Time for my annual Super Bowl Sunday rant. But perhaps I should not be so harsh on the masses who need their panem et circenses to keep them distracted from matters of moment, both secular and spiritual. The Latin could be very loosely translated as 'food stamps and football.'
I won't be watching the game. I don't even know which teams are playing. Undoubtedly there is more to football than I comprehend. But the games are nasty, brutish, but not short, and I know all I need to know about the implements of shaving.
As for the buxom wenches who strut their stuff during the half-time show, the less I stoke the fire below the better.
I am no fan of spectator sports in general. We have too many sports spectators and too many overpaid professional louts. I preach the People's Sports, despite the leftish ring of that.
Remove your sorry tail from the couch of sloth and start a softball league with your friends and neighbors. Play volley ball whether in a pool or on dry land. Engage your fellow paisani in a game of bocce. (But don't call it bocce ball. Do you call tennis tennis ball?)
Or take the Thoreauvian high road, leave the People behind, and sally forth solo into the wild. As Henry said, "A man sits as many risks as he runs." Old Henry puts me in mind of Cactus Ed, the Thoreau of the American Southwest.
In Vox Clamantis in Deserto Edward Abbey has it right:
Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are — retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.