Entertainment vs. Distraction

Hi, my name is Matthew and I am an addict. I am addicted to sports; playing them, watching them, and wagering on them. I posted earlier about the distractions that fill our technology filled lives. When I mentioned sports in the same breath as Politics and Pop Culture I was more alluding to the behind the scenes drama that fills up so much internet space and tv air time. The TO tirade, Barry Bonds and steroids, Bode Miller and 60 minutes, and everything like it is a drain on society. To give these athletes a super human position in our society because they can run faster, throw a ball further/faster, or slide down a hill faster it asinine. BUT the true competition that happens between the lines is what I am addicted too.

I root for perennial losers, but I love my teams and this is out of a sense of loyalty that is lacking alot of Americans now adays. But I don't care what level of skill is involved, if it is a competition then you have my interest. I could watch curling, boxing, cricket, or two old ladies fighting over the last can of Ensure and all the while be intrigued. Competition (friendly of course) brings out the best in society, it is not about winning or losing as the saying goes and I believe that, but I still don't like to lose.

The point of all this is that the supplemental crap that is now lumped into the media machine that is sport, is not the entertainment, it is the distraction.

Great News

I bitch and moan about the bad news that reigns supreme in our mass media but today I saw something diferent. According to Yahoo! the most popular entry in their news was this article about the poor recieving free tuition to Stanford. Later in the article it list Harvard and Princeton as the only other higher learning facilities to offer such a program. This is such a great gesture but I am sure that people will trash it as a PR stunt or ignore it because it does not affect most people who spend all day surfing the web. Good on you Stanford, at the cost of $3 mil per year which is about how much alum Tiger Woods will make after winnning the Masters this year.

New Essay

Ran has posted a new essay entitled "Fall Down Six Times" which he sets up the collapse using a few different points of view. Although a few are as fictional as Chaney's conscious each contains points that should be contemplated by everyone, especially those under the age of 30. People are living longer so when you start to think of dates like 2030 and think they are an eternity away just remember that if you are 26 now (as I am) you will be 50 years old. You will still have 10 more years before those great 401k funds can be touched, if they still exist. The final entry into Ran's essay hit home so hard that I felt like I was looking into a mirror.

Distractions

I love sports. I love watching them, playing them, and most of all I enjoy wagering on them. I have been involved in bets involving drinking, eating, money, or just bragging rites all over the outcome of a game. Why is this important? I have had a sort of awakening recently regarding how bad it truly is for our environment and society. I always knew it was bad but more or less didn't really care that much. That is not true, I cared but was more concerned with my american game plan: birth, baptism, school, college, marriage, good job, 35 years of work, retirement, death. I was too busy trying to compete for the best grades, best jobs, best girls to notice the world beyond 1 degree of seperation.

So anyway back to sports, they are the greatest distraction right along with pop culture and politics. The entire month of January is spent preping for the Super Bow, March is for the NCAA tourney, September is the World Series and for 17 weeks the NFL sucks the brains out of an entire country. I am not preaching I am confessing, forgive me father for I have sinned type of confession. But I am not going to stop, at this very moment I am filling out 3-5 brackets to be entered into various pools. I guess the first step in addiction is admitting there is a problem, so there it is.