Every couple of years when it rolls around, I tell myself the same damn thing: "Aaaaah, fuck the Olympics. I've had it with those goddamn things." And every year . . . I end up watching them.

I don't know why. The obvious explanation seems to be: I hate me.

Because really, the Olympics just end up pissing me off, pretty much all the time. Except when people fall. That I kind of like.

The Olympics piss me off for fairly unoriginal, pedestrian reasons. One big piss-off, of course, is the tremendously insulting American coverage of the events, which never misses an opportunity to manufacture a True Blue Bullshit story for American Olympians. Tonight they profiled a couple of lovely blonde American female downhill skiiers with INXS' "Beautiful Girl" playing in the background. I am happy to report that they both lost, and even happier to report that they lost to a fairly homely Austrian woman. Though I'm a bit surprised that NBC didn't do something in retaliation, like play "Evil Woman" or David Allan Coe's immortal "Finger Fuckin' Sally" over footage of the winner celebrating.

Another sort of meta-piss that I experience is in any event that has judging. FUCK JUDGING. Judging? This isn't American Fucking Idol, for Christ's sake. It's an athletic competition! Who is strongest? Who's fastest? Who's got the endurance? This is all I'm interested in. Unfortunately, judging is so pervasive as to ruin even some of the simplest events.

For example, ski jumping. This is an event that I clearly remember watching as a child, mainly for the incredible sense of awe and terror it inspired in me as I watched these lunatics willingly launch themselves into the high ether and eventually touch down--or, as it happened, explode on contact--miles away from where they started. To me, they were like astronauts without rockets--insane fuckers blasting themselves into the troposphere with nothing better than a couple of goddamn boards strapped to their feet.

How insulting, then, and I forget about this every Olympics, that these nutters are judged not only on how far they fly, but on style points. STYLE POINTS? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Listen, there is only one metric I'm interested in: Who went the farthest? Style points? I don't give a fuck if a guy looked like Bea Arthur with a hundred carrots stapled all over his body and pinwheeled madly all the way to the bottom while screaming "I REGRET EVERYTHING!" If the skier landed on his feet then HOW FAR DID HE GO? This is all that should matter.

Style points. Jesus Christ. Concepts like "style points" are just corrosive to sports, and it usually leads to phenomena like the Derek Jeter Effect, which I just now made up, but is basically: "It's the intangibles that really define him as a player." Not that it makes any fucking sense on any level. Jeter sure is an "intangibles" kind of guy. He's not an awful player by any means, but nor is he really an outstanding one. (But he is a fellow who isn't averse to ramming his face into a seat, for which I am always appreciative of. I hope he keeps that bit.) He's on a decent par with dozens of other decent players, but he's a "leader," he "makes the big plays" (except when he doesn't), he's "special." He's "intangible." Happily, baseball scores are not. Who got the most points? That's pretty tangible.

This is all leading up to, naturally, that bugaboo and great divider of us Olympics junkies, we who cannot help ourselves: figure skating.

First let me say that I totally acknowledge that these competitors are amazing physical specimens who routinely do beautiful, incredible things that are occasionally serenely lovely. I can appreciate it when the dude flings the girl into the air, and she spins a number of times and then lands on one thin blade with all the nonchalance of someone using an ATM. It's amazing.

Not amazing? The unbelievable pageantry and pomp accorded these ridiculous figures. Where else other than Las Vegas or the Winter Olympics would these odious clowns not be pelted with eggs and jeering epithets? Perhaps in some remote, undiscovered New Zealand village they might be hailed as gods, but for the rest of us, don't they look sort of like victims of Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun? And dressed as if by the designers of My Pretty Pony, but with their restraint bones removed?

Some day, if my deepest wish is granted, I will get to see a couple of figure skaters dressed in soiled denim doing a routine to Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" where for four and a half minutes, all the guy skater does is savagely throw the woman skater into the arena walls, only at the end to have her stick a bread knife into his eye. Then at the end, cheers will erupt and roses will gently fall to the ice while the female skater takes a bow and the guy bleeds to death over in the corner.

I would totally give that routine a 10. But hell, it isn't a 10 for that nonsport, is it? Is it a 6? Or did they change that again? Christ, what a pain in the ass. Is it 5 now? Whatever. The ice-queen murderess gets the gold. Just for the intangibles.