By now you may have gathered that I am not a huge fan of the Olympics.

So, you can imagine how lucky I feel to have the torch relay coming down my street this Wednesday. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to get out of my driveway to go to my doctors' appointments.

Wait, I could take public transit, as the BCCA is urging chemo patients to do.

Hmm, let's see. What would that require?

Boarding one bus, transferring to another, catching the seabus, transferring to the skytrain, and then walking up hill for 15 minutes to the Cancer Agency.

Wait, make that 20. You know, tumors and all.

Total travel time: 2 hours each way.

It would make things so much easier if I could just thumb a lift and ride in the priority traffic lane reserved for IOC dignitaries and athletes. Perhaps we could share a Big Mac on the way over.

Just think, they could tell me how athletes scored 100,000 free condoms (14.6 each) from the Provincial Health Services Authority and I could tell them about the lack of funding for clinical trials in this province.

We could swap stories of their parties at the billion dollar Olympic Village and I could tell them about the delapidated palliative care ward at the BCCA.

We could, like, totally bond!

Actually, come to think of it, it would be much more fun to ride on the torch bearers' bus. Then I could enjoy the VANOC promotional video shown en route which includes footage from the 1936 Nazi propaganda film "Olympia."

Nothing like a little Sieg Heil to raise ones spirits.

Oh darn.

Apparently, after a news article appeared in the Globe and Mail last week, VANOC decided their decision to use and obscure the context of the footage was a bad one, so the promo has been "retired."

Until now, I have been reluctant to post the following excerpt from the Riefenstahl film, first, because it is disturbing; second, with the increasing level of security and violation of civil liberties in this city over the past few months, believe it or not, it actually seemed risky to have this blog pop up under a possible Google search for "Olympics" and "Nazis."

Sad, but true.

However, it also seems to me that having an idea of the history and origin of the torch relay and the five Olympic rings that brandish every surface of our city is important.

So, screw it. I'm sure they have chemo in jail.