How dare you!

Yes, friends, I am lurching back into your lives.  I have been absent for many moons and here I am.  How dare I!  Thanks to kind family and friends who like to read the kind of things I write and who have gently reminded me that they think I'm a bit of a turd for not offering up anything on a predictable schedule...as if posting every couple years isn't predictable...thanks to them, I'll give it a go again.

I guess she's famous.  

I grew up reading great newspaper feature columnists.  To many of today's adults, that sentence lands with a thud.  Newspapers have never been part of your life, and the people who fill up the internet today seem mostly interested in cyber hollering and bullying. A lot of that stuff is  rooted in politics, and I don't really care about your politics, nor do I think you should be subjected to mine.  I do like to lampoon politicians, though, and my favorite targets lately (like for the past umpteen years) are Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and lately-er Fat Jay.   Another time we can talk about them; not today, not here and now.

Today I want to talk Super Bowl, aka "the Big Game" because the NFL doesn't permit anyone to say "Super Bowl" unless there is "consideration", i.e. a payment involved.

Super Bowl
Super Bowl
Super Bowl
Super Bowl

Ha ha!!  F-U, NFL!!! I'm not paying!

They're probably dispatching a black sedan right now to "pay me a visit".

Anyway, back to the Big Game (see, guys, it was all in good fun), that's this Sunday.  After that, there is nothing but a great void.  Gray and lifeless, time will plod on for weeks with nothing to distinguish the days, one from another.  This is life in the tundra of the midwest.

The cycle begins in November.  There is the end of college football, then Christmas and New Year's and bowl games.  Then comes the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl--oops, the Big Game.  That pattern of entertainment prevents cabin fever, a period of 10 to 12 weeks where you avoid depression because there's no sunlight and outdoor activities are generally sucky, like shoveling snow and trying not to have a big grabber.  The daylight hours grow fewer until almost Christmas (maybe we should trademark "Christmas" and make people pay to say  it or call it "the Big Presents Day" or something) and there's Seasonal Affective Disorder and stuff like that until St Patrick's Day and March Madness, where everyone skyrockets out  of winter by getting blasted out of their minds and talking about each other's brackets and trying to sing along with songs to which they've never learned more than mumbling melodies.

So party party party this Sunday.  It is the natural order of things.  In the tundra, anyway.