Poor Sports

I am not a sports fan. Not at all. In fact, I’m writing this post while a large segment of the population is undoubtedly watching the super bowl. My dislike of sports surprises most people, as I am not exactly a couch potato. I love working out, exercising, being outdoors, and all sorts of “athletic” activities. When it comes to sitting down and watching sports or getting attached to one team, I just can’t do it. It’s not that I don’t like the games themselves. I played baseball, basketball, football, and soccer when I was younger and I still enjoy playing them on occasion. In fact, it is because I like playing sports that I can’t stand watching them. I can’t sit down on a couch and watch people play sports when I’d much rather be playing the same game myself – I find it incredibly tedious. I also have trouble seeing them as anything more than games, and I certainly can’t identify with the “fanatic” sports mentality. Seinfeld’s bit about team loyalty sums it up pretty well: “Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify. Because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city… you’re actually rooting for the clothes when you get right down to it.” Despite the changing teams and locations, sports fans can get really passionate about their teams and usually refer to whether a team is winning or losing as whether or not “we” are winning or losing, which I find fairly amusing.

I do tend to appreciate sports based on athleticism – like swimming or track and field events – to a greater degree because the outcome more often depends on who trained the hardest. Much less seems to be left to chance in these types of sports and athletic ability seems to be what ultimately decides the winner. Even with the Olympic sports, where I can appreciate the competition and conditioning of the athletes, I still can’t sit down and watch them for the same reasons. If I have a couple of free hours to watch someone else swim, why wouldn’t I go to the pool and swim myself?

The odd thing is that during elementary and middle school, I was a huge fan of baseball, basketball, football, and golf. I even have all of my old trading cards in a closet somewhere. When I hit the age of 13 I lost all interest in sports and discovered something far more interesting to me: the stock market. I started getting interested in markets, investing, and economics. To me, those are better than sports in a few ways: the action is continuous, the outcome matters more, and should I refer to the performance of a company in which I own stock as whether or not “we” are up or down, I would be making an accurate statement. It’s not as great of a leap as one might think. Markets and sports have quite a bit in common: teams play in different divisions and stocks trade on different exchanges, for example. Markets have funds, and sports have teams. Teams have coaches and funds have managers. The real difference is that I find market activity fascinating because it represents the actions and ideas of many people on the planet whereas I have trouble viewing sports as anything more than games being played by people who earn entirely too much money for what they do. But I suppose that’s the price the market will pay for entertainment. Maybe I should look into investing in sports.

A Ferre-what?!

While traversing Buenos Aires the other day, I happened upon a closed store on a street corner. The backlit sign was turned off, but I could see large letters that said “Ferreteria”. Yes, “Ferreteria”.

Obviously, my first thought was that this was a place where people go to eat ferrets. But, honestly, who would eat a ferret? They’re so small – hardly any meat to speak of.

I’ve avoided walking by it again during business hours because I don’t want to see anything that would shatter my dream that, inside, dozens of ferrets are going completely apeshit all the time and no one is able to control them.

Imagine: scores of ferrets, scampering through the rafters, attacking employees, customers, passers-by…. Employees yelling at the ferrets: “Will you get the hell down from there?!” I also hope that the customers are people who believe the store is like a pet store that specializes in ferrets; people who go in expecting to purchase a ferret and instead find a handful of employees swatting at ferrets with brooms. Ferrets launching themselves at customers from the ceiling like little furry projectiles causing the customers to run out of the store screaming “WHAT is the purpose of this establishment?!?! Why don’t you stay closed until you’ve got your amphibious mammals under control?!?!”

Ideally, the store actually does no business (with ferrets attacking customers, how could it?) but is instead funded by some rich guy who gets his kicks from watching flocks of ferrets harass people. Perhaps he’s trained them to do his bidding. Perhaps not. Like the organizations headed by villains in Captain Planet, the sole purpose of his business is to create chaos and disrupt the social order for his own personal amusement. The best part about such a store is that ferret attacks aren’t very dangerous and you’d get a concentrated amount of hilarity in a localized area without causing any real harm. Damn, that’d be awesome. If I ever find out that a Ferreteria is something other than what I hope it is, I fully intend on starting a real one.