Conolympics - The Convict Games

This is one major group that has not yet been exploited by international media and advertisers but would make an excellent cohort for future expansion of the Olympic brand. After all, we know that the Olympics have little or nothing to do with amateur athletics and everything to do with turning a profit and providing a platform for international business interests to advertise their products and services.


This competition works on so many levels. With the proliferation of security firms, protection agencies and rent-a-cop companies, an opportunity to showcase lawbreakers and add to the general angst of security consumers is a virtual gold mine. Add to that the harsh training regimen for inmate-athletes, the fact that any appearance fees or royalties would accrue to the prison system (because convicts can’t profit from their criminality), and the natural appeal of themed events and you have a formula for unprecedented profit and watchability.

Imagine the commercial possibilities for showcasing criminals in two weeks of prime time. The crimes of some of the marquee competitors could run before their event leading to a commercial break sponsored by a leading security firm that specializes in that sort of felony – perhaps a bank robber in a slot for Brinks or a home invasion specialist, accentuating the need for a home alarm system. We are already sensitive to such crimes as identity theft – so why not feature a fraud artist in a commercial to accompany young offender figure skating?

Prisons the world over would profit immensely from these games. Current exercise programs to encourage inmate fitness could be ratcheted up to the eight hours a day most world class athletes put into their sport. No more lounging around the cell and making improvised weapons, rather a punishing regimen of mindless strength training with no time to plan escapes nor energy for shower room dalliances. And any convict that catches the public or advertising imagination would earn notoriety as well as much needed financial resources for his/her institution since laws could be enacted to broaden current prohibitions on profiting from ones crimes. Since one has to be a criminal to participate in these games, criminality is a precondition and, therefore, any profits garnered as a result could be seen as profiting from the crime itself.

What about the exciting new Conolympic events that such games would engender? How about a 15 kilometer cross-country that starts in a compound surrounded by fences topped with razor wire? Or a slalom course where competitors go around the gates rather than through them? Figure skating for fraud artists where the judges would be competing for the medals and the skaters drawn at random from juvenile detention? The biathlon for Mafia hit-men where the penalty for missing would be becoming a target for the next round? The four-man getaway bobsleigh? Short track speed skating for death-row inmates who have lost their last appeals? Long track for lifers? The latitude for innovation is almost limitless.

In your mind’s eye, can’t you all but see the Olympic rings morph into five sets of colourfully barred windows? In an age where people are increasingly afraid of their own shadows and the inequity between the rich and poor guarantees an increase in criminal activity, the Conolympics could fill a niche that security firms would be all too happy to promote and endorse. Besides, with our “law and order’ Conservative government, we should have enough citizens behind bars to mount a realistic attempt to steal the podium.
Higher Faster Stronger Farther Guiltier

Alpharants

A. I think athletes should get the gold medal for finishing fourth. Think of the strategy involved. What would happen in figure skating?

B. I think Wiebo Ludwig should have lit the Olympic flame in Vancouver.

C. I have a friend who has been married and divorced so often that his lawyer suggested next time he forego getting married and just buy her a house.

D. How did Paul McCartney wind up with Heather Mills? Maybe it was more Beatle destiny like George dying of cancer and John getting shot in the back.

E. During the cold war, espionage agencies used sensory deprivation to brainwash enemy agents. Canada locked people in a room and played Anne Murray until they cracked.

F. I’m not surprised that Tiger crashed his SUV. Driving accuracy was always his Achilles heel.

G. Life expectancy in Canada is up to 80.4 years. Before you get all excited, you have to look back at what it was when you were born. In 1971 it was 72 years. In my case it was 67.2 which is just around a very short corner. Damn statistics.

H. I think Steven Harper looks like a mortician. Or his client.

I. Death is something that happens to other people. Until it happens to you. Then you become other people.

J. The concept of ‘Death warmed over’ has always bothered me. I mean, who would DO something like that?

K. I’m going to get one of those vanity plates that seem to say something. Mine will be ER8W1UC (which means nothing that I know of) just to watch other drivers try to figure it out.

L. Of all the euphemisms for death, ‘passed’ is one of the more intriguing. You get the sense of someone going by in a hurry or giving up their turn in Bridge. Wouldn’t it be totally ambiguous if Joe Namath passed?

M. I don’t want to will my body to Science because I know the kind of sick humour that med students have. Besides, what if I wind up in the Physics or Chemistry department by accident? It’d be, “Someone get me a HUGE frickin’ Erlenmeyer Flask.”

N. My grandmother, in her early nineties, came to Canada to live with my mother. One day she confided in me that this was a strange country because the sun traveled backwards through the sky. I asked her what made her think that. She said that, in Austria, when she looked out her kitchen window in the morning, the sun was coming up. When she looked out my mother’s kitchen window she could only see the sun when it was going down. I explained that her kitchen window faced east and my mother’s kitchen window faced west. She said, no, when she walked in from her back door, the kitchen was on the left and her bedroom was on the right, just as it was now in Canada. I said, yes, but imagine that your house has been turned around. She said, the kitchen is still on the right. I said, you’re right – the sun does come up on the wrong side here.

Morants

37. I quit teaching because of teenage girls. Everyday some group or other would congregate outside my classroom and scream/babble about their latest boy or toy or both while holding hands and jumping up and down. It brought me to a new appreciation of 'infectious happiness' where infections are bad things that can kill you.

38. Whoever coined the term "as the crow flies" must have seen a crow on a very good day rather than in its usual course of meandering punctuated by long periods of sitting.

39. Ambergris, also referred to as whale barf and a former a major component of perfumes which still sells for three hundred dollars per ounce, comes from sperm whales. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere.

40. There's nothing worse than people chewing with their mouths open except if they're eating a hardboiled egg at the time. That's worse.

41. Can you imagine a grandpa in Haiti getting his grandson to pull his finger just when the earthquake hit? Talk about being scarred for life!

42. Why do people talk about opening a can of worms? Do worms even come in cans? Are there recipes?

43. People used to polish their teeth with urine. Honest. And Portugese urine was the most sought after. How could you tell it was Portugese pee? Did it come with a certificate of authenpissity?

44. I bought one of those cardboard shades you put in your windshield in the summer. It had a disclaimer in small print that said, "Do Not Drive With Shade In Place." Another Get Out Of Jail Free card in the game of natural selection Monopoly.

45. I wrote in Brian Jacobs' religion book in Grade 9. I thought it was my book so I captioned the picture of Jesus spreading his hands to the multitudes with the quote, "Honest, it was thiisss big." When Mrs. Demers asked me if I was responsible I lied. I remembered that later when I heard about Colin Thatcher.

46. When you are in an uncomfortable situation you are on TENTER hooks, not TENDER hooks. Did you think they had the pointy bit rounded off or covered with sponge rubber?

Final 20 base 8

85. The reason that police aren’t allowed to go on strike is very simple: they would have to club THEMSELVES on the picket line. 

86. Say the word 'flush' over and over to yourself, at the top of your voice, 10 times. Make sure you are not in a public washroom or standing behind a poker player when you do this. 

 87. Why do we still have expressions like ‘throwing down the gauntlet’ and ‘running the gauntlet’? Nobody wears gauntlets anymore. Especially in Canada because we often wipe our nose with our mitts in the winter. 

88. Speaking of freezing stuff to iron, I never did the tongue frozen to the monkey-bars thing. There are some potentially painful life experiences like defusing bombs, free climbing and base jumping that are better left to adrenalin junkies. I’m saving my adrenalin for running away. 

 89. Why is American Football called Football? The foot and the ball rarely meet and are definitely not in a compound word relationship. They could call it ‘Tossball’ but then nobody would come to the games. Except the sexually ambiguous. 

90. If a rolling stone gathers no moss, what’s that green stuff all over Keith Richards? 

91. My father once told me I could find sympathy in the dictionary between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis’. It’s a lot easier just to Google it but then it’s not as much of a fatherly advice sort of thing. 

 92. Some people have no sense of humour. I was the only person in the theater to laugh when Paul Newman got shot in Cool Hand Luke. Lighten up people! 

93. I taught a Phys Ed class to some 8 year-olds. I had them running laps in the Gym after lunch. A number of the kids slipped on what I had presumed were raisins that someone had dropped and forgotten to pick up. Turns out one of the students had had an ‘accident’ before the rest of them did. 

 94. Lying to children is the worst thing that anyone can do. Unless you’re a teacher. Then it’s called ‘curriculum’. 

 95. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Tell that to Mrs. Lemp, my Grade 3 teacher. All the other kids thought it was funny, though. 

96. I worked with a woman who kept Kleenex up her sleeve. She would blow her nose and stuff the tissue back in her sweater. I was waiting for someone to say, “I bet she’s got something up her sleeve” like she was plotting something and I would have said, “Snot’. 

 97. I think Ogden Nash’s poetry style was a result of his parents naming him Ogden. With that kind of start it would be hard to take anything too seriously. Nothing rhymes with Ogden.

98. I used to have this irrational fear of needles. Now that I have diabetes it has become a rational fear. 

99. What if  we had no thumbs? How would we hitch-hike? Would we still use metric? Would we have to index finger our noses at authority?

100. I heard that the word 'fat' was offensive and would even be removed in certain circumstances. The history books will contain entries like Yasser Arablank, Blanks Domino and Blanks Waller, that pool legend Minnesota Blanks, and Blanky Arbuckle. The Iranian government will only be able to declare a blankwa against unbelievers, the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima will become Blank Man, Mardi Gras will become Mardi Blank, things that kill you will be blankal, something silly will be blankuous, and when you're tired you'll be overcome with blanktigue.  Fates (oops, blankes) similar to to those of the word 'fat' await: old, dumb, gyp, ugly, stupid, mother , father, boy, girl, and crazy.

More Ants

75. I saw a commercial on television the other day. It was for an antidepressant. The entire 60 second slot had a voice-over that described the various side-effects of the drug. The word ‘death’ came up more than once as a distinct possibility. I smirked all the way through so I guess the stuff really works. 

76. I’m glad that the father of my country wasn’t an axe wielding eco-terrorist. 

 77. It's amazing how deceptively relaxed people look in coffee shops, sipping their java and giving not the slightest inkling of the quivering, hair-trigger synapses that tremble beneath the surface. With all that caffeine I’m sure that dropping a hint would be enough to result in people having to be picked off the ceiling. 

 78. Why are Americans supposed to remember the Alamo? Didn’t they get even with Mexico a long time ago? 

79. The term ‘mechanically de-boned chicken’ has always bothered me. I think it’s the ‘mechanically’ part. It conjures up images of medieval torture chambers. For chickens. 

 80. Some people feed baby mice to lizards. Apart from being disgusting, isn’t that a betrayal of your fellow mammals? 

81. Do people forget they have Alzheimer’s? 

82. Roland Nordman asked to leave the room in our Grade 11 English class. We didn’t notice the fire he’d set in his desk until he’d left the room. How do you translate that into future career opportunities? 

83. When I was two I nearly drowned in a farmer’s cesspool. Now I live in Alberta. Talk about foreshadowing. 

84. The Alberta Government should promote the Tar Sands’ sludge ponds as a future tourist attraction and treasure trove for paleontologists. In a thousand years they could become Canada’s answer to the Labrea Tarpits.

Howie Morants

63. Dyslexics of the world UNTIE! I wrote this in my Religion book (see #45) in Junior High but most people think that Gary Larsen came up with it. I still don't know how he got his hands on my Religion book. I think Mrs. Demers was trying to get even . . .

64. I cut the crust off a piece of toast. I’m going to put it on eBay because it looks like Wyoming.

65. I think hockey players should use loaded rifles instead of hockey sticks. It would make stick handling harder and there wouldn’t be as many fights.

66. I got my lip cut open playing hockey. Before I got it stitched up I looked like I was smiling but I wasn’t. Seeing your teeth when your mouth is closed is no smiling matter. Unless they're in a glass. Even then it's not much to smile about.

67. I needed to have my lip sewn back together after hockey. The surgeon used a surgical drape that is normally used for circumcision. I tell people I have a kosher lip.

68. You know how some people say that they climb a mountain because it’s there? They’d never get away with that answer to a three-year-old. Or maybe they would.

69. In high school I carried around Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics but didn’t read it until 10 years later. Now the debunking of metaphysics is a big preoccupation of mine. Coincidence? I think not.

70. So “fools rush in where wise men never go”? Most of the fools I’ve met don’t do a lot of rushing. They’re more liable to be the last ones out of a burning building. Wait. That’s rushing out.

71. Another one is “you’re only as old as you feel.” These words are usually uttered by old people in denial.

72. Most of you are too young to remember Ed Sullivan. Imagine one of those Easter Island statues with scoliosis.

73. So Scientologists believe that we are alien spirits encumbered by our attachment to our physical, material being? John Travolta is closer to being an alien spirit than most people. This would be true even if there was no such thing as Scientology.

74. Don Sroka, my best friend for part of Junior High, convinced me (by using a doctored tape recording) that Edmonton mayor Elmer Roper was the Masked Destroyer - a wrestling villain of the early sixties. I told everybody at school. Elmer Roper was 200 years old and looked like he was Gollum's consumptive twin. I was a very trusting person. I didn't know what 'gullible' meant back then.

Number 5

50. When you’re a senior you don’t work anymore.

51. In Grade 3 I sat behind Annie Florax. I hated it because whenever we had a class party she would eat until she got sick and I had to clean it up. Looking back, it could have been worse; I could have been sitting in front of her.

52. Our catechism had pictures to display the effects of sin. A white milk bottle showed your soul if you were free from sin, a bottle with black blotches among the white was venial sin, and a totally black milk bottle represented mortal sin. Of course all the pictures were in black and white so it could have been chocolate.

53. I wonder how many people have had their fingers amputated by pull-tabs or by carrying cans out to the recycle bin with their fingers in the hole left by the pull-tab. There’s not even a warning or anything!

54. I used to drink one half dozen cokes per day. When I think about how people used to dissolve nails in the stuff, I feel like apologizing to my digestive tract. I have since found that the nail thing is an urban myth. Considering that it involves nails, it's probably a rural myth too.

55. I know this sounds irreverent, but I wonder if miraculous stuff like toast in the shape of Jesus and melted candles that look like the Virgin Mary has to be made out of virtuous stuff. Like, let’s say I found a piece of doggy poo in the shape of some holy figure – would it be worth a fortune on eBay or would I just get a lot of hate mail from Alabama?

56. There are more than two sides to an argument . . . like a dodecahedron or an outdoor hockey rink or something else with more than two sides.

57. Sticking up your finger to show displeasure is called the fig (honest). If people actually had to hold up real figs there would be less antagonism in this world. And fig farmers would become very wealthy.

58. I used to sit next to this really stupid kid in Grade 6 and I would often look at his math test while we were writing it to see how ridiculous an answer he had written. On one occasion the teacher caught me looking at the kid’s test and accused me of cheating. I said it was only cheating if it gave you an advantage, not ammunition for ridicule. He said that was an advantage.

59. Why do television manufacturers run commercials that show how superior their picture quality is? A guy who’s watching on a crappy set is going to say, “Doesn’t look much better than mine.”

60. You know how people throw money into any artificial pool or fountain so they can make a wish? I’ll bet swimming pools would be treasure troves if people weren’t forced to leave their wallets in the change room.

61. In 1958, when I was in Grade 6, I prayed that my Dad wouldn’t find out that I’d played hooky from school. It was that same evening I began to mistrust metaphysics.