How can Kerry be the leader of a strong wartime America when so many Democrats are against the use of force? Devine: We'll defend the nation if attacked, and use force without anyone's approval. This Administration has a record of failure. Then he started talking about Halliburton. Blitzer: What about voting for and against the $87 billion? Devine: More Halliburton. And Dick Cheney wasn't in Vietnam.

STILL MORE: Now Miller's on Hardball. Chris Matthews asks him if Kerry really only wants to defend America with spitballs. Matthews calls him a "conservative Republican." Oops! Miller: I knew you were going to be coming at me with all that stuff. This is a bunch of baloney that doesn't have anything to do with what I said. He's right. I change channels. [LATER: By changing channels, I missed seeing Zell nearly challenge Matthews to a duel, and Matthews backing down, according to several reader emails. Jacksonian America indeed! Reader Daniel Wilkins sends: "Chris M. looked like a dog getting a bath. I've never seen him so humbled."]

Pandagon Ezra posting on Washington Monthly:

Bush's advisors will not be sleeping well tonight. Going this negative on national television is always dicey, but tonight, they pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and, finally, fell backwards into backlash. Zell's speech crossed the line and Cheney's sneer sealed the impression. Tonight's theme was "Fuck you, John Kerry", and it's going to end up fucking them.

After Cheney, Zell was up in CNN's booth, and Blitzer, Greenfield and Woodruff brought out the knives, dismembering his various inconsistencies (noting that Zell praised Kerry a few years ago, bringing up the fact that Cheney voted against funding for the same weapons systems he criticized Kerry for opposing and reminding Zell that the president has called Iraq an "occupation" four times) and making him look like a bitter, rigidly inflexible old man. Greenfield ended the interview wondering about backlash from the speech while Blitzer asked Zell why he was so unreasonably angry. Apparently Chris Matthews eviscerated Zell just minutes later. The media's getting sick of these guys, and swing voters who tuned in tonight -- the voters who don't mind either candidate and just haven't decided who to vote for -- are going to find themselves turned off by the Republican's brutality.

Tomorrow night, I have no doubt Bush will attempt to be positive, hopeful and even uplifting. But tonight, on their last chance to take on Kerry, they roared too loud and I think it hurt everybody's ears. Voters aren't always informed, but they're almost always decent and they well know that no party's candidate is that singularly wrong, exclusively evil, and determined to bring America to its knees. The right insisted on a caricature of Kerry too satanic for any reasonable person to believe, and that dissonance will say all that needs to be said. The media responded with unexpected anger (though they originally planned to respond with almost all right-wing guests) and the moderates (like McCain) condemned the vituperation. The meme is out: tonight, the Republicans went too far.

I don't know. I try to be objective about these things, as anti-Bush as I am. But doesn't Zell--and the crowd's reaction to Zell--make them all look like a pack of crazies?

REALITY RESUMES THURSDAY: As school begins, and I get a heaping helping of basic science. Biochem. Microbiology. Genetics. Histology. Woof.

So: another random points post. Like talking about how the Bush twins were so terrible and in-jokey tonight. And how cringe-inducing Arnold's references were. Did he say the phrase "girlie-men"? Isn't that from people parodying him, and not from Arnold proper? I missed the Mike Steele speech, which Dean said was really choice. Laura was as wooden as ever. I guess you really do have to marry your opposite to get a chance at the big presidential brass ring.

A preview of the Olympics stat dorkery I want to come up with: alternate ways of calling the "true" winner of the Olympics. Well, it's going to be the US no matter how you do it, but maybe more the "true" results of the Olympics in terms of medal count. One system: a 5-3-1 point system for gold-silver-bronze, and a 3-2-1 that does the same thing. And something that contrasts the actual results with the Bernard-Busse predictions, and maybe the PriceWaterhouseCoopers thing Daniel Gross mentioned in Slate. Bernard and Busse were not as spot on as they were with Sydney, apparently. The question is: how much were they off? And so on. Good old fashioned stats dorkery that I despise in baseball fans but will forgive in my Olympics-love.

So can Dick Cheney stand up?

Anyway: no more posting in the early A.M starting tomorrow. Duty calls.

OR NOT: Maybe I'll just take the night off. And just post a few random things:

--This Israeli spy thing is still at the point where it can't be parsed down into a sentence or so yet. A lot of it seems to rely on the statements of shadowy underworld types. I dunno. It's something I'm going to have to rely on other people to explain it to me, I think, which I know was the conservative defense as to why they dismissed the Plame thing ("It's too complicated!") but this really is complicated.

--The other big winner from the Olympics? Allen Iverson. The guy did everything right, and since I think a lot of the hate on Team USA '04 is from people who just can't stomach Allen Iverson, well they especially can jump up my butt. Where Duncan was being whiny and complaining about FIBA, AI was the one talking about how he was just happy to be there.

And I'm starting to be swayed by the "Larry Brown is actually a charlatan" arguments. Nothing in particular, just people talking about how he was, from the very start, distancing himself from the inevitable Team USA loss.

--Boy--those Republicans sure do hate Michael Moore. This must be all part of the "risky" Rove strategy of casting off the undecideds and appealing only to the base. I guess he must have it all worked out in terms of Republican governors and swing states and everything.

All right--just some babbling on topics I barely understand.

OLYMPICS WRAPUP POST DAY #18: Capsules. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a giant highlight package, but I was emotionally effected by NBC's coverage of the closing ceremonies and especially the little "Best of" clipfests they ran. Probably because I knew what was going on in most of the clips, and I had this sense of this vast drama coming to an end, which is exactly what was happening. Sport is art, to put it Britishly.

Handball, Women's: The Danes and the Koreans were tied after two extra periods, so we went to the shoot out! Which works like a soccer shoot out: 5 open shots on the goal. The Danish goalie came out far from her net and stopped a few. The Korean stayed back and was completely porous and the Danes won.

Handball, Men's: Croatia beat Germany for the gold in a game I think I slept through. Handball--it's EUROTASTIC! So while people can speculate about how good we Americans would be in handball if we bothered to play it, it's still too European in some inexplicable way (because it's indoors and we don't need a lot of indoor sports? because they don't wear pads? Something.) and besides we play a jillion other sports to begin with. Arena football has tapped the potential professional handball niche.

Water Polo, Men's: Hungary beat Serbia in a contest I had no rooting interest in.

Wrestling, Men's: I don't think this was on tv, and I'm sorry it wasn't:

Daniel Cormier went down without a fight this time, and without an Olympic wrestling medal.

Cormier, America's last medal hope in freestyle, couldn't hold a 2-0 overtime lead Sunday and lost the bronze 3-2 to Iran's Ali Reza Heidari in the 211{-pound (96-kg) class.

Heidari's dominance of Cormier was similar to that of last year's world championships, a match that turned ugly when Cormier became enraged at Heidari's on-mat victory celebration and shoved him in the back. After the latest loss, Cormier was left to lash out only at himself.

Maybe it's on something I haven't watched or forgot to tape. Anyway--no freestyle gold for the US of A.

Rhythmic Gymnastics: "Four years after watching her medal hopes end when she lost control of her hoop, two-time world champion Alina Kabaeva from Russia won the rhythmic gymnastics all-around in a rout." And there you are.

Taekwondo: I saw Moon Dae-sung knowck out Alexandros Nikolaidis with a kick to the head that left the stronly pro-Hellas crowd stunned. Taekwondo....it's strange to watch. Most of the time the big kicks don't connect, and you're left with one person holding a slim lead and running around the ring hoping for the time to run out. But then the big kicks do happen sometimes and it's spectacular. The rest of the time is this "Who's going to strike first?" dance that you have to be Pat Croce to appreciate.

Boxing: Andre Ward saved us from total embarassment by getting gold.

Marathon, Men's: Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima (and why he has two names I don't know) was in the lead until he got tackled by a defrocked priest. He managed to pull out a bronze, which was a fabulous acheivement. Meb Keflezighi is now the world's most famous Eritrean-American for taking silver. Italian Stefano Baldini was golden.

Hey--that's about it. The closing ceremony was great--nothing beats watching a Chinese communist party hack wave the Olympic banner for all he's worth, after getting the flag from a stauesque Greek lady in inflated pink pants--and I for one love the symbolism of the multiple nations on the way in, one nation on the way out thing. Graecopop stars mixed with traditional Chinese dancers and it was good. I am full of good will for the noble intentions of the Olympics.

Big stories at the Olympics, thrown up here so I can actually go back to this in 2008 and not be like "Hey--was he/she in Athens?":

Michael Phelps: Golden boy did his job and won eight medals. Thank golly swimming only lasts a week, though.

Hicham El Guerrouj: The master of the mile finally became a big Olympic star, winning the 1,500 and the 5,000. The big star of week two, and would've been the Phelps-like big inescapable star if he was American.

Paul Hamm: Overcame incredible odds just to get into medal range after he fell. Yes, the judges goofed, but that's just part of sports. How many NFL or NBA games are decided on one botched call? Quite a few.

Rulon Gardner: Big winner in taking bronze, due to his humility and his dramatic retirement.

Deena Kastor: Another big winner in taking bronze, though in her case due to coming out of nowhere to win the marathon. This is for my 2008 self: Mizuki Noguchi won gold.

The South African Men's Swimming 4 by 100 Relay Team: For smoking the Australians and the US.

Women's Beach Volleyball: The vulgarly glorious main attraction of the first week of the games.

America's Female Teams: Softball, basketball and soccer gold medals for the women--the soccer being the most impressive. I really wonder if we and China put together world-class teams for 2008, more them than us, because we'll have Wambach then. And if I'm a USA indoor volleyball player, in light of this item and the previous one, I'm wondering what happened to my prestige. Indoor volleyball is in danger of becoming water polo/field hockey obscure to Americans.

Carly Patterson: She won't become a Mary Lou Retton-like legend because she didn't beat the bad old Soviets, or even a Kerri Strug for flying with a busted wing, but somehow performing well when the stakes are low is even more impressive. In some way.

Team China: Made the statement they wanted for 2008, coming in with 32 golds to our 35. Can't we add skateboarding to 2008, so we have some more sports that we're really good at? Either that or we really need to start pushing table tennis around here.

Team Japan: Totally crushed the Bernard-Busse predictions. Judo, women's wrestling, swimming, the gymnastics all-around--one gets the feeling they're getting set for Beijing too.

Team India: Managed a silver in a shooting event. They are apparently not ready for Beijing. But they are sort of inching their way into things, what with Anju Bobby George and with the women's 4x400 team actually making the final.

Kosuke Kitajima & Aaron Peirsol: Yes, Olympic swimming's greatest hate-hate relationship. Only four more years until we hear about ILLEGAL DOLPHIN KICKS! again.

Team Argentina: As Costas pointed out, double golds in the world's two most popular sports, soccer and basketball.

Team Australia: I know there's more valid ways to look at it, but, for me, Australia proved itself to be greatest sporting nation on Earth, in summer games at least. I love how they're competitive in just about every team sport.

Handball, Badminton, Table Tennis: Stories because NBC decided to give them gobs and gobs of coverage. Thank you, NBC

Greece: Oh--and, of course--GREECE! They pulled off a flawless Olympics when I know I thought they couldn't. Excellent job. The opening ceremonies were untoppable.

There's more but I can feel myself reaching for things now--a good time to stop. Next time: medal-based Olympics stat dorkery, if I feel like totally exposing myself to ridicule.

OLYMPICS WRAPUP POST DAY #17: Capsules. I apologize for the crappy post yesterday.

Basketball, Women's: But at least I got to watch this. Lauren Jackson and the basketroos fall to Dawn Staley, Best Face of America, and the rest of them who actually make a commitment to USA basketball and come back for the Olympics and (I think) the major international tournaments. Maybe all the men's team lacks is continuity, because this is an all-star team like the men's team, but they get the job done.

Basketball, Men's: I shouldn't be too hard on the men because they did get the bronze medal job done, and so--since we have gotten bronzes in the past but we've always medalled--they avoid total embarassment.

As as aside: hey, there's a whole lot of Asian cast members on the new NBC show set on the....only.....Asian majority.....state. Yep! Once again, NBC has totally underwhelmed with their attempts to get me to keep watching their stations when the Olympics are done. We have a cop show set in Hawaii, a LAX drama with Heather Locklear (HA!) and Blair Underwood (double HA!) and a Friends spin-off. Meanwhile Bravo has a reality tv show about Miami plastic surgeons and their hideous girlfriends that they keep augmenting. It sounds train-wreck watchable--maybe--but if I have to listen to that girl complain about her boobs being too big one more time....well, I won't have to, 'cause Bravo's done Olympics-wise.

Anyway: We dispatched Lithuania in a workmanlike manner. Argentina dispatched Italy in a workmanlike manner. We should've played them for the gold and gotten trounced in that game instead of the semis, but--whatever. Everybody who took pleasure in rooting against this team can jump up my butt. Hate the NBA if you want to, but these are your people playing out here.

Track & Field: There was a lot of this. We won some relays. The Britons won one. Hicham El Guerrouj continued to be the big story as he took the 5,000 to add to his 1,500. That one Greek relay girl with the thin thin eyebrows--mighty fine. You know the one. And the Russian with the pierced belly button. And Monique Henderson--holy cats. Let's stop here.

Oh, and Team India made the final for the 1,600 relay. They didn't medal, but that's a great result for the world's secondest nation and first crappiest sporting nation. But they can take heart in this result. We're right on schedule for Bombay 2032.

Soccer, Men's: For such a dominant world soccer power, this was Argentina's first gold for soccer and their first gold of any kind in 50 years? It's all right, though, their anthem is like twenty minutes long--if they won too much the entire Olympics would be dragged out for like....twenty minutes. Is that right? Dragged out? I have no idea. U-S-A!

Wrestling: Cael Sanderson took the gold, beating a Korean in a good, competitive match.

Taekwondo: Steven Lopez took gold in a match I am waiting to see right now.

Handball: Women's bronze: Ukraine, continuing their great medal haul this year. Men's bronze: Russia. If you wake up/are awake at 3:45 this morning, you will see live gold medal handball on CNBC. I'll be there. I mean--I'll be watching.

Diving, Men's: The Chinese went gold-silver. SHOCKER SHOCKER SHOCKER shocker.

I think that's it for now. I love the Olympics--but they are wearing me down. Only one day left in what has been overall really good coverage from NBC. Putting on nonstop coverage for two straight weeks is a nice way of making the Olympics special. And there's been so much less jingoism this time. It's still American athletes we're covering, but that's what everybody does. And the Inspiring Stories were restricted to primetime and even then they didn't take away too much. In fact, I think the gymnasts took most of the personal stories away--I don't think there've been very many at all for the track people. Hey, way it should be.

OLYMPICS WRAPUP POST DAY #16: Capsules. But not much tonight, I want to wake up in time to watch the USA vs. Australia for the gold medal.

Basketball, Men's: Because the men's team isn't playing for the gold after losing to Argentina on Friday. If you bought a Lebron James USA basketball jersey, I blame you.

Track & Field: We botch the handoff on the 400-meter relay and were dq'ed. Jamaica took gold. Russians swept the long jump. We have a guy who wears a helmet when he pole vaults and whom the announcers call "Crash" who got the silver behind another American.

Wrestling & Taekwondo: I'm still going through my tape.

Hell--this post is pathetic tonight. I just want to get up early enough to watch basketball, and I don't think that's too much to ask. So--good night.