The Olympic torch relay rang into a few snags during its Paris leg yesterday, which is a gentle way of saying the torch went out 4 or 5 times. It did get re-lit pretty quickly, mind you, which would probably be acceptable if it were the regular sort of dungeon-illuminating torch. But seeing as it’s less a means of shedding light on goblin droppings, and more an internationally recognized symbol of hope, getting doused 5 times is kind of a big deal.

Throughout the route protesters mobbed the relay, and rushed the torch bearer on several occasions in attempts to seize or douse the torch itself. Although none of the protesters succeeded, at several points on the route the police were forced to put the torch out so it could be carried past the protests in a vehicle - which at least in my mind, kind of defeats the purpose of a torch relay. A dozen angry Chinese men and an athlete driving around Paris on a bus with a non-flaming stick doesn’t really raise the Olympic spirits.

I’ve talked about the Olympic protests before and could probably run a regular feature here recounting the various indignities the Olympic torch is bound to suffer over the coming months. Which would grow quickly monotonous were it not for little details like this: During this disastrous torch relay, French officials had arranged for 100 cops on roller blades to serve as an honor guard for the torch bearer.

100 French cops on roller blades. Isn’t that the most glorious thing you’ve ever heard of? Like the kind of thing you’d see in the background of one of the Lord of The Rings battles? If I had my way (I don’t) this would also become a common new theme in rap videos. Another great moment: hundreds of protesters shouting at torch bearers who happened to be wheelchair athletes. This isn’t a slam against wheelchair athletes, who are, in every measurable way, far better human beings than I. I’m just tickled by the concept, given that you never see people protesting against the wheelchair-bound. At least not since the 20’s.

It seems likely these sorts of shenanigans will continue, considering the initial protests during the torch lighting in Greece and the London torch relay on Sunday. At the later, at one point a protester attempted to put out the torch with a fire extinguisher. Training a fire extinguisher on some guy jogging is always going to be pretty funny, but if I were an Olympic protester, I’d be trying to come up with a somewhat grander way of suffocating the Olympic spirit. Something like:

Find an intersection where the torch relay has to pass through and flip around the <- Ocean | Torch Relay -> sign.

Train an elephant to shoot water out of its trunk on anything that burns. Hide the elephant somewhere along the relay route.

Organize your own relay going in the opposite direction. When you bump into the real relay, the police won’t know who to protect.

Start an actual fire. When the fire fighters show up, they’re rarely forgiving of guys with torches.

Streak out of the sky sliding on a sheet of ice and snatch the torch from the torch bearers hands (you’ll need the power to manipulate flows of ice and excellent balance for this.)

Disguise yourself as a Chinese official and stand along the parade route looking like you belong there. When the relay approaches with the torch, douse it with the powerful hose you were holding.

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Chris Bucholz is a writer and a robot. His personal blog, robotmantheblog.com contains a great deal of other humor articles, all of dubious quality and taste.

Last night, the official lighting of the Olympic torch for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics was disrupted by activists, who were protesting either torches, China’s human rights record, or both. This disruption follows several weeks of protests in the part of China called Tibet where many are upset over the fact that Tibet is in the part of China called Tibet, and not somewhere else. Depending on whether you ask the Chinese government or someone who isn’t lieing, anywhere from 30 to 130 people have already died there, a situation that probably won’t improve when the army is sent in to “crush” them.

Yes, that’s the Chinese state paper that said “crush” in reference to protesters, and no, I don’t know if the Chinese have a term for “faux pas.” Also, Holy Shit.

All of this has re-ignited the debate about whether, given China’s long history of human rights “whoopsies,” it was a smart idea to award the Olympics to Beijing in the first place, and whether it might be a good idea to boycott the games now. The idea being that any such boycott would in theory be of such embarrassment to China that they’d stop silencing/imprisoning/killing their citizens immediately, or at least feel really bad about it for awhile. And instead of watching the Olympics this August, the rest of the world would focus their attention on some other progressive and pro-human rights endeavor, unless Bono wanted to be involved, in which case we’d probably just do nothing.

One argument against such a boycott is that by doing so we’ll be punishing innocent athletes who have nothing to do with China’s adorable idiosyncrasies. I do sympathize with the athletes here; devoting years of your life towards the fucking discus must suck enough as is. Then to have your one chance at 15 seconds of lukewarm fame snatched away before you can even get your unnecessarily heavy disc out of its holster… well… that is legitimately heartbreaking. But let’s face it: in the grand scheme of things, the welfare of a billion Chinese is probably more important than the personal glory of a handful of athletes. Hell, the menu at Taco Bell probably has more bearing on the mental health and well-being of the world than the fate of some Olympic athletes.

Another argument against a boycott is that the Olympics shouldn’t be turned into a political tool. Yesterday, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge announced that the IOC was not a political organization, and refused to allow the Olympics to become part of a political discussion on China’s human rights issues. That’s patently ridiculous of course, because in practically the same sentence he also said that he hoped that by awarding the Olympics to Beijing, the games would serve as a catalyst for change in China - an entirely political act. The idea that the Olympics should be political right up until the point that being political becomes politically inconvenient is perhaps the most political sentiment I’ve ever heard. Also, confusing.

Nevertheless, there doesn’t seem to be any serious danger of a boycott going forward, given that most of the arguments for one are coming from disheveled looking Tibetans, and most of the arguments against come from tie-wearing Olympic executives, who are often standing behind important looking podiums. Like most Cracked writers, my personal fashion sense can be broadly classified as “wartime refugee” so I similarly don’t expect my arguments to make much dent in the Olympic juggernaut. I just wanted to rap at you for a bit, and also take an unnecessary swing at Bono.

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Chris Bucholz is a writer and a robot. His personal blog, robotmantheblog.com contains a great deal of other humor articles, all of dubious quality and taste.