Given the lack of other stuff to write about (life being more or less in stasis currently), I'm going to take the next couple weeks or so to give you my Olympic story of the day. We'll actually start with yesterday, given that Olympic soccer has already started.

Yesterday saw the US women start their tournament with a 3-0 win over host Greece. More of a story for me was the 8-0 pounding that Germany put on China. China is right up there with both Germany and the US, making this blowout pretty surprising.

Japan's win over Sweden was pretty surprising, too, but it looks like that may be the order of the day in Olympic soccer this time around.

Today, the obvious story is the Iraq's 4-2 win over Portugal in the first day of men's soccer. Iraq outplayed Portugal, though the latter team was also snakebit by a shot each off a goalpost and the crossbar. Iraq's been playing well in regional Asian tournaments, and obviously did well enough to qualify here, so as much a surprise as the result is, it's not like the Iraqis got here on sympathy.

The upset opening game loss is becoming a habit for the Portuguese (dropped the 2002 World Cup opener to the US, the Euro '04 opener to Greece, and now this).

Furthering the wackiness: Mali and Ghana tied Mexico and Italy, respectively, in their opening games. Then again, African success in Olympic men's soccer is becoming something of a tradition. Nigeria took gold in Atlanta, while Cameroon (who Mali beat to get to Athens) won it in Sydney.