25 January, 1998
Ten things you could be doing with your life other than wasting it watching
the Superbowl:
The Reverend editorializes a bit more...
American football is an odd sport. There really isn't much action. There's
no interaction between the spectators and the participants, unless you count those in the
stands clever enough to paint
each side of their face in the two team colours.
American football, when it comes right down to it, is a modern replacement for warmaking.
There are two sides, they're struggling towards opposing goals, but there's no real
success when they're finished. The only victory they can achieve can be merely a hollow one, at best.
Football is one of the only "manly"
sports with no obvious phallic
symbol involved in the playing of the game. This lack of phallus symbolizes the
emaciation of the players on the field. They can't be warriors so they attempt to
prove their virility by playing a simulated war game.
The playing of the game involves them throwing the ball away, and then struggling to get
it back again and take it to the goal. This is very symbolic of the player's own
feelings of worth as modern men. They're losing their balls, if you
will, but they're still struggling to get them back again.
I have to emphasize "American" football, because the the rest of the world
uses the term for the game we know as "soccer".
Interestingly enough, in soccer you're not allowed to use
your hands. Somehow doing so would be "unmanly."
Football is like sex, for men. There's the pre-game show
(foreplay) the game itself (sex) and then the post-game show (cuddling). The
interesting part is that over 95% (margin of error +/- 5%) of the football fans in the
world are men. So not only is football a substitute for warmaking and sex, but it's
a homosexual substitute (latent, or otherwise).
I'm sick of reading this marxist
propaganda, take me to Amber!
Note: today's daily page was scribed by The
Reverend Jough Approximately, so blame him
for its content, rather than complaining to the lovely and talented Amber.
I've always been a firm believer in the hypertextuality
of the 'web. I'm a fan of making almost everything linked to something else. It adds interactivity to an otherwise
"boring" medium. I also tend to be attracted to the bizarre and perverse. So here, for your browsing pleasure, are my suggestions for alternate activities that you
could engage in rather than watching some guys in tight pants play a game this afternoon/evening.
Sadly, most of these links come from my personal bookmark collection.
10)
Read some poetry.
Better yet, you could write some of your own.
9)
It's interesting that the Stupor Bowel is going to be played at the
Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego CA, since the fine Qualcomm
company makes internet communications software.
You could go visit their homepage.
8)
You could meditate on what Nietzsche means when he states that exploitation belongs to
the "essence of what lives"
in Beyond Good and Evil.
7)
You could be drinking a big frosty glass of milk and watching infomercials,
you infidel!
6)
You could act like a true American and
consider ways to invade Canada, our evil neighbo(u)r to the North.
5)
You could put down the remote, allow the beer to slip from
your other hand, get your lazy ass out
from the indent on the sofa,
and help out with the housework,
you rotten bastard! Oh, sorry, I was channeling the women of America's past for a second, there.
4)
You could make a little paper origami duck and give it
to someone you love.
3)
The pay-cable channel Showtime
is showing Kenneth Branagh's
complete 4-hour uncut version of Hamlet directly opposite the
Superbowl. You could watch
it, or otherwise read the play.
2)
You could teach yourself how to
juggle. Think about
how proud your family and friends would be if they could see you
simultaneously juggling
oranges, eggs, chainsaws, etc.
1)
You could proceed on to Amber's pages, basking in the warmth of their radiant glow.