believe it or not, we're all repressed

There are two things in this world about which I am less enthused than football--NASCAR and bass fishing. I guess that makes me a tragic waste of a southern girl. But come on. I can almost see how men release their primal killing urges vicariously through big guys in shoulder pads on the telly, but can anyone explain not only why people would televise bass fishing, but actually hold globally-acclaimed contests for it? Its not a sport! Its a leisure activity, much like solitaire or recreational alcoholism.
About a month ago I happened to be spending a night as a counselor at my local summer camp on Lake Wylie. At six in the morning, as the world was gradually being filtered into Technicolor for the day, I happened to wake. I stood, groggily, with my sleeping bag still around my waist, and peered through half-closed eyes toward something sparkly. It slowly dawned on me that the sparkly thing was a neon-teal bass boat, motor off, drifting around a nearby inlet. Suddenly, the statuesque figure standing stock-still in that tiny oh-just-one-push-would-flip-you craft looked up and made contact with my eyes. At that time I knew, either by dumb luck or divine intervention, both the fisherman and I were simultaneously thinking, "what the hell are they doing there?"
And NASCAR. jeebus. lets sit in cars and drive as fast as we can bumper-to-bumper without causing wrecks. Yep. yep. I call that I-485 on Friday afternoon. I do that all the time, flipping the bird with one hand as i hold a gas station Big Gulp in the other. Who needs both hands on the wheel when you've got elbows? I mean, i applaud the people who make and drive stock cars. But the fact is, the people who drive those cars drive upwards of 200 miles per hour constantly and at least once a race one of those cars is completely annihilated in a fireball visible from space--and the driver walks away. These days you can't even tap another car without the alarm going off and some sort of insufferable lawsuit, complete with neck braces and mental trauma. Why do people pay to see others drive recklessly without being ticketed? I guess we're again living vicariously through others whom we've glorified. Wow, we say, Look at that guy. He caught a real big fish and got money for it. Look at him--he's seven and a half feet tall and just pile-drove that little wimpy guy into a heap. Whoa. That guy is driving 210 miles an hour and I see No blue lights. I wish i could be him. Argh!
What we need is a complete upheaval of these celebrities and televised events. We should be idolizing that little gray-haired fella eating caviar with a straight pin while we are out pummeling little guys into heaps. We ought to feel awe at the sight of a blue-haired granny going 25 in a 70 zone while we're driving 3,000mph in our car with heat-reactive tires and a cabin that's designed to crush accordion-style. But no. We PAY PEOPLE to do that for us. We pay others to be cool, to have fun, to be strong and pretty and go fishing while we sit in our little gray cubicles tapping away from 9 am until whenever our pointy-haired boss says we can leave on our ugly beige PCs. We pay people to live cool lives so we can dream of one day being them. I'm embarrassed to be human. We're such little Puritans with our panties in a wad, at heart.