Opiate of the people (updated)

College football is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.   
--Karl Marx

So, yeah, now it's September.  Today was the first full day of a holiday weekend.  Seattle's brief rainfall was over almost before it began, barely touching the roots of the desiccated lawn in my back yard.  So -- I faced a beautiful day, happy people biking by in the streets, plenty of time to do anything I wanted.

I began the holiday weekend last night, watching my vaunted alma mater edge out a team that I now suspect had been underrated.  We beat 'em, but not in such a way that I felt happy about the game or the team's future.  But check, got football out the way early, right?

This morning, I got up, read the paper at breakfast, went for a walk,and then ...  I can't really remember.  Somehow, I ended up sitting at my computer, but staring at the TV.  I have faint memories of a number of games I watched briefly, involving teams I cared nothing about.  Then came the local heroes, the Washington Huskies, who vanquished a team, nominally from the Big Ten, satisfactorily.  I got a big laugh out of watching highly-ranked LSU "coug" a game (as we say here in the Northwest).   UCLA (who I'd usually never root for -- but playing Texas A&M?) lost a squeaker.  And I finally turned off the set as USC showed that it wasn't going to give Alabama much of a struggle.

I recite all of this to show how easy it is for a day to pass -- it's now 7:15 p.m. -- doing nothing but sitting slack-jawed in front of the tube.  What have I gained by today's football viewing, even assuming without deciding that watching my alma mater's game last night was an acceptable and understandable use of time?  Nothing.  Neither I nor humanity has profited from my totally wasting one of the dwindling number of days stretching out before me.  If I wanted to float along passively for a day, far better that I sat outside watching the birds chirp and the leaves fall.  Or listened to a Beethoven quartet.  Or even read some trashy, non-demanding fiction.

My life's not so "oppressed" or my soul so "soulless" that I need to dull myself with opiates.  I know that fact instinctively, which is why I daily consume great quantities of caffeine, rather than drugs or alcohol.

So tomorrow, I pull myself together and return to Rainier National Park.  I have a 12.6 mile hike in mind.

Unless, of course, I can't resist just sneaking a peek at an NFL game before leaving the house.