Imagethief has always been annoyed by the Chinese inclination to festoon press conferences with flowers. Spokespeople get corsages. Dais tables and podiums get bouquets. You'd think you were at a wedding if weren't for the fact that everyone is bored stupid and there's no bride to be seen. I can't count how many times I've had variations of the following conversation:

Flunky: We need flowers for the spokespeople!

Me: Why?

Flunky: Well, how will people know that they are spokespeople?

Me: Because they'll be seated on a dais behind microphones, under an enormous banner, facing the journalists?

...pause...

Flunky: We need flowers for the spokespeople!

Me: Right. You take care of that. I'm going to go bang my head against that concrete wall until my skull caves in.

And so on.

Over the years I've learned a grudging acceptance of the flower addiction, and many other Chinese press conference cliches. But, c'mon, you've got to be freakin' kidding:

God help you if you have an allergy.

Technically it's not a press conference, it's the opening ceremony of the 13th Beijing People's Congress. But it's really the same idea.

In other Olympic-related photo news, I was excited when I saw a story on the unveiling of uniforms for Olympic volunteers because I thought they were going to make the good-looking girls wear white micro-mini skirts:

For a moment I thought BOCOG was going to make good in a positive way on this dangerously ambiguous Xinhua headline:

"Beijing 2008 poised to be most memorable Games"

Unfortunately, it turns out she's just a compere. The uniforms are the shapeless, nursing-home drabwear in the background.

Alas.

Note: Thanks to Sage for pointing that destined-to-come-back-to-haunt-them headline.

Original URL: Click here to visit original article
Copyright Imagethief