I come from an alien world.

It is a place inhabited by a race of graybeards. We read newspapers, maintain rooting allegiances throughout our lives, and get drunk in bars, not parking lots. We've long understood that sports are just a part of life, not life itself.

We are a patient people.

Some of us have been known to survive 15 minutes without an update on the Winthrop-Washington State game.

Others can endure long stretches when they are not twiddling like preschoolers with tiny electronic toys, searching for hockey scores or the number of catches a Bengals tight end has at halftime.

We don't watch anything that is streamed, Webcast or features Merril Hoge.

On our TVs, there is nothing crawling across the tops and bottoms of the screens. If we really need to know the scores of other games, we watch those games.

In this land of ours, we enjoy sports for sports' sake.

Bracketologists, hand-waving ex-coaches, sportswriters who engage in televised debate for the sake of televised debate, and Mel Kiper have been exiled.

We prefer reality to fantasy in my world.

Grown-ups there act like grown-ups. They don't pretend they are general managers and conduct mock drafts and play mock games and create mock standings. We'd rather shiver at a high school football game on a brisk autumn night than dissect a pro game merely to extract its soulless statistics.

Our ballparks and arenas are peaceful places. The only sounds there are the buzz of the crowd, the snap of a ball on leather, the squeak of sneakers, and a vendor's plaintive shout. We don't feel a need to have our senses assaulted continuously by annoying noise. When we do, we attend Toby Keith concerts.

We don't wear much team gear in our little world. Maybe a baseball hat now and then. We realize that wearing a $120 Eagles jersey doesn't make us an Eagle any more than using Nike balls makes us Tiger Woods.

There are no seat-licensing fees in our world, no corporate names, no luxury suites.

We long ago banned NFL exhibitions, Skins Games, auto races, televised poker and archery.

My people and I read a lot. We'd rather read what David Marannis has to say about Vince Lombardi or Roberto Clemente than hear Jay Mariotti and Woody Paige shout.

You should visit sometime.

Our world is not that far away.

Just turn around and head backward.

You can't miss it.

Nighttime horrors. A tip for insomniacs: If you wake up at 3 a.m., don't turn on the TV. I made that mistake the other night. Here's what I found:

An ESPN turkey-hunting show. Two men dressed like Army commandos crawled on their bellies across an open field before blowing a turkey's head off. Do you really need to dress in camouflage and humiliate yourself when you've got a high-powered rifle in your hands and your prey is a two-foot-tall creature with a brain the size of an M&M?

Poker. Can the producers of these televised card games possibly find any sleazier characters? These guys used to be confined to the smoky corners of racetracks, where they bemoaned their bad luck, consumed gallons of coffee, and bought fistfuls of exacta tickets. Now they're TV stars.

The endless SportsCenter loop. There are only so many dunks, hockey fights and smarmy announcers one can endure in the middle of the night.

NASCAR note of the week. Occasionally, we feel the need to remind readers that we do not make these items up. This is one of those weeks. Here is a headline that ran on NASCAR.com, apparently designed to attract viewers to its Video Control Room:

"Tony Stewart gets his back hair removed and more Darlington tire testing. Watch now."