I love watching the Olympics. The view from down here is truly inspiring. I especially like the riders in the velodrome. Those streamlined hornet helmets with the dark visors are the sexiest things I can imagine, next to the flea-circus-sixteen-year-old female gymnasts, of course. They would all make magnificent insects, able to lift twice their weight, scurry along a path ten times their length per second, and able to fly off any mat, uneven bar, or springboard to perform flips, twists, and somersaults with fly-speed, and then land on only two feet without a single splat. Most courageous of all are the avatars who willingly jump from a platform fifteen times their height to land … IN WATER. In the bug world, we have a word for that ecstatic moment right before orgasm and death – Oooolah. That little one with the big smile who flips in spangled pink tights, and that tall phasmid mantis fellow who takes his ears off before jumping in the water are Oooolahlah.

The insect Olympic world is also so wonderfully rich in color, from purple to white head fibers, from sparkling chest plates to chaste Ooolah coverings, from eyes and bodies of all shapes to visages that show what I’ve heard is called “emotion,” although that makes no sense to a cricket such as I. Why do they eye-water when they win and eye-water when they lose? Other things don’t make sense to me as well. I understand the commitment required to practice their feats with only four limbs, but why must they have an additional penalty requiring some of them to use a bendy pole to jump? Why do they try to avoid that cute little hop after every flip? Why do they scurry over ten or so stick hurdles instead of going under them as any insect ought to do? Why have most of them dyed their nether feet yellow? Why is it that sometimes one who scores higher by .001 laughs and in another event, one who scores higher by .001 cries miserably? Why are there so many gnat-men who stick cameras in the faces of selected avatars right before every event and then again right after every event, even though some are in such anguish? What is it about defeat that appeals to so many insects? Why do such plain insects who are not competing talk so much?

It is also impressive but most confusing to see all of them in these contests somehow able to shake appendages and hug and not eat each other. I heard once that the Olympics are a substitute for war. It is most admirable that the losers do not get eaten. It is also admirable that the winners get their own personal glory and coins, but also that they care about glory for their team and their country. Only one thing is missing. The old, ugly ones who give out the coins which cannot be eaten, should look at all the scores, pick 50 events that happen in every Olympics, and average them. If a total of ALL the avatars is higher than the last Olympics in those 50 events, they should all get the ultimate glorious prize – a pizza. No reward is greater than the god-given pizza. It would make up for the fact that they are apparently not even allowed to eat the losers. Insect-icide is somehow regulated, I assume.

I have wondered why these games appeal to so many of us. It’s more than pride in one’s insect-hood. I know that some who watch are then inspired to train as avatars with only four appendages. It’s more than that. For the rest of us, we get to experience the glory and its loss without first giving up two or more of our own appendages. We should all be thankful for the avatars, especially those of us lucky enough to have found a ready supply of aged pizza. Can you smell that? Pepperoni, or I am not a cricket. Drrrrrr-bit. Ooooolah.