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Chiquita
August 11, 2008, 11:22am Report to Moderator Report to Moderator

Knight
Posts: 389
Beijing "Demonstration Sports"
     
In an article he wrote for the National Review, John Derbyshire indicates that he was able to obtain a list of  special "demonstration sports" which are not generally included in the Olympics, but which the Chinese may stage in honor of their distinguished visitor, George W. Bush. Such sports include Tibetan Snow Shooting, Buddha tossing, Toy Painting, Internet Blocking and many others.
[Our president has announced that he will attend the Beijing Olympics next year as an honored guest of China’s Communist government. The president is keen to go because, said a spokesman, “he loves sports.”

The president may not be aware that under Olympic procedures, the host nation may stage as “demonstration sports” some events not usually represented in the Games. These items are typically sports characteristic of the host country’s folkways and culture.

From a contact in China’s Olympic Committee, I have been able to obtain a list of demonstration sports the Chinese may stage for the entertainment of their distinguished visitors. Because the Games schedule is not yet finalized, I can’t guarantee that all the events listed below will appear on the program. I can, however, assure the president that all of them have been practiced in the People’s Republic, and most are still played today.]

Tibetan Snow Shooting. In their bid for a future Winter Olympics, the Communists will demonstrate their skills at picking off Tibetan refugees attempting to cross snow-covered Himalayan passes into Nepal. (This event may be scrapped because of a dispute with the Olympic authorities over the use of telescopic sights and snow goggles.)

Synchronized Slimming. Competitors here have to devise an agricultural policy so irrational that 30 million peasants starve to death simultaneously. Traditionally the winning contestant has his portrait hung in a prominent position overlooking Tiananmen Square, but for Olympic purposes a medal award will be substituted.

Organ Extraction. A test of speed and skill in wielding surgical instruments. A succession of convicted criminals, or members of obstreperous religious sects, are strapped to operating tables and their organs are removed without anesthetic, to be sold to intermediaries for transplant into wealthy foreigners. Points are awarded based on the total market value of the removed organs.

Indignathon. Competitors have to bluster continuously for six hours, maintaining an attitude of sustained righteous indignation about the Opium Wars, the burning of the Summer Palace, the Siege of Peking, the Chinese Exclusion Acts, and other wrongs inflicted on the long-suffering and ever-righteous Chinese people by cruel, dastardly foreigners. (Some other traditional events — the 10,000 meters Self-Pity, the Triple Emotional Blackmail — have been folded into this one for Olympic purposes.)

Buddha Tossing. Infant children declared by the Dalai Lama to be incarnate Buddhas must be seized and tossed into a barbed-wire enclosure, where they will spend the rest of their lives eating rice gruel and sewing export-quality gunny sacks. Extra points for family members of the living Buddha rounded up and incarcerated. (Half points for those dead on delivery to the enclosure.)

Korean herding. Competitors operating in groups of four must surround parties of North Korean refugees and hustle them back across the Korean border to the warm embrace of the Dear Leader.

Chest thumping. In this rather advanced event, competitors attempt to intimidate each other by shooting down satellites, threatening to nuke major cities, asserting ancient claims to other people’s countries, and setting up missile installations aimed at long-independent provinces.

Student Crushing. Yet another attempt to introduce motorized sports into the Summer Olympics. Competitors driving tanks are let loose among crowds of student protestors with the aim of crushing as many students as possible beneath the tank tracks.

Toy Painting. In a test of manual speed and dexterity, competitors try to load as much lead-based paint as possible onto small children’s toys.

Currency Manipulating. In this financial-trading sport, competitors struggle to keep their currency undervalued and nonconvertible against pressures from foreign bankers and trading partners. The competitor who, beginning from a fixed stock of currency, amasses the largest amount of foreign reserves, gets the gold.

Fingernail Pulling. Developed by the Communists’ superbly trained security police, competitors in the fingernail-pulling event race against the clock, equipped only with pliers, to remove as many fingernails as possible from Falun Gong practitioners in a fixed time period.

Land Seizing. A modern Chinese team sport in which teams must drive peasants off their land to make way for commercial or industrial development. Points are lost for dead peasants and residential structures left intact after the designated period.

Electric Hurdles. Middle-aged women who have been seen practicing meditation are driven over a 110-meter hurdles course with the aid of electric cattle prods, the hurdles wrapped with electrified barbed wire.

400-Fetus Relay. Teams of competitors administer forced abortions to women who have violated the one-child policy. A complicated scoring system awards points to each termination based on age and sex of fetus.

Internet Blocking. In this completely new event appropriate to the computer age, hackers must try to block access to all websites containing a long list of key words and phrases: “democracy,” “liberty,” “rule of law,” “East Turkestan,” “Dalai Lama,” “Taiwan independence,” and so on.

Petfood Doping. A popular sport that has emerged quite recently from China’s crowded factories, petfood doping involves trying to kill off as many domestic pets as possible with a single can of contaminated pet food. (The variant form, practiced in south and southwest China, in which the winner of the event is determined by aggregate body weight of dead pets, is not favored by the Olympic monitoring committee.)
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Chiquita
August 11, 2008, 11:30am Report to Moderator Report to Moderator

Knight
Posts: 389
Berlin 1936 Olympics

The organizers of Hitler's Olympics pared no expense on pageantry, and two of the most enduring symbols of the Olympic Games-the torch relay and the rings-were popularized by the Nazis. One of the chief architects of the Berlin Games, Carl Diem, dreamt up the torch relay from Greece to Berlin as a way to connect the Nazis to the ancient Greeks, whom Hitler claimed as ancient Aryan ancestors. They even concocted a lighting ceremony with vestal virgins to make the tradition seem more authentic.

As for the five rings, Pierre de Coubertin, the father of modern Olympics, designed them in 1913 to symbolize the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. But after World War I broke out a few years later, the rings were forgotten, Leni Riefenstahl, the documentary filmmaker who chronicled Hitler's rise to power, came across the design and decided to give it new meaning. She had the rings carved into a stone altar at Delphi, an Ancient Creek City. She the publicized the "discovery" of the ancient Greek relic, propagating the myth that the symbols were thousands of years old.
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Chiquita
August 12, 2008, 10:06pm Report to Moderator Report to Moderator

Knight
Posts: 389
China cheats!  Yup if you watched the opening ceremonies of the OG, you were watching computer enhanced footage of stuff (ie fake fireworks) that did not even occur there. In addition, the poor little girl with the awesome voice that sung the olympic song was deemed to fat, crooked teethed by the Chinese officials, that she was given a last minute body double to lip-sing the song....
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Shabadu_SMH
August 14, 2008, 5:08pm Report to Moderator Report to Moderator

Noble
Posts: 593
Yah they were making fun of this on the Edge the other day... said it was too bad the same standards weren't set for their athletes because apparently some of them are pretty darned ugly.. but big surprise that they did this... this kinda thing happens all over.. like the music biz.. Milli Vanilli.. and what about C&C Music Factory.. they had a booti-liscious babe who supposedly had the big, powerful voice, but it turned out to be some 250 pounds, older and much less curvascious woman in her 40s or 50s.. so it happens all over the place, not just China and these 2008 summer olympics..

On that note, how's everyone feel about Canada's lack of medals?  Is it a lack-lustre performance or simply a lack of funding to properly support our athletes?
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Diddly
August 14, 2008, 7:47pm Report to Moderator Report to Moderator

Noble
Posts: 1,231
Personally, I'm just happy we've got Canadians competing.  Sometimes just making it to the show is good enough.


Currently Reading:Next in Queue:
When Heavens CollideRed Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
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Danmick
August 15, 2008, 6:40pm Report to Moderator Report to Moderator

Knight
Posts: 295
As long as we're talking about the Chinese and the Olympics, I thought I'd share the recent story the Onion did on the subject

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/chinese_officials_deadly_virus
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Hawkeye
August 22, 2008, 7:58pm Report to Moderator Report to Moderator

Noble
Posts: 1,055
I really don't think Canada should be competing... Heck, I don't think China should have been awarded the games in the first place.


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