hosting the olympics is a pain in the a**. you have to spend ooodles of money preparing your bid, political capital trying to get your long-suffering population to get behind the idea (or at least some portion of your population), promise the IOC all sorts of venues and infrastructure you can ill-afford, move homeless people / alter regional topography to give those venues & that infrastructure birth, make your population somewhat presentable, promise all kinds of security that god herself couldn't provide, wine & dine IOC officials ... and all that before you even win the bid.
winning the bid is a huge nightmare: everyone has some sort of diametrically opposed opinion about your hosting of the olympics. it's a great boon to the economy or it's a money suck used on frivolity when there are urgent human needs to be met. or it's some local political hack trying to bump up his or her profile. regardless of whether you want the olympics in your town or not, hosting the olympics (even trying to host the olympics) is a colossal migraine. plus, you open yourself up to massive criticism -- who needs that? what's wrong with just slipping below the radar? do governments really want to open themselves up to that kind of scrutiny? alas.
but, if you do get to host the olympics, you get to have mascots!! i love mascots! there's nothing more adrenaline-pumping than a human being sweating it out in a plush costume, while acting so goofy. funny stuff. but i am sort of crushing on the vancouver 2010 winter olympic mascots: sumi, quatchi & miga. they don't represent anything particularly canadian. i guess sasquatch is canadian. maybe they are japanese-canadian. anyway, they are hella cute!!
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