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Friends, students, former lovers of our dear Nicole, this is our moral imperative! Jimmy Choo wedding shoes or bust!

Chinese Olympic Gymnasts 'Like Robots', says FIG President

Talk about racist! Orientalism lives on!!! Clearly, 'these Asians' are robots as they're naturally good with sewing machines and mathematics and manufacturing Nike shoes! Grr!

Sorry, Mr Grandi. I've never seen robots move as gracefully and photograph so well like these:

Compared to craptastic Romanian gymnastics (of recent years, at least):

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3 March 2009
Grandi: Chinese Olympic Gymnasts 'Robots'
From International Gymnast Online

FIG President Bruno Grandi criticized the Chinese gymnastics team and said there was "strong circumstantial evidence" of age falsification at the 2008 Olympic Games.

In an interview with German gymnastics magazine "Leon," Grandi said the members of the gold medal-winnning Chinese team in Beijing lacked aesthetic elegance.

"The Chinese gymnasts were robots," he said. "From a geometrical point of view the moves were very well done, but compare with the way [Nastia] Liukin performs a single movement with artistry. You can see how she continues to move through to the end point. The other is a perfect geometric figure. But a Code [of Points] will never be able to completely reflect aesthetic moment."

In Beijing, the Chinese women took its first ever Olympic gold medal in the team competition. He Kexin won the gold on uneven bars, and Yang Yilin won the bronze medal in the all-around and on uneven bars. Veteran Cheng Fei won bronze medals on vault and balance beam.

Grandi said it was conceivable that China had cheated in Beijing, alluding to the accusations that He and Yang were under the minimum age of 16.

"There was strong circumstantial evidence, certainly, but these investigations are not my job," said Grandi, in his fourth term as president of the International Gymnastics Federation. "I'm not the police or Interpol. If I find that there was cheating, then I can act."

After the Olympics concluded, the International Olympic Committee called for an independent investigation into China's six female artistic gymnasts and sought documentation of their birthdates. The IOC cleared the Chinese team after finding no evidence of age falsification.

"I had everything sent to the IOC and the IOC has carried out its investigations and the figures were the same," Grandi said. "The IOC gave us its findings, and we checked them and there was nothing. When people on the Internet find fake documents, you need to legally prove that these are fake, and that's not my job. I have to respect the documents that the Chinese government gives me. What else should I do - declare war on China?"

Resonance

I was reading Ben Okri's Booker Prize-winning yarn In Arcadia (2002), when I had to stop to reread and reread a passage that so thoroughly struck me:

"If you believe in something, your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naivete will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means that you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, till only the skeleton of your dream is left...

The world--which is to say the powers that be--would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn't believe in it at all.

That's the world. Take it from me."

It struck me because I can relate to it, having experienced recent loss and disappointment myself. And it struck me because it's a reminder of a world as it shouldn't be, of a world as it shouldn't seem. To me, or to anyone.

No, Mr Narrator. That is not how it is. Existential moping is so 1999.

I always find it special when our media, while pushing us outwards, taking us to new places and surprising us with the unfamiliar, can just as quickly shift trajectory and draw us back inwards, holding up a mirror and asking us how we see ourselves. Our media are part of our very own 'working through', as we confront our fears (just as my tarrying with In Arcadia) and affirm our longings (just as I silently applauded Isla Fisher's testimonial in Confessions of a Shopaholic).

So when was the last time you were struck by a film, or a book, or a play, and why? :)