Saturday 2 August 2008

God Giveth & God Telleth You To Take A Hike

Due to the time difference between the South coast of England and Beijing, the Olympics will be played out to the UK insomniacs and people who crazily follow the 'early to bed early to rise' model of sleeping. Personally i follow the 'late to bed and prompt use of the snooze button followed by a mad dash to get ready and then walking around on auto-pilot until the 5th cup of coffee kicks in around mid-morning' model.
My Olympics will then be the edited highlights in the evening which is not a bad thing, i will miss all the waiting around between events usually filled by banal chatter between someone who once came 7th in the 200 metre breaststroke and Michael Johnson wearing those shiny shirts he has a preference for and discussing how we can't pass a relay baton for toffee.
One thing we will still have foisted upon us and which annoys me beyond distraction, are the athletes who thank God for whatever colour medal they end up with.
The general gist is that God is sitting upstairs mulling over a long list of athletes and deciding, 'That Usain Bolt is a nice fella and all, but Tyson Gay is kind to his mum and there was that time he saved that vole. Gay it is then.'
If this continues i want to hear from the athletes who God decided are not worthy of receiving a medal.
I want to see the bitter 200m runner shaking a fist up at the sky and blaming God for their disappointing 6th place in the qualifying heats.
Make no mistake, if you win, God did it because he had decided that you are a worthy Olympian, if you don't win it's not because you skipped all those training runs when it was a bit cold and raining, its because God doesn't like you and thinks you are a bit of a git.
Yep, make no bones about it, if you leave Beijing empty handed it's because God really screwed you over this time. Maybe you should try one of the other deities next time, Muhammad seems to do quite well for the Ethiopian long distance runners so maybe he has an opening for someone in the One Person Dinghy, Laser Class. Might be worth a try.

5 comments:

iMuslim said...

"Muhammad seems to do quite well for the Ethiopian long distance runners"

Umm, a little confused, Lucy...

1) Muhammed is not a deity, but a Prophet. Yes, some Muslims pray to him as an intercessor (though others, like myself don't believe that is valid form of worship - anyhoo).

2) Aren't Ethiopians mainly Christian?? Although I guess there could be Muslim Ethipians...

Anonymous said...

About.com put the Ethiopian religion demographic as Muslim 45%-50%,
Ethiopian Orthodox 35%-40%,
animist 12%, other 3%-8%.

http://atheism.about.com/library/world/AJ/bl_EthiopiaIndex.htm

Falling on a bruise said...

iMuslim, i wouldn't know a diety from a phrophet from a God if one came up and sat on me. I couldn't even tell you what Jesus is and i'm CoE. I apologise for promoting Muhammed though.

I actually did origianlly say the Kenyan long distance runners but Ethiopia had a higher percentage of Muslims so i changed it.
I googled it and the US Dept of State/Bureau of African Affairs/ Ethiopian page gives the Sunni Muslim's at 45-50%. If it is wrong i blame George Bush.

iMuslim said...

I have learnt something new today! Maybe I am getting confused with another African country, but for some reason I had it in my head that Ethiopia was predominantly Christian. Strange!

Falling on a bruise said...

It probably is imuslim, this info is from the US Government and we all know how reliable that has been of late. cough-cough-WMDs-cough.