In response to an unexpected outcry (and some projectile vomiting), hotels around the Olympic Village have decided to take “Dog” off the restaurant menus. Of course you can still order snake and worm. Or you can go to the inlaid bamboo aquariums at the back of the dining rooms and select your favorite giant water beetle, which will be steamed in the shell and delivered to your table with a bowl of white or fried rice.

If none of those delicacies tickle your palate, you can always go to the Guolizhuang Restaurant for a plate of yak’s penis and sheep testicles on a bed of curry. Deer, horse, bull and ram penises are also available, but the yak’s member is prepared tableside on a golden dragon cutting board. Nothing says five-star experience quite like sipping a fine Chianti while a tuxedo-clad waiter takes a cleaver to a yak’s knob.

Welcome of the 08 Olympic Games, where, in the words of sports management consultant Jim Keegan, “You won’t fault their earnestness, but you can bet the execution will be just a little bit off.” 

For example, the Beijing Olympic Committee announced this week that people with “mental illness and venereal diseases” will be barred from entering any of the venues. As much as that sounds like satire, officials are not only quite serious, they couldn’t wait to share the good news. They even put out a press release and had a smiling agent standing by to answer questions. No need to worry, sports fans of the world; Chinese authorities have vowed to protect you from bag ladies and seeping genitalia. 

That’s not all you will be protected from if you visit Beijing in the next two weeks. Chinese authorities have taken the liberty of adding a couple of filters to your internet, for your own good, of course. Want to get a little history about Tiananmen Square before walking through it on the way to the aquatic center? Don’t expect any archived images of the 1989 massacre. They aren’t sports related, so officials have vanquished them from the ether, and the collective memories of almost a billion people. “Public order” and all.  You also won’t find references to Tibetan protests, not even those that disrupted the torch relay.

In Paris, a Chinese security guard extinguished the torch and put it on a bus in order to avoid protesters. Two time Olympic judo champion David Douillet was carrying the eternal flame when the extinguishers came out.

“It is incomprehensible. It is as if someone spat in my face," said Douillet, who is also on the French Olympic Committee. “They have trampled on the Olympic rings. They have trampled on the athletes who carry the values of the Olympic Games. Given what happened, the athletes are asking themselves one question: how will they be treated in Beijing?”

They will be treated fine, as long as they don’t disrupt the social order. Taking pictures in front of Mau’s smiling mug at the Forbidden City is fine, but don’t wear a Dalai Lama t-shirt. You can clap for the government-sponsored street performers dancing along the walkways, but don’t ask anyone why the smog is so thick it makes L.A. look like Crystal Springs. You can ask the uniformed officers patrolling Tiananmen Square for directions, but don’t ask them to show you where that lone student stood up against the column of tanks.

And whatever you do, don’t order anything long and slender at a restaurant. The best it is likely to be is a snake.