And welcome to the Winter Olympics, where we've had an enthralling opening couple of days, beginning with the men's blood-tests, which have been downhill all the way, with a dozen contestants eliminated, writes Kevin Myers.
One athlete blamed the positive test on a pedicure a year ago. Another blamed the fohn. Another said it his toothpaste. A fourth said it was his time of the month.
A fifth said - ah well, you can guess the rest: proof, yet again, of how the true Olympian spirit lives on in the test-tubes and the laboratories of the world! All talk today is on yesterday's polar triathlon, in which contestants were expected to wrestle a walrus into submission, pluck its whiskers, then swim a mile beneath an ice-sheet, before finally using the whiskers to floss the teeth of a polar bear. However, not merely did the reigning champion in this event, Knut Fittelikkir, fail the blood test, so too did all the walruses. The polar bear ate the first three blood-testers who approached it.
Favourite for the ladies' uphill bobsleigh is Ulrika Reindeerdottir, whom nature has particularly favoured by giving her four legs and some antlers - highly unusual in the female of the species in the animal world, and relatively rare even among human athletes. Those antlers, and the aggressive manner with which she wielded them, have been a primary reason why she did not fail her blood-test, the handful of surviving testers having decided that since their job was to take blood, not give it, they didn't oblige her to take the test.
Norway's prime contender for the 100km anvil-carrying marathon over broken ice is Harald Sphagnum-Moss. But strong competition is expected from the Swedes, Carl Gustav Barrel and Magnus Opum. The Danish outsiders are Nils Desperandum and Viggo Vereyougo. A team of naked pygmies from Botswana has also arrived for this event, but never having seen ice before, and with an average height of four foot six, hopes of their triumphing over the Nordic countries are not widely entertained.
Excitement is high over the Polar Quadrathlon. This involves athletes on ice-skates hauling a Volvo containing ten tons of Scandinavian platitudes up a glacier. This is followed by the luge, in which each contestant descends down a vertical ice-sheet on a coat-hanger with a bazooka on his back at 200mph, stopping every quarter-mile to shoot cod with his bazooka.
The third leg is in the Olympic pool, and involves harpooning a killer-whale calf while it is being minded by its mother. The final part occurs in the Olympian cemetery, where the athletes' colleagues from less demanding sports - three-legged curling and the ice-rink foxtrot - bury the remaining fragments from the pool with full Olympian honours: crossed syringes and a volley of testosterone over the coffin, with ovaries at half-mast.
In tune with attempts to give the Winter Olympics broader appeal, beyond the reach of performance-enhancing drugs, yet nonetheless locating the events in the homelands of the winter sports, the Arctic Indoor Triathlon has been introduced. Here contestants' hands are immersed in ice-cold water for half-an-hour, after which they have to knit the Icelandic Constitution. Points are deducted for failure to purl Iceland's undisputed fishing rights over its entire continental shelf.
After their hands are re-frozen in liquid nitrogen, athletes must crochet Sibelius's Finlandia, with penalty points for the wrong key, or for straying into the Karelia Suite. Finally, after immersing their hands in liquid carbon dioxide for a further half an hour, they must execute an embroidery of the Regency of Sten Sture the Elder of Sweden, (1501-03), with - naturally - points deducted for any confusion with the hopelessly corrupt Regency of Svante Nilsson Sture (1504-12).
Bookies' favourite for the moment is the only Irish hope for the games, Sister Hibernia Irredenta, the 108-year-old lace-making nun from Carrickmacross. Her body temperature has never risen above 20C since her order - the Impoverished and Wizened Little Sisters of Arachnia, of which she is the youngest member - renounced money, food and warmth of any kind in protest at the shamefully liberalising measures of Vatican II.
But the event which is really seizing the imagination not merely of traditional supporters of the Winter Olympics, but of a far wider audience than ever before, is the Danish flag-burning-on-ice competition. No skill or intelligence is required for this event, and it is giving a real sense of belonging to cultures which in the past have felt themselves unfairly excluded from the Winter Olympics - because of course, they don't have real winters. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan have all sent enthusiastic teams for this event. So too has the Gaza Strip, which many athletes - not being too interested in politics - had hitherto thought was a dance by a drunken English footballer. However, despite this strong competition from the Middle East, the favourite for the gold actually combines regional and global antipathies: the Swede, Sven-Abdul Hammerskjold.
There is also a ladies' Danish flag-burning-on-ice competition, commentary on which is made somewhat difficult by the fact that the contestants are all dressed entirely in unmarked black burkas, inscriptions on female attire being regarded as sacrilegious. There is no drugs-testing in this competition. Taking a blood sample would of course mean baring a body-part; and as for acquiring a urine sample. . .
No matter! After a break of what seems like all of several weeks, the wretched Olympic Games are back at our throats, once again.
Time to stay glued before the television, to a book.