21st Century Schizoidman

OWN THE ODIUM

   Greetings from the Prime Minister

  Dear Canadian Voter,

  I, Stephen Harper, just wanted to let you know what a wonderful 17 days I've just had out here in Vancouver. Aside from some inclement weather, the odd glitch here and there, and a dead Georgian luger, the 2010 Olympic Winter Games have been a rousing success for Canada. As you've seen, I've had a very enjoyable time taking in many of the events, and watching Canadian athletes do our country proud. 

  Now, aren't you happy I prorogued that dreary and annoying Parliamentary session? Many critics say I did it to avoid Opposition scrutiny of our policy concerning the handover of Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees to the Afghan government, and the alleged torture of those detainees. Nothing could be further from the truth! No, no. my friends. My sole motivation was to make sure you could watch the stirring spectacle of the Olympics without being distracted by a bunch of boring opposition politicians. 

  Which brings me to another charge by opposition critics. They claim I used the Olympics as one big political photo-op to boost my party's sagging fortunes in the opinion polls. And that I my main focus was not to cheer on our athletes but to get as many pictures of myself with them on TV, in the papers and on the web. What total bunk! 

  I can assure you I never ever touched any athletes, unless of course they invited me to. The Canadian women hockey players actually asked me to come celebrate with them, as long as I brought along some stogies, champagne, and of course, beer. I made sure the beer was Molson's of course.I'm perfectly happy if foreign companies want to buy out Canadian firms, but I'll be damned if our underage girl puck-chasers drink anything but Canada's finest brew(even if it is partly owned by Coors!).

    As for the men's curling team, I felt I deserved to be on the podium with them, since we'd pumped so much government money into that thing. If our slogan for these Olympics was Own The Podium, then I feel I have every right to stand on it!

    But now, it's back to Ottawa and all those pesky, annoying questions day in and day out about Afghanistan, the economy, ministerial outbursts at airports. I know you're all as tired of it as I am.

    If I were you, I'd just switch of the TV, download some porn or videogames on the computer, and just ignore the background static that is the daily news cycle for a while. It's all just going to be really boring shit anyway. Instead, just think back to the fine job our young athletes did, and remember  it was your Conservative government, which means me, who made it all possible.

   Fondest regards,

   Steve

TRANSLATING TIGER

  Hello Ladies and Gentlemen.

  Thank you for giving the opportunity to stand before you today and use all the methods my image consultants have taught me. I come before you trying to look convincingly contrite and penitent. They tell me I'm supposed to look really grave and serious, and trying not to move my head too much while I gaze directly at the camera, otherwise I'll look shifty-eyed - rather like a philandering husband who's lying to his wife about all his affairs.

   See video of Tiger's "apology" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6jSHBHRIBM

   Of course, if I can shed a few tears it'll be a bonus, but it won't be absolutely necessary. However, just to be sure, I've brought this onion along with me, in case I feel like I'm tanking up here and the tears might save the day.

   Anyway, onto my apology, which I really hope can save my endorsement deals, and keep people from heckling me on the course whenever I decide to return to the PGA tour. I don't know about you, but I find it really hard to make a decent putt when somebody's calling me a whoremongering sex addict in a really loud voice. It's really murder on my short game, and I implore everyone to find it in their hearts not to do it.

  Oh, shit ... I almost forgot ... I really hope this apology saves my marriage to Elin. (Sorry, I accidentally folded over that part of my cheat sheet. Ha!! Get it? Cheat Sheet!!)  She's really a great girl, even if she's not that great in the sack, and a little boring. But what do you expect? She is Norwegian, after all.

  Still, she is the mother of my children - well, at least some of them, anyway. And by the way, all that stuff about her trying to hit me with that golf club? Not true. She thought she saw a fly on the windshield of my SUV and was trying to swat it before it scratched the finish on the hood. And thank God she's decided not to get a divorce. I really don't want to lose half my stuff!!

    Now, I'm perfectly aware of the questions you want to ask, even though I have no intention of answering any of them. What was I thinking? Why did I have multiple sexual liaisons with so many women?

   Well, it all goes back to my mother's religious instruction when I was a child. You see, mom taught me that in order to attain Nirvana, I must let go of all craving and desire. And I found that having multiple orgasms with as many women as I possibly can, especially ones I'm not married to, was a really good way to do it.  Believe me, once you've done that, you don't have much desire left, except to have a couple of tacos and take a nap. 

   But now, my mother tells me this is a total misinterpretation of the Buddha's teachings. And she's also reminded me Buddha expressly forbids adultery. To that, all I can say is sorry Mom, I'll remember to take better notes in the future. I hope that'll also come in handy when I go back to sex addiction therapy.

   Finally, I'm hoping you can all believe in me again, and I can be the hero I once was to you all. OK, so it is kind of weird that in order to be a hero, all you have to do is be really good at hitting a little white ball into a tin cup. But since it's the only thing I'm really good at, aside from endorsing products, it'll have to do.

   Thank you very much for listening.

KEEPING THE WINTER GAMES WINTRY

    INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

MEMO

 Subject: Unacceptable Length of Winter Olympic Parade of Nations

  It has come to our attention that the Parade of Nations portion of last night's opening ceremonies in Vancouver took over an hour to complete, making a generally dull opening ceremonies even duller and losing us valuable TV ratings in the process. We cannot have this, otherwise we will not be able to sell our broadcast rights for the obscene amount of money we've come to expect next time around. If you don't think that's important, think about the austerity measures we'll have to implement. For example,  next time, IOC members may have to stay at 4-star hotels rather than 5-star hotels. Unthinkable!!!

 After all, NBC stands to lose a cool $200 million on Vancouver and even more on London in 2012, so we cannot afford to be boring. Pace, people, pace. That's what we're looking for!!! Something perhaps the length of Twitter tweet? 140 characters, that's it!!!

 So, somehow, we must pare down the number of nations in the Winter Olympic  parade. After all, what the hell are Ghana, Mexico, Australia and South Africa doing there, anyway? We thought we'd narrow the field down by only allowing nations with a legitimate shot at a medal to march into the stadium. But now we've got another idea that will work much better. At the next Winter Olympic Games we shall show each national team this picture and ask them what it is.   

  A. Curling broom

  B.Woman's grooming device

  C. Windshield scraper

  Those who answer C. will get to march in the parade and participate in the games. Those who answer A. will get to participate in the games but not march. Those who answer B. will get driven to the airport and sent home. We trust that will speed things up. 

  Next time, we might also consider awarding the games to a location here it actually snows during the winter rather than rains, and temperatures sometimes dip below freezing. To those that have criticized us on this point this time around we can only say "Oops!"

  However, in the meantime, enjoy the Vancouver games and remember our new motto: Faster, Higher, More Expensive.

  Regards,

  The IOC