Thank you, Winter Storm MacCormack

and this is what the northeast looks like today--all because of one severely hurled rock that smashed into Siberia like a freight train loaded with nukes and home heating oil, except without Denzel Washington or Steven Seagal on board.

and people think women's curling doesn't matter.

Today's frozen sheet/hot action

so, those of you lucky enough to wake up at 3 am, well, this is what you saw:

Completed	Women – Qualification CAN 8 : 5 DEN
Completed	Women – Qualification CHN 7 : 8 GBR
Completed	Women – Qualification SUI 8 : 9 SWE

for those of you adorable sleepyhead losers, here's your next chance: the 10 am session that will feature:

SWE vs. DEN
	RUS vs. KOR
	SUI vs. CAN
	JPN vs. USA

Winter Storm Debbie MacCormack terrorizes the South

apparently, the Deep South does not read the blog--and so were caught, if not entirely but still mostly, unaware of the repercussions from yesterday's MacCormack Death Comet in Sochi.

fear not, dear friends, for the Grey Lady, she's all over it.

ATLANTA — Georgia residents who went to bed worried about Gov. Nathan Deal’s ominous warning that the state was about to be iced over woke Wednesday to find out that he was right: An ice storm of what meteorologists say could be historic scope had begun as the Deep South slept.

“There is no doubt that this is one of Mother Nature’s worst kinds of storms that can be inflicted on the South, and that is ice,” Mr. Deal said Tuesday night. “We’re not kidding. We’re not crying wolf.”

wait, what the fuck is that? my Scottish gods, this is almost like a 911-style/global warming/IRS scandal/BENGHAZI BENGHAZI!1! cover-up, all-over-again, rolled-all-up-into-one like a Satanic pig-in-a-blanket (say it in your Jim Ross voice). but to blame the clearly causally related worldwide meteorological disaster that was Debbie MacCormack's errant stone on "Mother Nature"? that's even worse!
so, as a public service, we're going to help you read between the lines of what Big Media doesn't want you to know. just follow the helpful bolding, which we've added for context:

Waves of rain began falling in the early hours Wednesday, which may or may not sync-up perfectly as far as Sochi-time. By 8 a.m., the winds had picked up and the rain had turned to a steady flow of tiny ice pellets. Trees, cars and streets were coated in a light layer of ice that likes of which the region rarely sees , like the gold medal for Women's Curling.

wow, that's some serious stuff. but with the US Team due to play at least six  five more matches before not reaching any sort of medal round... isn't the worst still potentially yet to come?

“Right now I would be prepared for days,” Aaron Strickland, Georgia Power’s chief emergency executive, said Tuesday night. "But I think it would be even easier if maybe they just didn't pick Debbie MacCormack to hurl stones with the force of a 150-megaton nuclear explosion."

it's great to see people are finally start to get the message about the deep impact that Debbie MacCormack can have on pan-global weather systems. we're well past the stage where we could feel safe just because she was "competing" a hemisphere away, people.

hey. let's be careful out there.

Mid-day-ish Banter: Yes, curlers read email!

just to prove how much we really love Canadia here at the blog, here's a lovely piece of advertising ART that i may or may not have totally written last year for some former clients in the North of which Jason Isbell sings so, so tenderly.

no, no, i'm not bitter.

Tough Shite: the day's results, and the standing to date

Not pictured: Eve Muirhead

well. while We (i get to use the royal We now, suckahs) salute the hair-lipped she-wendigo from the North on their triumphant, well-earned victory... hey it's not like we folded in 20 minutes.

and when Eve let fly that final, fateful hammer (a frozen goddess' tear, sunlight itself caught in parabolic, doomed arc, til gracefully yielding 'neath gravity's inevitable sway, it shatters, crunching sadly into irrelevance, much like Nancy Kerrigan's medial collateral ligament), well it was goddamned clear that the word "overtime" was one that's simply not pronounceable in our our heroine's charming native patois--and, moreover, that TEAM SCOT would either die out there, right in the middle of this goddamned rink AND on international television streamed over the Internet, or that they would sure as hell be momentarily feasting on the smoking entrails of their half-Wookie opponents, right after all their stones exploded.

alas, Fate is one fickle bitch.

but while everyone else had to leave their stones at the rink, only Eve Muirhead half-walked/half-skated her way out of there carrying a well-earned and giant fresh set. human/alien hybrid Sam Cassell would certainly be proud.

moving on... today's results:
JPN 8  : 4 RUS
USA 4 : 7 CHN
KOR 4 : 7 SWE
CAN 9 : 6 GBR

and the overall standings:

1. Round Robin
2. Semifinal
3. Final

		Games Played	Wins	Losses
1	Canada	3	3	0
1	Switzerland	3	3	0
3	Japan	3	2	1
3	Sweden	3	2	1
3	China	3	2	1
6	Russia	4	2	2
7	Great Britain	3	1	2
7	South Korea	3	1	2
9	Denmark	3	0	3
10	United States	4	0	4

see you tomorrow, for a double session. we'll post the exciting details here later, along with some of the inside-the-ice features we teased so successfully (2 comments! holy shit!) yesterday.

In Olympic Russia, stones curl you!

WEDNESDAY SHE-CURLING FUN FACT: before being drawn with the Swedish Housewives' Assassins Guild, The Duke was "pulling hard" to get paired with Russia, because they have some gifted athletes.

Russian skip Anna Sidorova, showing one of her intricate pregame stretching drills.

Bad site design make Hulk SMASH!

holy Anglican baby Jesus... after 18 minutes of searching, it's on, here. no more typey until coffee. UPDATE: pro tip for wives everywhere: maybe don't say the Scottish Goddess of Stones "looks like a bird" if you really want spit-free coffee.

Mercy rule, suckahs!

well, that shit was fast.

thanks to Anna Morgan's hot rocks, and Eve's total EVE-ness--plus a crucial McCormack Choke Job^TM that gave TEAM SCOT an epic 7-stone end by air-stoning a rock through the entire 5-stone guard, past the button, through the back end and well into Siberia by the time it stopped sliding--it's over.

fastest mercy rule in the history of all Olympics--or exactly the fitting comeuppance Zeus himself intended when he first created the sport out of thunderbolts and human skulls, back for the original Games? you decide.

can't wait until 5am tomorrow morning when TEAM SCOT deals with the Empire's dangling, discarded, half-French former North American appendage. we'll cover it here, live, of course, with frequent real-time telephone updates planned.

UPDATE: we've found some live footage of TEH DEB's epic air-stone, and its horrible, climate-altering aftereffects. if you have small children following at home, you may want to cover their eyes.

The deadly Scottish detective assassin!

so.

if Charlie's Angels were cast more as a curling detective story, then 4 years-ago Eve would maybe have had a bit part, as like Kelly Johnson's neighbor's dying foreign sister or something. she'd be in it for an episode--maybe a two-episode arc, at best.

but a few years have passed. and no, i'm not sure how i missed the 2012 WOMEN'S CURLING CALENDAR!?!, but Eve was all over it--literally. and, let's be honest, it's a real step-up...

but we've all been through that slutty bagpipes stage; it's something you outgrow, hopefully.

now, though?

like a non-terrifying, 30 years-younger Claire Forlani, she's become curling-hot enough for all three angels, all by herself.

and just as deadly.

"My Country 'Tis of Thee" was a blatant fucking rip-off.

well, devoted followers, we've got about five or so of your American minutes until we redcoat the tar out of you Yankee rebel bastards. fuck freedom.

watch it live with my cat all here.

Rounds 1 and 2 of the Stone Robin

Russian curler Anna Sidorova, shown here before her twice-daily, pre-match shaving routine.

in Das Curlingland, that magical, fairytale setting where petite, face-painted ice princesses gracefully sling Brobdingnagian boulders across the frozen steppes until they are swept into sparkling bits of dust by fiercely dancing Scandinavian she-trolls, no one can here you scream (even if you use a run-on sentence).

however, as we covered the fucking shit out of that meme the last time 'round, here's a list of this She-Curling Death Pool's fresh topics we have planned at girthy--the kind of groundbreaking, hard-hitting, local cable news-quality reporting that will take you behind the scenes of our favorite every-four-years sport, and deep into the ice, much like Ted Williams' severed cranium:

• exactly how do she-curlers get their she-stones? think: Scotland, not Jesus.
• what hidden secrets are embedded in (or beneath) the Ice Cube?
• who is this year's hottest skip? plus, player profiles!
• also, why do they even call them skips? i mean, honestly.
• how much does it cost to start curling--and where can you start?
• and if these costs are too prohibitive, is it possible to purchase a $99 temporary pool from China, leave it up all winter--and use it as your own, homemade, baby-sized, retards-only curling rink without serious risk of brain injury? (this answer is yes, at least, the first part.)

also, here are some results, now through the first two rounds of the round robin.

the frigid fray picks up again at 10am ET with four matches, which you can hopefully watch somewhere on NBC's corpo-clusterfuck-a-lympics website thing. we'll post the link when (if) we can fucking find it.

Let the She-Curling Death Pool of Russia BEGIN (like 5 hours ago)...

ladies. gentlemen. corporations. people. friends.

here are your selections for our beloved quadrennial battle, held starting this morning on the subtropical frozen ice of Sochi, home of large, demon-eyed robot bears, flying children with amanda peet-'brows, double shitters, and 20 pounds of eye puss from bob costas' leakily-fucked skull.

so, have the fuck at it--and thank the almighty Freedom Jesus that Nelson got stuck with teh debs this year!

NOTE: for rules and regulations... well, check the post from four years ago.

1. all entries were on identical strips of paper, segregated by team and participant, separated into two sorting hats, and pulled in a double-blind draw, one by one, over speakerphone technology with the Floof.

2. the Judgment Cat also witnessed all proceedings--much like the Ernst & Young dudes at the NBA lottery, only with more claws.

Debes -- South Korea

The Duke -- Sweden

Big/Floof -- O, Canadia

Jimmy -- Denmark

Mike Nelson -- USA! USA! USA!

Joe -- Great Britain

Kwaaks -- China

Liz -- Switzerland

KC -- Japan

Vig -- Russia

WELCOME McCORMICKBACK

dear gods, it's been the annual four yearsish, and the whole damn blogging thing has been sold to the googles, and now works like bad microsoft word.

/picardvoice: TRIAL POST, ENGAGE!

latest signs from The Fall...

long time, people. don't spit up your coffee/beverage of choice:

• who doesn't love Arizona, microcosm and flashpoint of Empire? well, us--but, still, welcome to your new Brady backyard:

  “It’s easier to have fake grass,” Mr. Hague said, looking over his deep green, perfectly trimmed yard. “You don’t have to worry about it. It doesn’t fade.”

• FOMO is fuckin' funny--especially when you have FOGO:

  My problem is emblematic of the digital era. It’s known as FOMO, or "fear of missing out," and refers to the blend of anxiety, inadequacy and irritation that can flare up while skimming social media like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram.