Why I hate the Superbowl... and what to do when you run out of underpants...

So I posted on Slavebook yesterday; decrying my lack of appreciation for the game of football and the subsequent folderol over this SuperBowl thingie.  After some small debate and a preponderance of thought, I realized that it really wasn’t the game of football I hated but rather the attention it garners. Some comments were made, some people responded, and then more debate…      Out of this, a blog began to form… Here goes.

**********************************************

The thing is I really really dislike playing football myself. In fact, most sports became anathema to me when they go from “cuz I wanna” to “Competition”. Being six foot tall and "thick" (as well as a girl) all through middle and high school it was treated as my duty to “join the team”, whatever teams it was; soccer, volleyball, basketball, (not much call for football wherever I was usually at, but it falls into the same category for me nonetheless). The point being, that each experience was profoundly and personally obnoxious at best, demeaning and soul-crushing at worst. People became bloodthirsty, cruel and vicious. This “competition” thing makes disloyal animals out of perfectly nice folks. So that could be part of it.

The only reason I had EVER watched the Superbowl (aside from that early girlhood delusion that boys only liked girls who like football) was for the commercials. Especially when I figured out that game quality, sportsmanship and individual/team athletic skill didn't really matter to as many as we would like to think it does… Instead it really REALLY mattered who was                                                                                                     popular            

                                            

and what kind of halftime spectacle there was going to be, who gets hurt, how badly and will there be an instant replay of that?

To this tattooed white trash poetess, it is akin to the mistaken notion people watch Nascar so they can observe other people in skin tight Frito Lay suits make left turns all day in varying weather conditions. Fewer then we may care to admit actually understand or appreciate (beyond the occasional comment of "Damn, he's good!") the skill involved in keeping the physical laws at bay while performing the same act(s) over and over again, with increasing power, at increasing speeds, with numerous ever-changing variables, successfully. Not to mention trying to safely best all the other renob’s endeavoring to do the same thing you are, right next to you, as fast as you are if not faster, as long as you if not longer. They don’t really care about all that.

Most of them secretly just want the chance to watch someone  burn. 

Then there is always my favorite. The supremely humiliating-as-a-species fundamentally flawed fracas… ahem, excuse me… cough!, cough!, “debate” over whether or not someone “flashed” millions her mammary or there was a "wardrobe malfunction"… And don’t lets forget the infamy-obsessed publicity junkies and relentless bricktards who exploit this hugely public venue to reflux-ively crotch-grab or casually defame our nations honor.

I think it is supposed to be funny. 

Ha. Ha. Ha.

The fact that this deflects attention away from more dreary and distasteful stuff like famine, ethnic cleansing, atypical ecological decline, and lots of altogether significant *face-palm!* political shenanigans makes me almost physically ill. 

Not to sound like the rural Alaskan cabin-dwelling hyper-vigilant conspiracy theoretician I am alleged to resemble…     

But perhaps this is its inescapably devious function at the quick of things. And I am only dubious of its deviousity because I don’t give our Caesars, our tax-collectors and our money-lenders that much credit for projected social outcome planning beyond how it effects their bottom line. 

It’s always an advertisement campaign at the end of the day. It’s about profit and loss. Run the numbers, you'll see I'm right. The goal is either to drive the lemmings off the cliff or away from it. Ask yourself which process and its outcome feeds the black, what gets the job done and makes the shareholders, ahem, cough… I mean all twelve voters… happy at the end of the business day. One and One usually makes two. Unless you’re the Fed Reserve Bank, the IRS or the Treasury Department, then they’ll have to get back to you in seven to ten working days.

I know, it’s hard to pay much attention to things like; Benghazi, the NSA harvesting our communication(s) will ye nil ye…, this national affordable care act insurance cataclysm, 1.5 million unemployment benefits being cut... when everyone is focused on voting to have Justin Beiber deported. 

Haven’t we done enough to the Canadians? 

Honestly, who gives a shit if a nineteen year old gets picked up for being stupid and irresponsible any more than all the other nineteen year olds getting picked up for being stupid and irresponsible. It’s kind of epidemic in proportion these days… He was rude to cops? No! Shock and Horror! How can this be that a phenomenally rich, famous and delusional teenager would have an ego maniacal manifestation in public!!! How strange that he would feel entitled and above the law! I find it hard to comprehend the root of people’s indignation. But that could be just me.

Sure, I can gape at mind-blowingly ridiculous public displays of deafening stupidity with the best and least of us. I can even admit to a certain modicum of Chronic Rubber-Neckary that pains me now and again and maybe I suffer from some Somatoformic Tom-Peeperson disease… But I am struggling to surmount the symptoms! As a fanatical addict of this so substantially gov’ment subsidized substance of choice, it is all I can do some days to make the choice… to refrain from cheering the lions, to refrain from bathing in the witnessed horror people are drowning in… And I gotta keep choosing to refrain, on a daily, sometimes even hourly basis. 

     

I admit the seductive quality of this perspective is as foolish as it is subjective to my fluctuating and fickle perception(s). I recognize brain-candy-floss when I taste it's sickeningly addictive sweetness and am I am nonetheless fighting so that I don’t just stand there, mouth breathing 
while stuffing and streaming 
and stuffing and streaming 
it live on my 
Slavebook…      

  

Well, that’s not all true if I am to be honest. For a short period in my life I actually tried to enjoy the Superbowl. I suppose because so many people I respected around me acted like it was valuable. It seemed an important thing to at least learn to appreciate… like eating lima beans when I was seven… tasted like I imagined paste and salt would taste and made no sense but it was supposed to be good for me… then it just began to seem as if I must be un-American, that maybe this mental illness thing had spread further than we had first thought… and since I still don’t appreciate it, maybe I am a failure at this social conforming thing too. Just like that principal said about my son when he was seven…

Well screw you principal lady. Screw you.

Still I realize that in my defense it could be that I am simply not invested. I don’t have a boy on the team, a stake in the game, as it were. I don’t have a home team advantage to scream for, buy swag in support of the squad for and all that jazz. 

So this pensive pondering, all this worrisome wondering…and I still don’t understand why!!! Billions and billions of dollars spent on a game that nevertheless makes no damn sense to me. 

What it does seem to do is foster every undesirable prejudicial stereotype historically ingrained on an already ethically-crippled planet. It actually seems to hold more value and importance per capita then stupid boring stuff like standing up to be counted, or divesting inhumanity of its all too human face. Call me un-American if you must. But the fact is, at the end of the day, it is just a damn ball being chased around by a bunch of quasi-steroidal muscle bound boys in tight shiny pants.

Much like other ritualistic activities, there's only a certain level of appreciation I allow myself for them; I.e... I don't plan my whole year around them, I don't throw a huge party to celebrate watching a portion of it/them perform on television... I don't paint my face and act like a boob about them, I don't attempt to tear the eyes out of those who don't think my favorite [insert (un)holy icon here] is the bestest in the universe... mainly because I believe it to be a mark of an evolutionarily challenged simp to get that damn hyper about much of anything. 

I do like cooking shows though…

I am also compelled to point out that as far as I am concerned, acres of people slavering all-over themselves like tedious infected protuberances while tossing their metaphorical OR literal panties on the stage(s) of ANYONE/thing... save the Divine Architect(s) of the Universe, is just plain old fashioned bullshit. The only proviso in my defense being that a comparison must be made to the significantly pathetic turn-out for things that are actually of vital importance (like voting and meaningful community involvement) and not just a form of hysterical mutual masturbation. 

We’re tragically, only a few lions away from pay-per-view MMA Gladiators vs. Christians sponsored by Budweiser and Nike. OOO, more corporate sponsored orgiastic rage festivals! Yay! Next we'll televise executions on pay-per-view and call it a healthy form of social closure... betcha Coors Lite would sponsor that shit. Maybe Chick-Fil-A... Who knows... sky is the limit. You get to decide. I wouldn’t bother trying to put it to a vote though.  And you should probably put down your clipboards and your picket signs on this one. ‘Cuz no matter what we choose or allow to be chosen for us, lately we seem to be doing an excellent job of behaving like an intolerant, self-indulgent, gluttonous and fickle-hearted bunch of cannibalistic babies. 

Look you, to how history's winners penned and painted the stories of Rome, Greece, Egypt, the Huns and others. 

Witness how pride again and again went before destruction.

Now cut to commercial! 

Boo, I say. Boo!