Is It A Cold, Or Is It Allergies?

Nope: it's Olympic Fever!

(Bet you thought I was going to link to that Times story from a few weeks back? Oops--guess I just did. Rats.)

Anyway, we've been trying to enjoy the Games, though it's been a challenge.

As you can see, the MacBook is our viewing medium, which has been great for months (years?) now: no bulky thing taking up space, needing to be dusted, being a pain when we move. Most everything we like (from the Daily Show, Colbert Report, and 30 Rock to Mad Men and The Wire, to name some current / all-time favorites) is online or on iTunes, and is either free or reasonably priced.

But that damned NBC!

Oh, sorry: what I meant to say was that the Olympics, alas, are being withheld by the jerks at NBC. Now it's true that there's an unprecedented amount of stuff they are letting us watch online, but all the hot stuff (gymnastics, swimming, beach volleyball (oh yeah!)) is TV only.

It's tough, though, these days, to pull something like that off. As Brian Stelter reported the other day, a lot of the opening ceremony was leaked before its official, legal, US showing--a showing which was, stupidly and insanely, 12 hours after the ceremony was over.

In the spirit of those brave folks willing to breach NBC's 20th Century attitude, we decided to go ahead and watch as much of the hot stuff as we could, and as close to live as possible.


And it's working, more or less. Found a TV station that's streaming free live footage of the Games. There are just two downsides: 1) there's no way to choose which of the--what, like 5,000?--sports you see; you just have to watch what they want to show. And 2) it's in Arabic . . .

But for now, at least, I'll happily watch Al-Riyadiah's Olympic coverage (unless you have any ideas, reader?): it's live, it's online, and so far it's the only thing I've found to treat my symptoms.