Dude, Don't Bogart That Olympic Torch

I guess you might see anything if you're high enough. Well, I didn't pay much attention other than to the coeds during art appreciation class, so I'm not seeing it. Then again, I'm not stoned.

Whatever. Any of you art majors out there feel free to weigh in.

We hate to delve into smut and cheap innuendo -- leaping into it is more fun and profitable these days -- but the subject can be avoided no longer.

More and more people seem to be agreeing with select Canadian potheads (pardon the redundancy) that the Official Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch, lying on its side, looks suspiciously like a big, fat doobie. As in, joint. Marijuana cigarette. Fill in your own nickname here.

We hardly think -- or at least we hope -- the good folks at Bombardier, makers of planes, trains and now, apparently, 37-inch, 2.8-pound, stainless steel and aluminum replica joints, had the evil, killer weed in mind when they designed the torch last year.

But in a nation that made dope-smoking snowboarder Ross Rebagliati a hero after he became the first person ever to be stripped (temporarily) of a medal for using a performance-impeding drug at Nagano in 1998, anything's possible.

That contact high that Ross claimed he got at a party in Whistler must have spread east, because the Toronto Star today ran a piece about the uncanny resemblance of the Olympic torch, or "Olympic toke," as they say it's being referred to around Vancouver, to a light-up-able conveyor of B.C. Bud.

Two thirds of Star readers, in a highly unscientific and perhaps buzz-induced poll, thought the torch looked like a joint.

Not everyone agrees.

Over on The Stranger's Slog, for instance, David Schmader opines that "Personally, I think it looks like a pregnancy test that reveals you're having Satan's baby."

Hard to argue with that.

This just in: Michael Phelps has petitioned to enter the 2010 Winter Games.