On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for August 22nd
Olympian Clown Camp
Oh, good. The Olympics started yesterday in Brazil. The drama. The excitement. The world’s best athletes try to win gold. U.S. wants to have more gold than those pesky commies, China, and ex-commies, but still our main adversary, Russia. Hope Russia doesn’t cheat like last time.
The Olympics are a deplorable event. It displaces the poor for unusable infrastructure. The money generated goes to businesses and the Olympic committee, rather than people experiencing poverty. It plunges the city into billions of dollars of debt, and all but one of the Olympics, Barcelona 1992, makes the city worse.
First off, how does a city even get into bidding for the Olympics? Well, a bunch of wealthy business owners get together with a bunch of government muckety-mucks, and they spend the city’s funds to entice the Olympic committee to want to host those doggone games there. You have to spend billions of dollars to be told no possibly.
They need to prove they can build the necessary pavilions where these games can be held. They need plumbing, sewage, housing for the athletes, pools, courts, and other buildings. Most of these structures are one-use only, so this massive structure will remain unusable and of no use to anyone afterwards.
Crime and poverty will need to be addressed. Not the long-term solution kind of way, but the hurried swept under the rug kind of way. The TV can’t be showing this horrible city where most of the population lives in complete poverty and shit, and nothing that the Olympics are doing will benefit them at all. So move them and lock them up until NBC is out of view.
Then the city gets the Olympics, so they have to spend a lot of money changing the entire city’s infrastructure to host a 14-day event. This isn’t chump change; it’s not money waiting around to be used for the Olympics only. This money comes from somewhere. It comes from taxes and business loans.
In U.S. dollars, Sydney spent 4.7 billion
Athens spent 9 billion (total has never been verified)
Beijing spent 42 billion
London spent 11 billion
Rio has spent $15 billion so far and will spend more.
Rio is bankrupt already. Brazil is bankrupt and dealing with one of its worst recessions yet. The president is being impeached and removed from office. It needs money. It has a massive poverty and crime problem. They displaced thousands of poor people to build their Olympic village. Rio spent 15 billion dollars, and they have sewage-infested water, body parts washing ashore, athletes getting kidnapped, and housing that is made shittier than the huts in the surrounding favelas.
The only people that make anything off of this are the businesses that made it, the TV networks that cover it and make billions off of advertising revenue, and the Olympic committee.
The athletes get fucked because, other than a few athletes who get huge endorsements, and mostly those are from the good old USA, it is not lucrative to be really good at fencing. There is a sense of country pride, and even a style of fighting with other countries to send athletes who can win. This includes doping and spending tax money on state-of-the-art training facilities in countries that could use the money on better things.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a Cold War battle on the Olympic fields.
There is no compensation from the Olympic Committee for anyone to compete at the Olympics.
The real losers are the people from the host country. They are displaced, brutally policed, hidden from the world, and now live in a country billions of dollars poorer. That takes a lot of hope away. Some economists believe the 2004 Athens Olympics had a direct correlation to its failing austerity. The Olympics bankrupted the very country where this international event began.
How do we meditate on all of this? Stop watching it, social media-ing about it, and don’t support the Olympics in any way. The bad outweighs the good by a truckload of gold medals.
If you really love Olympic sports, support them locally. Some gymnasts and swimmers compete for their parents every weekend. There are fencing and track & field meets that have empty stands. Just because you’re in America doesn’t mean you have only to watch the ball sports. You can go to any event you want. You don’t need the Olympics to watch diving or synchronized swimming.
The Olympics are a corrupt nationalistic scam. Just watching it means you want poor people to suffer and rich people to keep getting richer. You only root for it because you are a patriotic drone.
Prayer
Zeus,
Here is a sacrifice of 100 bulls,
So that my city-state,
Can dominate the other city-states,
For no other reason than to let me and my rich friends bask in our ego.
Let the athletes represent us,
But not need any compensation,
But for the logos on their breast,
And the name of our city-state,
So all can look on with jealousy.
When the games are here,
Please take these sacrificed oxen,
To hide the unsightly, the ugly, and the downtrodden,
So we look successful.
Amen.
Craft
All of these sports and games that are happening in the Olympics can be done in your backyard or a nearby park:
Javelin – throw a long stick. Whoever throws it farther wins.
Pole Vault – Take a longer stick, and whoever can pole vault over the highest fence with razor wire wins.
Diving – Pick a nearby bridge and jump off of it, and if you can get back to land without dying, hurting yourself, and coming down with a gnarly infection, you win.
Boxing – See how long you can engage with a cop at fist to cuffs before they reach for one of their many weapons.
Judo – Go down to the local strip club or discoteque and see how fast you can pin a bouncer to the ground—the quickest wins.
Golf – Don’t worry, we won’t be using the waste of land that is a golf course. You will be teeing off, hitting, and putting through the city. Instead of sand traps and the rough, you will be dealing with buildings, cars, people, babies, and the cops.
Hurdles – Pick the densest residential neighborhood and run through the backyards, hurtling all the fences people put up to close them off from their neighbors.
Weightlifting – Easy, pick up heavy things, and whoever lifts the heaviest thing wins.
Gymnastics – Tumble in a crowded park or bus, and whoever gets the most oohs and ahs wins.
Equistian – Steal a police horse, and whoever keeps the horse the longest wins.