Just like any true Weapons of Mass Destruction, Australia's proved to be non-existent.

The NBC is copping an absolute bollocking for sticking to a (for them) tried and trusted formula in covering the Olympic Games - or as Americans insist on calling them, the Summer Olympics. Taking the day's highlights, packaging them up and wrapping them in a journalistic narrative worked in the 20th century. Problem is, we are now a dozen years into the 21st.

Here is a Youtube playlist of ten of my favourite pieces that were performed at the London Olympic Games opening ceremony.

All I can say is that I am as much in awe of Danny Boyle's craftsmanship as ever. This was the best stadium-based opening/closing ceremony ever, and it should be the last because no one is ever going to have a hope of topping it. Seriously.

If being Australian cricket captain is as important a job as Prime Minister, then carrying the Australian flag at the Olympic opening ceremony must be on the same level as winning a Gold Logie. Well, maybe not quite.

A storification of my Olympic-related tweets and retweets in the five days prior to the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Most of my #london2012 tweets from the past few months can be found under my automated Daily Twitter collection, which unfortunately hasn't been functioning properly all the time.

The Games have begun. That traditional opening to the Olympics, unknown up till now as Women's Soccer Wednesday. The twelve teams of this Matildaless tournament got the Games of the XXX Olympiad under way, but one team received preferential treatment from the organisers. On the day it was announced that Kim Jong Un was no longer the world's most eligible bachelor, LOCOG chose the ideal present from their wedding gift register.

There is a List A and List B of words that are prohibited in certain combinations. List A comprises Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012 and Twenty-Twelve. List B includes London, Medals, Sponsor, Gold, Silver, Bronze. You can't use two List A terms together or one List A with one or more List B. Sounds like the opposite of opening a bank account, doesn't it?

It has been 112 years - two years longer than an Allen Stanford prison sentence - since two club sides from Great Britain and France played what, to date, has been the one and only game of cricket at the Olympic Games. We may not have to wait so long again for the sport to return to the modern Games, but there will be many hurdles to overcome first.

Fifteen days till the opening of the Games of the XXX Olympiad and time for me to get serious about yet another Olympic Games blog. It's not actually the start of my blog posts tagged "London 2012" as you'd be able to see but let this entry be a means of introduction.