TOO FURIOUS AT TOO FAST

I am no speedster.

Edward Young, in Love of Fame, said - Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed? I do, I agree, and in fact I'm not enamoured with speed even when I was fourteen.

When I was in my youth in the Philippines my Dad gave me my first car, a blue Mitsubishi Celeste. It was fast and equipped with what I was told as "the perfect engine" - a Saturn's. But being the exact opposite of a speed maniac (a Slow Moe?), I did not feel any attachment to the car (I did not tell my Dad or he would have given me left hook or an uppercut, depending on his mood) and all my memories of it was that it brought me from point A to point B while very seldom hitting the fourth gear.

For years, decades, my biggest asshole is the speedster who would cut fellow motorists with no care for their safety and if only for the lame reason that he failed to wake up for an appointment on time. Then as now, I compare the weaver of traffic as a confused cockroach insectfied by the climax in Kafka's Metamorphosis.

May the speedster spot the checkered flag of life ahead of us all!

And so it would come to pass that, here in the States, I had been asked more than once to come and see a racing event at Daytona or Homestead - NASCAR events that are paradise on pavement for those who literally live or die on the fast lane - and be insulted; I had always wanted to ask the invitor, Uhm, does my neck look red to you?

Right now I wanted to see a good sporting event, something that could showcase a good human athletic skill: nimble, fast, strong, quick, armed with a sharp eye, a coordinated pair of limbs, and a knowledge of when to shift the body weight from left to right. I pushed the tv button and what do I see? Roaring machines that go round and round the pit of hell, wasting all precious gasolines for all they care, spitting the scourge of earth for all they care, bemoaning us all with horsepowers for all I care, never knowing that every one in attendance is there to see not for any single skill (which is unseen) but for the cars to uncontrollably spin their own crazy axis like tops and smash each other like plastic bump cars and prove that indeed the race oval is a medieval gladiator arena fed by steel, fuel, carbon, and the blood of some very precious human life as well.

Let me rant. Which is more athletic, these speedsters, or the poker players I see on ESPN?

What planet am I in?