Cops crush my Olympic dreams

Flushed with success from our clandestine Friday felony at the women's beach volleyball (see below) a motley crew of assorted ne'er do wells and myself assembled at the Rickshaw yesterday afternoon to plan further hijinks.

The target was the men's hockey between Aus and the Netherlands, and the plan was simple: find some Brazilians, slit their throats, and steal their tickets and passports. Failing that, we also hoped just to purchase them in the normal way from any scalper we could find.

The first problem proved to be of a geographical nature. Our cabbie happened to be one of those ubiquitous cranially-challenged clowns who didn't have a clue of our destination and so dropped us off near the Bird's Nest. Several phone calls and conversations beginning with 那个，and 这个 later, and we found another taxi who could take us to the actual location.

The temporary setback overcome, we hovered near the entrance to the stadium trying to attract the attention of those shady deviants who ply the scalping trade. And attract attention we did - only not from scalpers. Merely moderately obese middle-aged men who wished to have their pics taken with the females of our party.

Our plan thwarted, we sulked awhile in sullen rage before hitting up some dim sum and karaoke. Not too bad an alternative, but it didn't really stack up against a night at the Olympics. And a very puzzling turn of events considering the ease at which we picked up tickets on Friday night. It was a mystery wrapped in a fortune cookie, that is, until this morning when I saw this article at Xinhua.

Beijing police has seized in a single day 110 scalpers who illegally sold Olympics tickets at competition venues, according to media reports.
About 340 Olympics tickets were found to be sold through illegal trading by scalpers on Friday, including 17 foreigner nationals, the Legal Daily reports.

Curses!

And so unnecessary. The scalpers are like the vultures of the Olympic savanna. Without them hundreds and thousands (more) tickets will not be used, and hundreds and thousands more pics showing row upon row of empty seats to audiences around the world are going to reinforce the belief that this is the No Fun Games.

And so I look at you, the noble protectors of law and order in this fair city, with big, sad eyes, and ask one pitiful question: Why?

Post script: To make matters worse, the Xinhua article also had a typo. You wood never see me do such things.