Olympics 101: Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems, Part I

Despite sinking more coins into our Olympic coffers than a virgin at Lucky Fountain, Toronto has been repeatedly denied the chance to host the games and as a result, we won't get to see if the shot-put can, after 2500 years of failing to do so, finally ignite the public's imagination.

By not landing the Games of the Olympiad, we'll not only miss out on yelling 'Geronimo' off a 10 meter springboard, but also the aesthetic thumb in the eye that is the opening ceremonies, which distill a nation's character down to a few silly gesticulations, which in our case would be break-dancing Mounties, some sort of giant papier-mâché leaf and a chorus line of lumberjacks.

However, the Olympics are about more than just cheap showmanship, like your uncle who can balance a cane on the end of his toe while whistling "Chevy Van". They're a chance for countries to atone for past sins, march together in a show of togetherness twice a decade and see whose athletes can pump themselves more full of pharmaceuticals than an Amy Winehouse pot luck.

There are some countries, such as those whose main export is a variety of tart nectarine, that you never really get to hear from in non-Olympic years unless an extradition treaty is violated or some autocrat is ousted and replaced by an antelope as the interim head of state.

The odd time though, one of these nations will unhinge the masturbatory grip on the podium held by Russia, Germany or the United States and you'll get to hear an off-key warbling of some country's national anthem and bear witness to a moment of pride that'll last for generations to come, if you define "generations" as however long it takes for the urine sample to come back positive, the sportsman in question to defect, or when the next commercial break will air.

But what exactly are they singing about as banners are raised to the rafters and the eyes of the world (or at least the eyes of the world that aren't glazed over by a less than rousing game of handball) are upon them?

Not surprisingly, most anthems are a call to arms, mostly partisan hymns that are a soundtrack to bayoneting your nearest geographical neighbor and a tune you can tap your jackboot to as you proclaim the superiority of your culture, mountain ranges and comely women (the seldom heard fifth stanza in Slovenia's national anthem: "To you, our pride past measure, Our girls! Your beauty, charm and grace!")

There are some ditties sung that are much more ominous than any ‘Bombs bursting in air', you might've whistled while relieving yourself after a heavy lunch, and that would make a scout troupe cower in fear more than a scoutmaster's invite to a midnight swim.

Of course, officials quickly noted that when performed at certain epochal functions, some of these stanzas were better left out altogether, like in the case of Italy, where if something of import were to be held in Warsaw, for example, it might be prudent to omit the bit about "the Polish blood they drank, along with the Cossack."

We thought we’d share a few choice verses, unearth a few national secrets, and perhaps create a diplomatic shit-storm with this, our list of the Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems!

10) Algeria: Being that Algeria's national hymn was written not long after the North African nation broke free from France, thus ending one of the most violent and oppressive periods in European colonial history, we're not surprised that their national anthem makes scant reference to daisy-picking and the value of complacency. Of course, as you'll learn during the course of our bloody world tour of national anthems, nothing ups the carnage in a national anthem like a good throwing off of the yoke of an oppressor. However, this one gets bonus points for the fact that amidst all bloodshed and overthrowing of oppressors, it never forgot the importance of the beat:

Choice Lyrics:
"When we spoke, nobody listened to us,
So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm
And the sound of machine guns as our melody"
(click here for full anthem)








9) Tunisia / Haiti: Continuing on with our theme of countries breaking free from French colonial rule and celebrating their independence in violent verse, here are two nations that preferred death over French rule, much as we'd prefer such a fate over say, a screening and subsequent discussion of the Sex & the City movie.

Choice Lyrics:

"The blood surges in our veins,
We die for the sake of our land."

"For the flag, For our country
To die is a fine thing! Our past cries out to us:
Have a disciplined soul! To die is a fine thing!"
(Full anthem: Tunisia, Haiti)

8) Albania: It is impossible to enter into a discussion about Albania, without in some way referencing Mother Teresa. That should suffice. For a far more eyeball-rewarding look at a native of that country, turn your peepers to the left. Saints preserve us!

And in its national anthem we have a recurrent theme in many such ditties: the glory of having your ass shot off in a war.

Choice Lyrics:

"From war abstains only he,
Who a traitor is born,
For he who is a man is never frightened,
But falls, but falls a martyr to the cause!" (Full anthem)




7) Hungary: The Magyar Himnuz, based on a poem of such emotional intensity, that some interpreters apparently see it as an example of the nation's deeply-rooted pessimism. We would agree, but what does it matter anyway?
Choice Lyrics:

"But no freedom's flowers return
From the spilled blood of the dead,
And the tears of slavery burn,
Which the eyes of orphans shed."

(and later) Grief and sorrow all the same
Underneath a sea of blood (Full anthem)

CLICK HERE FOR THE TOP FIVE MOST VIOLENT NATIONAL ANTHEMS!

Notre Dame QB Drinks Beer! Life of as we know it is irrevocably altered

What do the US, Oman, Indonesia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates have in common?

Well, nothing, apart from a legal drinking age of 21, the highest in the world.

To put it another way, the US is the only non-Muslim country we're aware of (though in some parts of the Ukraine, they enforce the age of 21 though by all accounts it's roundly ignored) where to consume a beer, you must be old enough to earn a college degree.

Since many so-called 'student athletes' don't, we figure they just enjoy the college experience (the aspects unrelated to the taking of actual courses), in the limited time that they have.

Members of the Notre Dame football team (seen here) were cutting loose in a rousing game of Beer Pong, a time-honored college tradition, and for some reason, this non-event made its way into the pages of the Chicago Tribune, among others.

Now, to be fair, The Fighting Irish (a bizarre name for a team whose college name translates to 'Our Lady' in French, but to be more fair, being French is not typically associated with fighting anything successfully) have a graduation rate near 80%. This is substantially higher than the coin flip figures elsewhere in the country, some of which are as low as 30% and the team is known for hitting the books at least as hard as those across the line of scrimmage.

Of course, when the rest of us were busy say, studying, we weren't cut admission breaks for being able to run a 40 in under 5 seconds, common practice so that, well, dumb kids can practice.

A Notre Dame football spokesman said Monday there was no comment from the team for the time being, apart from 'Chug, chug, chug, chug!'

Bear Stern: Ursa Major Mauls Mashed Mom and Have A Shark Sandwich on Us: The Shark Guys Mark 100 Blog Entries!

When a tiger nearly made an “uno” out of the duo Siegfried & Roy, the effete conjurer Siegfried did not heed this clear warning that wild animals do not belong in the world of men in sequined jumpsuits, but rather insisted that the tiger that mauled his sidekick was "protecting rather than attacking him".

A similarly baffling disconnect from reality guided the life of the sad lunatic Timothy Treadwell, subject of Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man”, who took Winnie The Pooh as cinema verite and decided to spend his summers among grizzly bears. He didn’t survive his final trip, because, having been lulled into a false sense of security by previous trips when bears had not packed their lunchboxes with his innards, he didn’t bring along the arsenal that we would assume mandatory for such a camp-out: a portable drum of bear spray, sticks of dynamite to light and throw behind you when a bear doesn’t buy your “play dead” routine, a tank etc.

What makes these stories truly puzzling is that they cannot be blamed squarely on the drink – Siegfried and Roy have been performing for decades and heck even Charles Bukowski was known to sober up from time to time. Treadwell, although a recovering alcoholic (who might well still be alive today if he had just kept on boozing) at the time of his death, would have had to have had Budweiser air-dropped in to reach him at his remote Alaskan camps.

In our book, the first-ever published compendium of blue-ribbon drunk stories taken from newspapers around the world “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, we covered feats that were just as gallingly dangerous as the above, but at least those featured in the chapter “Man Bites Dog and Dog Bites Back” were plastered at the time.

One of the stories in that chapter, “Bear-ly Legal”, chronicles the exploits of a drunken Ukrainian man who thought himself so strong that no human could best him, and decided to seek out suitable competition in the bear cage of his local zoo – only alert zookeepers kept him from a Treadwell-ian-like fate.

You can imagine our surprise then when we came across an international news item involving yet another drunk mauled by a bear in the Ukraine. The woman reportedly wandered into the bear enclosure at a local farm, an intrusion which upset one of its occupants – the kind of upset that animals of that species tend to externalize by mauling to death the intruder. The next time you feel bad for opening a door on two lovers at a party thinking it’s the bathroom, just think of how much it might have been.

Along with making sure that our record of chronicling ursine-related drunk stories remains in tact, we also have an announcement to make: this is our 100th blog! It’s been quite the ride, with quite the number of DUI convictions along the way. While not as remarkable an accomplishment as, say, having lived 100 years and being first on your block to get a letter shuffled out by the lowly aid of a high-ranking government official (click here for an example of how to do it up right should you live to 100), we did want to mention it and thank everyone who has stopped by and had a round with us. We're enjoying the party and are glad to have made the acquaintance of a few new drinking buddies to add to our ever-expanding circle, among them the good folks at CollegeDrinker.com where we regularly contribute Shark material.

We'll continue to belly up to the bar three times a week to bring you the best drunk stories, drinking trends and all matter of alcohol-soaked news.

Salut!

The Shark Guys