The Stupor Bowl

Isn't this a beautiful scene? It's a small section of park-like area between our street and Stanley street, near the river.

There's a big old - must be over a hundred years old - apartment building that is quite stately which looks over it.

I walked past this to go to my hair appointment and to buy bread from the bakery in Wortly Village. We had a big snow storm about a month ago, then it all melted.

It was like Spring around here for a couple of weeks. We had some lashing cold rain - just like we can get in Springs - and then it warmed up, was sunny and beautiful. Angus actually hung up laundry outside on a couple of occasions.

Now we've had another storm.
The snow was so wet and heavy it brought down power lines in parts of Ontario. Fortunately for us, we have had heat and power. There was a scare about the water supply. The power outages had affected the water pumping station so there was a call to conserve water.


Here's the bakery.

I admire these people. It's a family. They come in early, bake about 14 kinds of breads, including sundried tomato, flax, whole wheat, olive, sour dough - you name it - and open at 6 a.m. 7 days a week.

A loaf of bread baked today sells for $3.50. You have to slice it yourself. I love it when I'm able to buy a loaf just out of the oven.

I won't buy mass produced bread any more, the kind that's full of preservatives and sits on the shelf in the grocery store for a week with a "stale" date. There's just no comparison.

Grateful to have water at all, I cut my shower very short on Tuesday morning. I hate to waste water anyway. But the call to stop using washers, dishwashers and cut down on water usage lasted less than 24 hours. We can now return to be our wasteful selves, if we choose.

These are photos I took while walking up and down our street. You can't see it, but sunlight glinted off the snow so it looked like an enchanted world.

Okay, I've got the tea. And I've got some thoughts, although I would expect the following to be about as popular with the general public as the Muhammad cartoons are with Muslims. [For my views on that, see my Feb. 2, 2006 Prayerforce blog.

Although it happened three days ago and in modern terms is ancient news, I find myself thinking about the Super Bowl. My brother-in-law calls it The Stupid Bowl.

I think a more apt name is The Stupor Bowl.

Honestly, isn't that name perfect? It demonstrates so well the stupor of unreality in which affluent Americans live. It typifies the mentality of kids who can't garden, couldn't sew a button on if their lives depended on it, but can surf the Internet all day.

It typifies the "it's all about me and what I want" attitude, the self-aggrandizing, self-promoting lie that corporations have sold us. They tell us we're special, our team is special, our lives have meaning through the mattress we use - have you seen the "Transform Your Life" (a trademarked phrase) commercial for a mattress?

We're special, all right, as long as we buy all the stuff they tell us we need. Poor people aren't so special. They have no voice at all. They're swept under the rug where we can't see them.

We're not about making a difference. We're all about living through technology, about living vicariously and being entertained. If the electricity goes off for two seconds people panic. Yet people in Iraq - and throughout the world - are not only without electricity, but without food, plumbing, heat or even shelter.

Why don't those wealthy corporations make a big deal out of that? Why don't they enlist our aid in alleviating misery? They're the ones shaping us, shaping our ideas, our needs, our wants. But they encourage us to be totally selfish, then say: it's what the public wants.

It's the easy road. Pander to the flesh instead of the spirit. It'll do this country in, in the end. We're like the Romans: decadent imperialists only concerned with ourselves and our petty desires.

Whatever happened to people playing on their own little teams instead of living their lives through the television?

The answer, of course, is we've been sold the idea. Our adrenaline gets falsely charged - add to it the copious amounts of booze people drink as part of "the celebration" - and there you have it.

The corporations are so good at selling escapism to us. And the more participants, the more money for them and all the advertisers.

I tried to watch the Stupor Bowl this year, but I just couldn't do it. I found it to be just so much pompous ado about nothing that I wandered off to bake a cake.

What really showed the perversions being ingrained by the Super Bowl was the total insensitivity to Motown musicians. Aretha Franklin wound up being a warm-up act for the Rolling Stones.

Imagine.


Why bring the Stones over at all? What do they have to do with Detroit? Or football? They're English, for heaven's sake.

Maybe I'm not the only one bored by this whole dog and pony show. Maybe getting the Stones involved was to generate interest.

But I think it backfired. It did with me. Making the Stones the headliners was a slap in the face to all the black musicians who put Detroit on the map via music.

Another thing that really hit home for me on this whole issue was the MVP saying something like he was "King of the World."

Maybe he meant he felt like king of the world, because helping to win a football game does not confer that title. If he or anyone else thinks he's a "king" in a real sense, they are kidding themselves.

If football was used to settle conflicts between nations and avert war - if the players in the NFL were, in a sense, real warriors instead of pretend warriors - then it would have a higher purpose. As it is, its purpose seems to be to distract everyone from what really is important.

It's nice, of course, that the players get to use their talents and succeed on a grand scale. But, again, what are they doing that merits all this celebrity? Solving crises? Eliminating polio? Eliminating a perceived need for war?

What is it that they really do? Catch balls and knock people down.

What empty heroes.

There are 25 to 30 million slaves in the world. Is the purpose of the NFL to eliminate slavery? A billion people are starving. Is the purpose of the NFL to eliminate starvation?

It is so telling in regard to where do we put our money. We put it into acquiring things and diversions, not making the world a better place. A football player makes more than a Nobel Peace prize winner.

It sure seems like this is a screwy world of upsidedown priorities, priorities that a five-year old might have as opposed to a full-fledged adult.

Speaking of upsidedown, the cake I baked was pineapple upsidedown cake and was delicious. Gave away most of it away.

The secret of making a truly delicious golden cake is cream. Instead of using all skim milk, use half cream. If you're worried about cholesterol or calories, give away half of it to people who can afford the calories. Eat less of the cake. But, trust me, what you do eat will just melt in your mouth.