The replacements.

The National Football League season is about to mercilessly start, though no one ever intended 400-pound men to wear 75 pounds of equipment and bang into each other in the ever-longer-lasting heat of summer. But no matter, sport is quaint, but money is where it's at and money is what the National Football League is about, so it's coming and there's nothing we can do to escape its hormonal/steroidal apocalypse.

Yesterday's "Times" ad column--what's left of it, it's now written by people who are not reporters, they're press-release-sifters--called the NFL and its 181-million viewers, "the greatest advertising delivery vehicle ever invented," and I think that's about right. There is no sport involved. It's about selling tires, nachos and beer.

It's about to kick off, the NFL mammoths are, and not with professional referees presiding but with, from what I glean, "replacement" referees who have neither the skill nor composure to adjudicate a game in which two tons of mean slams into the opposing two tons of meat with intent to kill.

We have disposed of the professionals, of the trained, of the experienced. Bring on the replacements.

Replacements infect our everything.

Our ads are rife with them.

Stock photos instead of real. Replacement visuals.

Cliches instead of thoughts. Replacement copy.

Hyperbole instead of emotion. Replacement soul.

We are a world which has embraced the replacements.

In hipster heaven our arms, back, legs and necks are sloganeered in permanent ink. Replacement wisdom.

Our clothing, our shoes, our handbags, our glasses are festooned with brand logos. We rely on brands for our identity. Replacement personality.

We labor under the delusion that every snapshot is a photograph. And never look at the work of masters. Replacement taste.

Because we're too lazy to read, we rely on idiots, windbags, professional pontificators, limbaughs, coulters etc. for our opinions. Replacement judgment.

In our business, where our goals have mutated from building brands to winning awards, we rely on pay-per-trophy award shows to affirm our worth. Replacement qualifications.

This is what we have come to.

A plasticized, synthetic, naugahyded world.

Throw out the originals.

They are trouble.

Here come the replacements.