Ashen

I so don't care about the Ashes. There. I said it. David Cameron said that the 'whole country is very proud of them'. Well, I'm not. They get paid far too much to play a game that's far too slow in a country that's too unfairly hot at this time of year. Cricket has, along with many other sports, landed itself in the lowest area of life priorities for me and in fact, I care even less about it than most of its other contenders for things to 'render me asleep within seconds of conversation' about it. Don't get me wrong, football chat is like a verbal assassin. Mere seconds can go by with someone telling me about transfers, and as soon as I realise it doesn't mean I can have a wash off tattoo of Optimus Prime and is instead about someone from Yawnsville FC being given £12 billion to go to BoreTown United, the little Mac shutdown noise goes off in my head. I know this puts me in a minority as sports fans are everywhere, but I think my reasons for not enjoying it are valid. The main one is that nearly all sports go on forever. The Ashes for example have been going on since 1882 and every 18 to 30 months the whole 'oooh who's going to win it this year debacle goes on and on'. Yet were anyone to sit and think about the pointlessness of winning a terracotta urn containing nothing but the long lost memory of a satirical obituary article in an British paper, that will then have to be played for again and again and again until cricket is banned or the world explodes, then maybe they'd just stop and we could all do something better with our lives.

All other sports have the same problem as far as I'm concerned. Yes your favourite football team may do well this season. But then next season they might not and then they might again then they might not and suddenly its 42 years later and you've done nothing with your life but wear a shit scarf and cry at men in shorts. When does it ever end? Why not have one big game and one team will just be the winners for ever and can own the other team's families or something? Actually have worthy trophies. It takes up so much time to do that too. If you want to support a team, that's several hours a week watching games, nearly every bloody month of the year. The Ashes has been going on for weeks now with all those interested having to stay up all night just to see if anything happens ever and if its ok to insult the Australians yet. In some sort of idealistic world according to how I'd run it, if all these sports stopped I imagine lots of people with a sudden lack of reason for prejudice and a lot of time on their hands all building schools, saving orphans and giving milk to the youth centre instead of telling the ref he's a wanker. I mean, I know that's not true. There'd be some other reason for violence or they'd all team up and attack me for banning all the sports and I wouldn't really like that.

Anyway, I suppose people have to care about something. I'd love to say that in all the time I gain by not watching sport that I'm doing some brilliant world saving work. In reality, while the Ashes was on last night, I was laughing at this:

WOMEN LAUGHING ALONE WITH SALAD

Then I ate cheese on toast at 3am in the morning and questioned my life. All in all, maybe I should have watched the Ashes.