The Winter Olympics: Beijing propaganda edition started last night. Well, the sports did. Not the Opening Ceremony. I know I "shouldn't" be watching, and I do intend to avoid the cultural stuff, but I'm genuinely passionate about Winter Sports (for... Reasons), so I intend to watch my country's athletes in action, where possible, and when I'm not doing other things (it's in a good time zone for me, so help me, lol).

Anyway, I watched the "mixed doubles" Curling last night, because it was the first sport event on. Australia was playing the USA. Round robin. I don't really give a fuck about curling (was much more interesting live, in person, anyway...), but I noticed something rather interesting, about the team dynamics...

In the American team, they were a couple, and both the guy and girl did an equal share of the work. The throw (or whatever the technical term is) of the rock, and the sweeping, or "curling"... They took it in terms. Naturally, this meant that the man did not get so worn out...

Why this was interesting? The contrast to the Australian team. I watched the whole thing. The Australian woman only threw maybe... 5 times, the whole game, and only swept once. She let the man do literally all the hard work, and spent the entire time yelling instructions. She then complained *when each "rock" didn't go exactly as planned...

She got have helped. She chose not to. And then yelled and screamed the entire time, while grinning from ear to ear. As a result, the bloke was exhausted, naturally enough, because he had to do all the work. There was no "rule", at play, here. No reason for it. She just chooses not to actually do the physical work. So naturally, they fucking lost. Right at the last minute (last rock), too...

And yet, when they were interviewed before and afterwards, she did all the talking, and the bragging. About "how they should have won", and "how it could have gone better". The bloke was almost too exhausted to talk.

It was made very apparent, before and afterwards, that they were not a couple, and that the bloke may well have been a fag. Amusingly enough, especially with how "whipped" he was...

His dad was providing the commentary, on the TV. I don't think he was terribly impressed with what went down...

Anyway, I just thought that was utterly symbolic of the relationship between most (adult) men and women, in Australia right now: The woman yells and screams, and then complains when it "isn't perfect", and the man does all the actual work, in this case literally. I grew up in that sort of environment. Let me tell you, it isn't healthy. And yet, my parents are somehow still together, so lord knows, maybe some men are just... Meant for that role. :-/

Anyway, they (the Aussie curling pair) are playing again today, twice, so it will be interesting to see if he continues to put up with the humiliation, or whether they implode, spectacularly, on mic and camera, lol... Because I know I wouldn't put up with that, for an entire week, if it was me, and if doing the work of two humans was enough to leave me nearly fainting by the end of each "end", lol...