ontroversy again surrounds the Olympics as Canadian skier Mark D’Ouvret was muscled out of the gold medal by a newcomer to Alpine Skiing, skiing dog Murph, representing the United States.

D’Ouvret was gracious in defeat, despite claims by skiing fans and Olympic critics that D’Ouvret had the better showing in the event. Millions around the world, however, especially Canada, were stunned and disappointed by the results. Some even lob charges that corruption has entered the Olympics again. It’s a tough accusation coming at a time when the IOC is still mired in controversy revolving around the figure skating gold denied to Canadian skaters David Pelletier and Jamie Salé. Suspect judging has been the focus of that Olympic blunder, while the gold being awarded to a dog has brought anger to every aspect of the Salt Lake City Olympics.

“Strictly speaking,� said Olympics Historian Professor Drod Hamelstein, “there’s no official statement in the rule book that says a dog can’t participate in the skiing event. Of course, it’s hard to actually write a rule banning something before it happens. There’s no rule that says an athlete can’t turn into a duck and still compete in the Luge. The point is, Olympics officials have to react stronger and quicker to things like this. The official who allowed the dog to compete should have been disciplined. And the dog, too, for that matter.

The dog in question is United States Alpine Skier “Murph� Murphy T. Dog. Murph is trained and owned by Coach Ralph Maple. He feels Murph worked very hard for the gold and the Canadians and critics are just sore losers.

“Murph is no overnight success story,� said Maple. “He worked hard for this, just as hard as D’Ouvret or any of those skiers. Even harder I think. He won, right?�

“That’s completely ludicrous,� said Austria’s Klaus Kleinermacht, who has been outspoken about the illegality of Murph’s participation. “The dog, he skis fine. But he is still a dog. Dogs should not be skiing in the Olympics. They ski on TV shows or home video programs. And did you see the scarf his owner put on him? Shameless pandering to the judges.�

International Olympics Committee President Jacques Rogge was reluctant to name names, but did admit mistakes were made and the situation was being reviewed.

“Personally, I would not have allowed a dog to enter the competition,� said Rogge. “I cannot say who is to blame for the lapse in judgment, but we will investigate. All I can say is I would not have allowed a dog to enter the competition. Unless perhaps he had a darling scarf.�

olf pro and sports celebrity Tiger Woods, unable to confine himself to every fucking T.V. commercial on the air and sporting event there is, has recently written and published a book, obviously thinking himself a writer now.

Woods, who has no proven talent with words or prose, is the "author" of How I Play Golf, an instructional guide on the overrated game he's famous for playing published by Warner Books at the unrealistic retail price of $34.95.

The book, which is surely hard to drudge through and a perfect gift for people who like shitty reading material, is called by some critics an energetic and enthusiastic guide to golf beginners as well as an insightful study of Woods' own passion for the game. However, the book is actually lame-ass.

At 320 pages, the book stands as the longest publicity ad for a sports figure in quite some time.

Although Woods could not be reached for comment, being such a god among men he doesn't have time to return phone calls to reporters, it is believed he will next try to walk on water or heal the lepers. Good fucking luck to the superman.

To kick things off with a bang, and also give you a taste of my own personal pain, I'd like to start off this column with a slice of reader email I received recently.

"Yo yo yo Griswaaaaaaaasssup Dreck my man! Shit baby! Anyway, dude, the Internet? Fuuuuuuuuuuck. Whatup wit dat?"

Now that I have your sympathy and perhaps your piqued interest, let's dig the morsel of inquiry from the verbal turd above.

Nearly everyone, and at least half of the commune staff, knows what the Internet is. But how many really know how it works? Is it all techno mumbo-jumbo too daunting to penetrate, or just wicked voodoo best left alone? Thankfully for curious minds and Internet columnists who've already spent ten minutes on this column, it's neither.

The Internet was started in 1961 when a teenager named Frank Shultz in Flatbush, NY covertly connected his homemade computer to his neighbor Darcy Stanley's homemade computer in order to send the world's first Internet virus, which consisted of the following code:

10 PRINT "DARCY ISA SLUT"
20 GOTO 10


In response, Stanley sent Shultz the world's first spam, a message detailing the modern miracle of penis enlargement through the revolutionary technique of shooting yourself in the head. From these humble beginnings the Internet grew into several larger computers in Shultz's bedroom, which were connected to the homemade computers of several of Shultz's friends for the purpose of downloading brief text descriptions of pornography.

At this point the scientific community took an interest in Shultz's network, and appropriated the technology for their own purposes, namely sending science geek jokes and chain letters back and forth to each other. Thanks to a particularly popular joke about an amino acid, a Mexican and a Polack, the network eventually grew to include thousands of computers nationwide.

Things stayed about like this for a very long time, until the 90's, when computer manufacturers were maligning the fact that people stopped buying home computers just because they were only good for playing solitaire and pretending to balance your checkbook with Quicken. Some genius realized that people would buy more computers if there were some way they could be beamed faux-inspirational quotes and other heartwarming Chicken Soup for the Soul bullshit on a daily basis, so they developed the modem. A modem is a device that translates computer information into teenage slang so it can be sent over phone lines. Thanks to this breakthrough, five new computers were sold.

But before long retailers and scam artists everywhere discovered that Americans would pay to get kicked in the face as long as it had a .com attached and they got a box in the mail, and the real Internet was born. The thrill of getting a box in the mail has fueled economic growth in America since the beginning of time, and the online age was to be no different.

As for the nitty gritty of how it all works, the concept behind the Internet is that your computer is connected to your neighbor's computer, which is connected to his neighbor's computer, and so on and so forth until you get to the local computer geek's house, where there are big computers connected to the homes of larger and larger geeks until you get to central command. This is why the Internet is often slow and crappy, if one of your neighbors is playing Quake or running an analysis of where his life went wrong it can bog down your shit for real.

At central command there are a bunch of guys who sit around and monitor everything, laugh at your poor email grammar and the fact that you visit spankspock.com thirty times a day, distribute Xerox copies of really embarrassing stuff and generally just make sure everything keeps on truckin'. This is where the string of computers is actually connected to the Internet, which is a big metal thing that looks like the ghost containment unit thing from Ghostbusters. Nobody's sure what exactly goes on inside that thing.

Today the Internet is an indispensable part of modern life, providing us with news, sports scores, bad blind dates and solutions to modern problems like what does the girl from One Hour Photo look like naked. Some wonder how we lived before the Internet, and the answer is we didn't. We thought we did, but what the hell did we know? Back then we had to get all our information from books, which is a little like getting your news from popular music. And you had to jog down to the library every time you found unlabeled prescription medication under the couch or wanted to know what happened to the cast of Goonies. You may call that living, but it sounds an awful lot like Cast Away to me.

Who played Tom Hanks' fiancée in that movie? I bet she looks good naked.

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