Folks, I have to say, the Olympics depress me like no other event. The Oscars, Grammies, Golden Globes... they may well be overhyped, overbotoxed, oversilliconed, oversexed, overcaded, overpublicized, overspent, overdone, they may well be put on solely for the self gratification of a couple of fortuitous in-bred hicks with affinities for backbeats, they might well be the catalyst for this, my most self-conscious run-on sentence that I've ever had the gall to write... they still don't depress me quite like the Olympics.

The sight of people my own age... YOUNGER. The sight of them accomplishing, striving, excelling... It's too much. I look at my two hands and I think "What have I done that's amazing?". I look the athletes, the writers... the violinists. The greats.

I don't like being mediocre. This isn't ego talking. I don't want to be 'better' than anyone else. I just want to be better that what I am right now. Who I am right now.

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The other day, I went for a walk in a meadow I'd not visited for some time. The grass still smelled as sweet, the trees were just as majestic, the paths familiar. I found a pair of tarnished white socks cast off to one side of the path, and remembered why I stopped going to the park. All the squirrels ran away.

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"Comrade! Turn back the pony invasion fleet! The Christians are not dancing! I repeatski! Not Dancing!"