At brunch today (yeah, we indulged), I saw a commercial for nascar on ESPN. My reaction was “shake and bake!”. Amy’s reaction, after “hah!”, was to wonder about the waste of fuel it was to have cars drive in circle. I couldn’t argue. Amy said “you’re going to say it’s awesome”. Yeah. I said it was a race and that the tracks were not always circles; some are oval (boring) others have curves. Pretty lame argument.
I said it had never occured to me before what a waste of fuel races were.
Later in the day I was indulging in a nap (it was a day of indulgence) and as I was drifting toward slumber, I had a mental image of a crowd of car racing spectators. The image changed to that of an arena filled with a crowd of roman gladiatorial games spectators.
In my half asleep state, I was likening nascar and gladiator fights. Further thoughts brought the following: it’s still better to waste fuel than execute wild animals, slaves or criminals.
At which point, I thought I really needed to sleep.
[All about NASCAR and Gladiators on Wikipedia.]
Contemplations in markup 