I hate the Winter Olympics. You can despise me, deride me to kingdom come and slap me across the face with your newfangled American beret. But I'm not going to apologize for hating the Winter Olympics anymore than I apologized for the last principled stand I took -- being the only person on earth to savage March of the Penguins.

In fact, the Winter Olympics and March of the Penguins have more in common than not. There are lots of living beings standing around in the cold while someone explains something you never knew before.

On the positive side, the Winter Olympics have medals. On the negative side, they don't have Morgan Freeman narrating. This is unfortunate for NBC because I think Morgan Freeman is so outlandishly popular that if he narrated the entire two weeks of the Olympics, NBC would actually be in possession of every single dollar in America.

The primary reason I don't like the Winter Olympics is that every event is really just one of two things: Different ways to come down a mountain or ice-skating variations. Yet somehow this is supposed to be so absolutely entertaining that it will fill up two weeks of television.

I'd sooner watch outtakes of Bob Costas pretend to be excited about the events he's sending us to watch. For example, "And now we're sending you off to the final round of the curling competition where a scintillating race has ... aw, Christ, redo."

Plus, there is exactly one sport in the Winter Olympics you can watch and know who is winning without hearing an announcer tell you: hockey. Seriously, when else have you ever spent an entire evening watching a sporting event and have no idea what was going on? For instance, if the announcers wanted to, they could convince me that any average performer had just redefined his or her respective sport of going down a mountain or ice-skating variations.

And the scoring systems make absolutely no sense. At my wife's urging, I watched ice skating on Sunday night and if someone didn't fall, I had no concept of what was going on. Just that it was accompanied by elevator music. The winning scores were something like 68.462319749 to 67.415784378. It was almost like the judges were taking a shot at discovering a new prime number.

And how about all these imbeciles who line up outside in the cold to watch the luge race, which passes them in less time than it took you to read a single word of this sentence. This is the rough equivalent of going to the shooting range to watch bullets being fired.

Further, the whole idea of the Winter Olympics just strikes me as inherently exclusionary since there are tons of places where there is neither snow nor ice. No matter where you live, you can run, jump and probably swim at some point in the year, so I accept the universality of the Summer Olympic Games. But if you happen to live in Central America, Africa, large portions of Asia or anywhere remotely near the equator, you're probably not going to be very good at either coming down a mountain covered in snow or ice skating.

Perhaps I'm more sensitive to this because I'm a southerner who never participated in any winter activity other than very weak two-inch snowfall sledding. That's until I married my wife, who snowboards black diamonds while flossing and making cell phone calls. Subsequent to our marriage, I went skiing three times and did the following:

* Got teased by some 6-year-old girls while holding onto the rope pulley at the bunny slope before spending the entire day trying not to curse too loudly every time I fell.

* Tried to receive skiing lessons from my expert father-in-law, who is a legitimate adult-amateur ski racer. That led to an entire group of adolescent males taunting me as they passed above in the ski-lift.

* Hit a tree at pretty much full speed. After ascertaining that my body was still in one piece, I then attempted to stand, which somehow led to my becoming even more enveloped in a spruce tree.

From that moment forward, I resolved that winter sports were not for me. Now I just sit and drink beer in a Jacuzzi when I visit a ski lodge.

I find it hard to believe that anyone has ever run, walked or jumped and then voluntarily said, "You know what, this whole movement thing just really doesn't work for me. I'm going to stop doing it."

Basically, the Summer Olympics celebrate the movement of the body in all its manifold graces, while the Winter Olympics celebrate coming down a mountain and ice skating in all their horrible permutations. I would think that mankind would not have survived without the ability to run. The ability to ride a snowboard? Not so much.

OK, it's time for me to come clean. I do appreciate certain aspects of the Winter Olympics. And it's unfair for me just to keep ripping these events without acknowledging the good parts. So here's my list of things I like about the Winter Olympics:

The women's ice skating outfits.

That is all.

But I do feel bad about this hate, so in an effort to make the Winter Olympics more palatable to winter misanthropes like me, I crafted a very detailed list of changes which I am confident would lead to record ratings, a huge fan base and rampant egalitarianism.

Additions I would like:

1. Bull-fighting on ice: I've never been to a bull fight, but it seems like things are pretty slanted in the bull-fighter's favor. Plus, the matadors always seem so cocky prancing around with mud and dust to rest their feet upon. Well, ice seems like it would even the playing field and make the outcomes much less predictable.

2. Team snowball fight: I'm not that excited about the World Baseball Classic, but who wouldn't be excited about watching these same baseball teams engage in a huge snowball fight? If you get hit, you're out. Can you imagine what it would feel like to take a snowball in the face from Randy Johnson?

3. Morgan Freeman as the announcer for every event: For example: "And entering the ice rink (pause) the woebegone beast of burden known as Samson (pause). Set to engage in an eternal contest (pause) pitting man against his own fickle and star-befallen footing (pause). Oh what magic (pause) the earth hath wrought." The downside to this is that Congress might have to examine all sorts of anti-trust issues once NBC owned every dollar in America.

4. Obscene snowman building contest: This would have to be on television after 10 p.m. And Jenna Jameson would have to represent America every four years.

5. People who have never skied before: In order to avoid deaths, this would probably need to be limited to bunny slopes. You'd have to pretty much be an idiot to kill yourself on the bunny slope. Trust me, I know.

6. Snow angel contests with the contestants only allowed to wear one article of Under Armour clothing: This is pretty self-explanatory. Personally, I think you have to go with the Under Armour pants, although that might necessitate this competition also only being shown after 10 p.m. And let's be honest, it's only a matter of time until the Under Armour Olympics start up. I'm definitely putting money on that ripped 12-year-old from their commercials known as Little E. winning five golds. (Incidentally, the people at Under Armour are very accommodating, but they did turn down my Little E interview request).

7. People racing penguins on the luge: Before I walked out of March of the Penguins, there were all sorts of shots of penguins sliding down snowy hillsides. This got me wondering: Would a person or penguin win if they raced on the luge? I can see arguments either way and I'd be interested in reader opinions. My feeling is the penguins would win, but surprisingly, I don't have any scientific basis for this opinion. My wife is more logical about this debate, "You have to go with people," she said. "How would you get the penguins to luge?"