Darth Vader at the Olympics

Yes, the title is correct.  The story is innocent enough.  One of the world's fastest double amputees will be allowed to compete in the Olympics.  Hooray for disabilities everywhere!  Hooray for everyone!  The world is becoming a friendlier place!

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/olympics/05/16/pistorius.olympics.ap/index.html

But wait...

What if someone gets three of four limbs sliced off with a light saber and is thrown into a lake of fire, then wears a crazy mask with a techno-mullet and gets James Earl Jones' voice but has superhuman strength?  Can Darth Vader now compete in fencing?

What if Tommy John surgery in baseball actually gave erstwhile finesse pitchers the ability to throw the ball 100+ mph, like in Sparky Lyle's The Year I Owned the Yankees?

What about Robocop in a wrestling match?

Imagine the NBA if marijuana gave players a competitive advantage.

With all this talk about keeping sport pure from blood doping and steroids these past couple of years, how do we account for TIP's (Technologically Improved Players - a Sparky Lyle term) now?  How do we decide what's good for sport and what's an unfair competitive advantage?

The lines may never be drawn well enough.  Some new bleeding heart may enter the fray at every turn, championing the cause of the latest TIP.  Soon, there will be no people competing in their own skin, except at the Ablympics, the new competition made for non-TIP's.

And it won't matter, because it's just a game.  If we want to show our nation's prowess now, we just fly a stealth plane in the middle of the night and drop smart bombs down elevator shafts from 3 miles away, or blast them with lasers from space.

I don't know what I'm getting at here.  I guess I just thought I'd give you the heads up.  If the first woman who encouraged a man to openly share his feelings - in public - knew that one day we'd have emo music, she might have thought differently.

Signing off.  I've said enough.