It goes without saying that you’re not going to watch the Winter Olympics, why would you?  Very few non-Europeans or devoutly Canadian hosers really enjoy winter sports.  But have you ever stopped to actually understand why you loathe the winter Olympics or is it just a knee jerk reaction?  Well jerk those knees no longer, here are some legitimate reasons to take issue with this winter’s Olympiad.

* Ed. Note – This article was written and published before the accident which claimed the life of Nodar Kumaritashvili during a luge event on February 12th, 2010.  Obviously we would not intentionally make light of that tragic accident.  Our tasteless luge jokes, which remain complete in the article, were meant in a harmless manner.

Sex

If you read the news or have your houseboy read it to you, then every time a major world sporting event occurs, you hear about the massive rise in the sex industry because international competition causes incurable boneritis.  Analysts predict literally thousands of women will be trafficked into the country to be forced into prostitution and this year’s winter Olympics are no different.

People predicted upwards of 40,000 women would be smuggled into Germany for the 2006 World Cup, and Vancouver has already been slammed for not making an effort to wrap the city in an anti-whore net.  Benjamin Perrin, a law professor at the University of British Columbia is also on board, letting everyone knows that, you bet, Olympics is a mad hooker magnet.  So while your favorite Latvian is busy speed skating, outside the Olympic village there will literally be hundreds of hookers read to bob on your sled.  That’s the best winter Olympic sex pun ever.

Except that’s all rancid bullshit.  Benjamin Perrin, I pity your students.  Google “Olympics” and “prostitution” right now and you’ll find literally hundreds of articles about the 2010 and 2012 Olympics.  The ones that haven’t happened yet.  It’s all people making predictions.  The world does not have that many whore-psychic journalists.  I checked with NASA and there’s only 5 on record.

In fact, research after the World Cup in Germany indicated that no, there was no rise in human trafficking in the country.  The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, an actual organization that exists to put an end to human trafficking, so if they have a bias it would actually be towards claiming trafficking is going on, said that there is no rise during the World Cup or Olympics.  It doesn’t happen.  Why?  Because there’s enough local poon to go around for the limited few people who actually want to see hookers.  And because more police are on hand during large events so bringing in illegal immigrants to do illegal work is about as stupid as trying to improvise a flashlight by sticking a fire cracker up your ass.

Honestly, who gets tickets to see the Olympics and then goes to see a hooker?  Probably most people are in town because for some ungodly reason they’re actually interested in cross-country skiing and those people can’t get laid even if they pay for it.

So the media bashes you over the head with lurid tales of literally thousands of prostitutes being available during the Olympics when in fact it’s just not true.  If you want to get laid during the Olympics you have to do it the old fashioned way by trading a snowboarder some weed for a handjob.

The Luge

The Winter Olympics has always been the bastard cousin of the Summer Olympics, the Lennie to its George.  In summer you at least get to watch professional athletes from the USA trounce amateurs from Kiribati in basketball, baseball and assorted other sports that are actually popular and televised year round.  During winter you get the luge.

No one actually luges anywhere in the world for fun.  It’s literally never happened.  Luge involves waiting for the bobsled guys to go on a lunch break, then stealing their little ice tube, jamming a skate up your ass and throttling down the hill at break neck speeds.

How on earth can you take any event seriously if it involves sliding down a hill?  Do you know who first mastered sliding down a hill?  Ugly little cave toddlers.  They slid down hills and buffered their falls against mounds of mammoth dung.  Luge puts skates in your ass and that’s all that’s different.

The winter Olympics is never going to compete with summer if they keep allowing shit like the luge to go on.  Sure, summer has cricket and equestrian events that are preposterous at best but here’s the thing – can a corpse play cricket?  Arguably no.  But you have no way of knowing if the guy luging is even alive until he stands up at the bottom.

National Pride

Speaking of luge, do you know when people care about luge?  Once every four years if they see on TV that their country is sending the world’s best luger to the Olympics and he has a real chance at winning the gold.  Suddenly you feel pride.  And if he does win, someone, somewhere will remark “we just won the gold!”

Olympic fans will readily take credit for the achievement of a person who could have lived their entire life 2500 miles away from them.  Or more.  But because it’s the Olympics national pride means we all support our luge enthusiast friend from the other side of the country, at least for 14 days.

As a Canadian, I’m forced to endure the wrath of paper tiger nationalism every Olympics in ways Americans can’t even imagine.  This is because America is known for patriotism, while Canada is known for beavers.  By saying this I will prompt objectionable Canadians to defend their patriotism in one of two ways.  Fiercely, in a way that bespeaks many lies.  I am Canadian, you can’t fool me.  Or subtly, claiming Canadian pride doesn’t need to be as boisterous as American pride which will, of course, degrade into a xenophobic, prejudicial rant against Americans.  It’s all Canadians know how to do and I feel bad for us.

It’s not that I don’t have national pride or I’m not patriotic.  It’s that I don’t have much national pride and I’m not particularly patriotic.

See, the US was founded by people who hated themselves some shitty Brits.  Hated them. The tea, the crumpets, the close proximity to the French, it disgusted them.  So they said “eat our asses” (it’s in the Declaration of Independence, 4^th line in) and they traveled across the ocean and made their own country.  That’s a ballsy move.  On the other hand, Canada was founded by some Brits who came over and kept a watch on the Americans in the land that was arguably deemed too damn cold to live in by the newly formed country.  And we brought Frenchmen with us.

Americans were celebrating freedom, the frontier, manifest destiny, independence and all that.  Canada was selling beaver pelts and harvesting goo that comes out of trees.  It’s a fine country, don’t get me wrong, but meh.  I’m not going to write a song or anything.  We really don’t have anything to get a boner over in the nationalistic sense.

So when the Olympics rolls around, Canada sends its hockey team.  Gee, do you think they’re going to do good?  Do you realize people play hockey on the way to work here?  People play hockey right out on the street, or on ponds, or in parking lots, not because they want to, but because what the fuck else do you do on ice?  Curling?  WE DO THAT TOO!  Of course they’re going to do well, don’t pretend to be surprised.

For four years we couldn’t give two shits about any of that though.  No one televises curling here, except TSN at 2 in the afternoon.  And speed skating?  Cross country skiing? Biathlon?  It’s not even legal to air that, old people keep falling into comas.  So the only time it rears its head and becomes a point of national pride is during the Olympics and that reeks of boring sports hypocrisy, which is one of the worst kinds of hypocrisy.

Good hypocrisy is when you agree with your friends that being double-teamed by toothless whores is awful but then secretly you do it anyway.  Bad hypocrisy is when you don’t give a shit about something that you don’t give a shit about because there’s no reason to give a shit, then pretending to give a shit once every four years because everyone else is doing the same thing when secretly no one still gives a shit!

Olympic Mascots

Canada is the home of Sasquatch.  The world now knows this thanks to Olympic mascot Quatchi, who is apparently an anime Bigfoot.  We’re also a land of Hello Kitty and little, fat marmots.

The official word is that the Olympic mascots, Quatchi the Sasquatch, Miga the Sea Bear and Sumi, the almost-Thunderbird were not inspired by drinking Thunderbird, rather they’re meant to appeal to the children of the world, as it relates to promoting a massive, multi-million dollar sporting event.  Oh, and there’s also a Vancouver Island marmot named Mukmuk.

Why they look like Japanese cartoons is a question for another day and certainly someone’s going to make a fortune marketing little plush versions of these intensely cute bastards, the fact is they’re perpetuating the myth that Canada is, in fact, a land of yetis despite the country’s best efforts since its founding to convince people we are free of Arctic monsters.  Other than that I have no issue with them.

Vikings

This is a shout out to all the conspiracy theorists (holla!) because you guys need new material, anyway.  They faked the moon landing?  Seriously?

Every 4 years, your various Nordic folks get together and send off their teams of Olympians and honestly, is there really a difference?  Would you know if Sven Sorenson from Finland was replaced by Soren Svenson from Iceland?

The fact is, Norsemen are cunning and sly and so pale you can barely make them out against the typical winter Olympic backdrop anyway.  It’s possible the entirety of Scandinavia pooled their ill-gotten Nazi gold and chocolate monies to develop a super soldier and, realizing they don’t actually need any soldiers, made him focus his talents on winter sports instead.  It could literally be one guy, he’s just so good that he plays all 5 positions during Swedish hockey games.  There’s 5 guys on the ice in hockey, right?  Goalies don’t count, we all know that.

Now of course this only matters if you actually care about the winter Olympics, so the very idea of being put out by this revelation kind of flies in the face of the whole article.  I mean, why should you care if a Finnish super athlete just trounced your country’s best ski jumper?  I’ll tell you why – sportsmanship.  Even if a game sucks withered sack, sportsmanship is essential to the very nature of gameplay.  Without it we’re no different than soccer fans.  The spirit of sport must be respected, even if you’re doing something as ridiculous as skeleton.  I don’t even know what the fuck skeleton is.  It’s scheduled for February 18^th at 4:00pm though and by God they better be good sports about it.

Drug Scandal

Did you have any idea there were narcotics being used by winter Olympians?  And not just guys who play hockey, which is actually a sport, but cross country skiers?

According to an allegedly real news website, people who take part in an Olympic event that is arguably walking from one place to another while on skis feels the need to engage in some manner of doping.  For the past two winter games, Torino in 2006 and Salt Lake in 2002, Austrian skiers apparently spent all their free time injecting themselves with horse tranquilizers or Lysol or whatever the fuck improves an alpine skier’s performance.  Cheating at skiing is so awesome in Austria that this year the Austrians aren’t even sending skiers because they know it’s just going to turn into a clusterfuck and they don’t want to endure the embarrassment of having photos surface of their Olympic team caught up to their tits in a room full of speed and delicious, tiny canned sausages.  For a third time.

Now I’m not so naïve as to think the Olympics are never plagued by drug scandal.  For instance, who played for the US baseball team at the last Olympics?  Because probably those dudes were so juiced they could have shit a hole in concrete, but we’re talking about skiing.  This is like hearing that your mom had to snort bleach and pop rocks every morning just to deal with you – it makes you feel bad about yourself.  No one cheats at skiing, may as well cheat at taking a piss.  Can you even do that?  We’re going to have an intern check it out by press time.