Growing up, I was taught to be a motorsports fan and NASCAR was the motorsports of choice in my family.
My father took me, as a child, to “minor league” NASCAR races at the local track on Friday.
My grandfather turned the TV to national NASCAR races on Sunday after church.
As an adult, I attended open-wheeled racing events with Dad but NASCAR was still a common topic between us.
However, somewhere along the way, the people who run the show at NASCAR have turned me into a NASCAR hater. I really dislike watching the event on TV and have grown tired of the noise at a live race.
I used to enjoy rooting and rallying enthusiasm for my favorite drivers but then, somewhere along the way, the fans started yelling at each other and booing their least favorite drivers.
It was enough to turn me off from the whole show.
Then the NASCAR organizers decided to up the hate even more, pretending the races were some kind of real sport and technological regulatory nightmare in return.
So, I stopped watching.
I was glad that Richard Petty, Alan Kulwicki and Jeff Gordon were my favorite drivers.
Now, it doesn’t matter.
The headlines that pop up showing yet another female driver being a “maverick” on the racetrack or the attempt to create another non-stock-car variant of racecar turn me further from even thinking about paying attention to the driver standings or watching the races.
But they do get me to comment about my lost childhood and the joy of cheering for both local and national drivers.
C’est la vie, NASCAR. Adios. You oversold the concept of bland racecars and pretty-boy/girl drivers — the empty seats show that those of us with limited incomes have more interesting things to do with our time and money than support your infighting and pretense with setting your rules and then proving your worth by punishing innovation within your ranks.
Richard Petty was right. The stock car died a long time ago and would eventually take NASCAR down with it.
I laugh in your face and spit on your so-called sport. Ptooie!
The pulsing migraine headache that has dogged me from the moment I was born is pulsating “louder” than ever today.
I am screaming in my thoughts in order to be heard, using alliteration as method to contain the contagion of madness that wants to spread into the rest of my body.
Using old tricks of my youth to hide my insanity from the rest of the world — running through vocabulary words in any language to keep myself connected with the society into which I was born and am expected to communicate in a legible manner.
The litany of voices I hear and read wants to repeat itself here through the funhouse mirror/brilliant cut crystal ball of a writer.
…the dance instructor I just met who tells me her whole life story in a few minutes — married, divorced, miscarriages, births, lack of silliness, not a girl, not interested in guys, Western Swing dance champion who prefers Balboa dance style, etc., like she has been through this interrogation by strangers a million times and learned to push people away quickly, or…what?
…on social media: the animal rescue posts — please rescue this dog/cat before it’s euthanised, pitbulls aren’t dangerous, found a cat with kittens in a back alley that need to be adopted, etc.; the gun owners who feel threatened by government regulations and must let us know their fears through LOUD STATEMENTS EVERY DAY; the people who claim they are loving devotees of their religion but they relentlessly post hateful comments about others (Christians against Obama, Buddhists against overcrowded cities, etc.).
So, in my mental confusion, I put a paper bowl filled with water, oatmeal and ground-up flax seed in the microwave oven, set the timer for 20:00 instead of 2:00 and, after taking a shower, I returned to find I had made dried oatmeal/flax seed cakes instead of a bowl of hot cereal.
Happiness!!!
The universe entertains me constantly, poking me in the side and saying, “See? Isn’t life beautiful? You didn’t burn oatmeal, you made yourself the handheld dried oatmeal cake you’ve always dreamed of eating on the commute to work for years, didn’t you?”
Despite the boring moments between eventful events, while setting up the next scenario to snag the snaggle-toothed snagosaurus, life is, indeed, beautiful.
Surprising, no?
Today, I let my eyes wander over to websites I rarely find interesting only to find them interesting, including this “poster” at rare.us:
Which pushed my thoughts on to other mass media outlets and their statistical anomalies, including the Saturday Night Live “Five Timers Club“:
Is there a pattern here worth analysing or simply pointing out and laughing toward?
If George W. Bush’s image can be rehabilitated, then anything is possible, n’est pas?
I don’t know what it is that puts me in a mood like this, this feeling of smugness, this desire not to believe in myself, to always be wrong, always chasing the perfect 100 on a test score as if I’ll never get it, running from my mistakes, fleeing into the cosmos.
Why?
Because of both my faith in AND my fear of our species’ imperfections.
I do not want to be successful.
Instead, always vigilant, looking for the crack in the veneer, analysing the pinhole leak in the dam, contemplating the lack of understanding everything going on in a cubic centimeter of dirt.
Why?
Because we can make films about our mistakes, films which contain their own mistakes, and we learn from neither, or the lessons we learn and the solutions we apply solve a different set of problems because time is irrelevant, only relative.
That is why we seek perfection in our theosophical beliefs.
Otherwise, tarnish, rust and decay should be taken as normal aspects of our impermanence.
I am chasing my tail in an M.C. Escher print.
According to English translation of an online article on http://www.lemonde.fr, that is.
treetrunkdings 
