Spirit of the Olympics

January draws to a close and the war drums of the international 2010 Winter Olympics draw closer. Already the downtown office buildings and street corners are sprouting new banners and posters egging passersby to cheer for the Canadian team. Winning is the only objective and the media and local sporting officials claim Canada could walk away with the highest medal count. Isn't that what being a good host is all about?

VANOC, the blood-thirsty, greed-based vampire of an organization that oversees the Olympics is crowing the success of its on-line ticket scalping site, that has spread its money-grubbing lust to the masses. The cheapest tickets of a single event now go for $600 and the top end price for a ticket for the opening ceremonies would suffice for a down payment on a small condo. Nine family members of one of the American bob sledding team, which is expected to win gold, just learned that the house they rented in Whistler for $8000 to watch the event was actually a scam. For them the Games are ruined but the scammer is definitely feeling the true spirit of the games.

An invading army of several thousands of soldiers, police and security guards, more than the number of troops we have employed in Afghanistan, will comprise about 10% of the population around the sports and tourist venues. They are there to ensure that no terrorists, like the anti-Olympic movement that has waged a futile fight against the squandering of so many hundreds of millions of tax payers dollars, don't disrupt the "festivities". The cost for the policing will be approximately one billion dollars.

The events with their sky-high prices are not for local Vancouverites. About half the tickets are for media and corporate sponsors and rest are for the rich (they are the same). We won't likely be able to welcome either the tourists or athletes as there will be enough barriers between them and us. When it is all over, there will be a four lane highway from Vancouver to Whistler, a subway to the airport and a few over-sized and under-used sports facilities left behind and, of course, a massive debt that will take at least a quarter of a century to pay off, thereby preventing other improvements that would make this a more liveable city.

I tried not to be a cynic this time, tried not to see or smell the sewage treatment plant-sized ball of shit flying out of the sky and rolling over us. I wanted to welcome the world and keep my happy face. Undoubtedly, there will be lots of real human drama, both joy and sorrow and a coming together of the worlds best young athletes that would leave any porn producer weeping with envy. But the most wondrous and spiritual sites also attract and counteractive and equal degree of neutralizing cess and sleaze, like the sea of tourists, scam artists, thieves and hustlers who hang around sites like the pyramids and the Taj Mahal, the tacky, cheesy wax museums, freak shows and heart-shaped vibrating beds at Niagara Falls, or the sea of yuppie tourist boutiques that have sprung up in Woodstock, New York.

An acquaintance of mine who is a Native/gay/Catholic activist in New York, was pleased to learn that the mascots chosen for these Games would be three characters from Native West Coast mythology: "Quatchi", "Miga" and "Sumi", that is until I sent him the pathetic cartoon images they would be portrayed as. Their simplified names and bleached and boiled personalities bear no resemblance to the myths they are supposed to represent.

Quatchi (short for Sasquatch) "comes from the mysterious forests of Canada and dreams of being a hockey goalie", according the official Olympic website. The forests are certainly mysterious to the promoters who have never been there, and Quatchi has the personality of an unsalted soda biscuit. He looks like Chewbaka with a happy face. He is nothing like the shy, lumbering Bigfoot, terror of the forests who kidnapped young children and took them back to his cave to bugger them--a Catholic priest of sorts.

Miga, from Kwakiutl mythology, is a sea bear; half orca and half Kermode bear. Far from the sea Spirit who devours unwanted visitors, he (it) looks more like a skunk without a tail, with a white-faced, balloon-sized black head, white panda ears and a small French moustache. There's nothing about him that looks like either a bear or a killer whale.

Sumi, a powerful animal Spirit with the legs of a black bear and wings of a Thunderbird, assumes the look of a gardener in a green smock wearing "a hat of an orca". Even in Native mythology whales don't wear hats, but even Disney would not design something this stupid. The hat looks like an overturned green salad bowl with points on top, and his green Thunderbird wings look like a watermelon slice with the colours reversed. He shares the same benign, mindless smile as the other two, proof of his mushroom-like personality and his inability to express or form thought.

They represent the consumers that do as the organizers would have them do. In that way, they are true mascots of these Games.