About that reefer-bished Vancouver Oly torch

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.

Historical note: To be fair, a lot of torches of Olympics' past bear uncanny resemblances to unsavory things, if you turn them a certain way and squint a little. Canada ought to know this already. For instance, take that 1988 Calgary torch and turn it upside down, and what do you have?

A fine silver-and-wood toilet plunger, or worse.

Gets worse than that. Look back farther. The Albertville 2002 torch, pictured below, can only be described as looking like a .... well, you be the judge.

Note: If you want to get completely carried away with this -- and why not? -- see the New York Times' interactive graphic of torches past here.

(Photos, top: Vancouver Olympic torch tipped sideways for, uh, creative effect, VANOC;
lower: Calgary 1988 torch and 1992 Albertville torches (Olympic Museum)