On the importance of writing. From A.S. Byatt's Possession (an ingenious novel), here is a fair description of myself: ...when I told her of my great desire to write, and the great absence in my daily existence of things of interest, events or passions, which might form the subject matter of poetry of fiction, that it was an essential discipline to write down whatever there was in my life to be noticed, however usual or dull it might seem to me. This daily recording, she said, would have two virtues. It would make my style flexible and my observation exact for when the time came...when something momentous should cry out...to be told. And it would make me see that nothing was in fact dull in itself, nothing was without its own proper interest. So there it is. Validation for this blog. And "jocularly" is a word. I know that because I looked it up.

I don't normally use this blog as a platform for my political beliefs (being an apolitical person, it would go against my nature) nor do I care to use it as a soapbox to pontificate about all the injustice in the world and how we need to take action to change it. However, every so often, I do discover an issue for which I'm quite passionate and feel the need to communicate my viewpoint and criticism. Case in point--the ludicrous and biased scoring of the U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team. As a former gymnast and avid fan of the sport, I make it a point to watch every meet available to me as a viewer. I entered the gymnastics world at the age of 3. At the age of 8, Mary Lou was taking the gymnastics world by storm and became my hero. That same year, a movie about Nadia Comaneci was released and I was obsessed with the sport. I have a long personal history with the sport and an even longer history as a keen observer and supporter. Gymnasts are by far the strongest, most talented athletes in the history of sports. No sport is more demanding or as debilitating as that of gymnastics. Gymnasts follow the strictest of diets, train the longest and most grueling hours, do things with their bodies that don't seem humanly possibly, and then are judged most harshly. Yes, judging for gymnastics has always been ridiculously strict. But this year, it is absurd. It is as though the "non-biased" judges have decided that if you're not Chinese, you don't stand a chance. Let's observe: The women's team final occurred last Wednesday. We had a couple of hiccups that caused us to trail the Chinese by 2.475 points. Unfortunately my girl, Alicia Sacramone,couldn't get it together and fell twice--once on beam and once on floor--dragging the entire team down. Still, the Chinese had their flaws too. And looking at the numbers, the U.S. came out ahead of the Chinese on vault and beam (despite Sacramone's fall, due to a fall on the Chinese team). Yet--and I'm not just being sour grapes--it seems as though the deductions for the Americans were far greater than those of the Chinese for the same if not worse mistakes. I could go on and on about how when our girl fell, they deducted .9 points as opposed to a deduction of .85 points for the Chinese girl's fall. But I must move on. Friday night's individual all around was a nail biter. Nastia performed flawless routines, legs together, toes pointed, graceful, stuck landings, etc. Yet she could not get out of the rut of the biased judging. They awarded the Chinese much higher scores on vault and bars despite the fact that she clearly (even to the untrained eye) made many more mistakes than Nastia. Our girls more than deserved the gold and silver for the event and I thought maybe the judges had redeemed themselves. Boy, was I wrong. The event finals have been absolutely appalling. Sunday night, my girl Alicia, performed 2 beautiful vaults with the slightest of hops on each of the landings. The deductions should have been .1 point, .3 at the very most. Fei Cheng, China's sweetheart couldn't even land on her feet during her second vault. She landed on her knees! How she squeezed a bronze medal out of that has me flabbergasted. And last night was the final straw. Nastia Luikin performed better than she ever performed on bars. The tiniest of mistakes occurred for her on the top bar, as she teetered forward slightly in a handstand position. She stuck her landing. The numbers came back. She was tied with the under aged He Kexin, yet ranked second. The controversial "tie-breaking" rule had kicked in and knocked Nastia out of a place she more than deserved. There shouldn't have even been a tie in the first place. Kexin bobbled twice in her routine and took and extra step on the landing, yet got the same great score as Nastia's nearly perfect performance. Does anyone see a trend? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but what I'm seeing is a clear cut case of anti-American bias/pro-Chinese bias along with some corrupt judging. It wouldn't be the first time a judging scandal rocked the Olympics. Remember the 2002 figure skating scandal? Perhaps in a few months, maybe even years, the IOC will be brought to justice and Nastia will receive the gold medal that is rightfully hers.