WEEKLY WHINE
We here at GoobNet like to make jokes about things that are going on in the news. That means that we don’t know how to react to things that are obviously not funny, like what happened to Nodar Kumaritashvili.
However, everyone’s reaction to what happened to him is funny.
Everyone clear on that? We are not going to make jokes about Nodar. Okay? We are going to make jokes about everyone else.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, it is time to assail the Vancouver Organising Committee and the International Luge Federation for their unfeeling, unthinking, and inconsistent responses. They have been not only moronic, but oxymoronic. They have spent the last couple of days insisting that the track was safe all along, but they still installed new walls, changed the starting locations, and resurfaced the ice. They have claimed that Nodar’s crash was due to his own inexperience, ignoring the fact that it was his 27th run on that very same course and that previous crashes on the course have involved lugers of all skill levels.
Even the changes that were made are wrong. The steel poles that lined the track after turn 16 have now been covered – by painted plywood. That will allow an out of control luger to smash into wood instead. Organisers have clearly been outthought by blog commenters; if a guy who calls himself “dennisons_wrong_foot” recognises that the track should be enclosed and FIL does not, the sport of luge is in the wrong hands.
But it’s not sufficient for us simply to call them out on it. We must also take their oxymoronicity to absurd extremes by showing you what would happen if their approach was taken to improve safety in all other Winter Olympic sports.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration has discovered that the stones used in curling are heavy. We have therefore decided that in all future curling matches, the stones may not be thrown. Instead, they must be slid across the ice, and curling teams will be permitted to modify the stones’ travel only by sweeping the ice in front of them.
FIL president Josef Fendt tried snowboarding the other day, and he fell over. Therefore, we are improving control, and therefore safety, by dividing the board into two long, narrow components. Each foot will be attached to one of these components, which will run parallel to the direction of travel.
Freestyle skiing includes the disciplines of moguls, aerials, and ski cross. Mogulers move down the hill at a high speed, so to improve safety in this discipline, speed bumps will be added to the course. Aerialers often find themselves in midair, so we will make it safer for them by requiring the ground to move up whenever the aerialers are in the air. Ski crossers often crash into each other, which is fine, because the occasional crash is nothing to worry about. After all, when FIL president Josef Fendt crashes into people in the hallway, only his pride is injured.
Figure skaters often fall on the ice, which is not only hard, but cold as well. To improve safety, figure skaters will now wear helmets and pads. They may optionally add face masks to their helmets, but if any figure skater is observed pulling the face mask of an opponent, that skater will incur a penalty of fifteen yards.
The most dangerous part of ice hockey, of course, is the fighting. Therefore, when starting fights, all ice hockeyers must wear boxing gloves underneath their ice hockey gloves.
The skates used in this sport have sharp blades. However, each set of skates also comes with protective covers for each blade. Each competitor must now skate with these covers on.
If speed skating on a long track is already safe, it must be even safer on a short track.
It has come to our attention that downhill skiers can also travel at high speeds. Luckily they never veer off course by accident. But we should lower the skiers’ speeds anyway, just in case. Therefore we are starting a programme in which we use explosives to blow off the front of each mountain face. The remaining terrain will be much flatter than before.
What are those guys doing skiing around with rifles strapped to their backs, anyway? Instead of trying to shoot targets with bullets, they should have to flip cards into a hat. Each missed card results in a two hundred metre penalty lap, except for the ace of spades, which counts double.
The three most dangerous parts of cross country skiing are the poles, which could impale a competitor if you are skiing too close; the skis, which can be used to slice other peoples’ legs; and the snow, which has often been found to be cold. Therefore, cross country skiing will no longer use poles, skis, or snow. Instead, competitors will wear a type of shoe that has rubber soles and provides protection and comfort when partaking in athletic competitions. While wearing this type of shoe [called a “sneaker”], they will user their legs to push against the ground and propel themselves forward.
Ski jumping is already perfectly safe. After all, the Agony of Defeat guy walked away, didn’t he?
The safety of Nordic combiners is being compromised by the long delays between the cross country skiing portion and the ski jumping portion of the event. Therefore, in an effort to maintain Nordic combiners’ attention levels, the Nordic combined is being combined, literally: the course will end at a cliff.
Did you know that every skeletoner who has ever crashed did so whilst facing forward and lying on their stomachs? From this point forward, all skeletoners are to lie on their backs.
The safest bobsleds in the world are those on the Matterhorn at Disneyland. So, we are taking lessons from them. First, bobsledders will not be permitted to begin moving until all participants are buckled into their seats. Signs reading “You must be at least this tall to ride the sleds” will be placed at each starting position. The runners on each sled will be replaced with wheels, and the ice track will be replaced with a train track. Finally, we will begin immediately with installing an Audio Animatronic Yeti on each bobsled track around the world.
PLEASE SEND ALL POORLY PLANNED BUSINESS PROPOSALS TO <GOOBNET@GOOBNET.NET>
© 2018 GOOBNET ENTERPRISES, INC [WHICH DOESN’T ACTUALLY EXIST HOWEVER]
THIS FILE ACCURATE AS OF: THU 06 DEC 2018 – 06:34:56 UTC · GENERATED IN 0.002 SECONDS
