It’s a chill and rainy Saturday night in New Haven - it’s Superbowl eve! My roommates Leong, Anna and Lisa and I were playing a game of Upwards - it’s a scrabble-like word game and we’re all strangely super competitive.

My phone went “dunk!” A happy ‘Water jug’ sound messages make when they're from one of my favorites. The message was from Charles. He was at the front gate with a package that came to the house where Charles and Mrs. Charles live (about 600 yards from the dorm). He passed me the package through the bars at the main gate, “Thanks,” I said, “ga-night,” and he was gone.

Back in my room, I ripped the box open like Christmas morning. The word game could wait - this package was from Paris. The light beige, Jacquemus, ‘Les Ballerines mary-jane pumps’ I’d ordered (forever ago) had arrived and they fit like soft leather gloves.
“Ooo! Glampse!” Lisa pronounced.
“Aren’t they?” I agreed, swiveling my hooves to show them off in the full length mirror.

When I rejoined the Upwards game, talk had shifted to tomorrow's Superbowl.
“I read yesterday that Taylor’s on her way (to the Superbowl)!” Leong declared.
“I like that she likes the NFL now,” I said.
“A lot of people hate her for it,” Anna countered.
“She was on camera twice, for 11 seconds total, in a 3-1/2 hour long game. If that upsets you, you’re bringing a lot of your own baggage to the plot.” I updogged.

Leong wants to order vegan “wings” for the SuperBowl.
“What, exactly, are those?” I asked, apprehensively.
“You’re the girl who talked me into trying buffalo-frog-legs in Paris - ney?” Leong enquired, sarcastically.
“Yeah,” I admitted, guiltily, “but they were delicious,” I said in self defense.

I’m picking the Chiefs 30-20 over the niners.

Please Pogo music, wake me up. The night, now reduced to warm laptop light, is inching toward dawn. I pray to the patron saints of writers - is it Neri or Ávila? Whichever is on call I suppose.

“I’ve indulged in reprobation,” I confess, openly to the fuzzy, waxing, crescent moon. “I need that alchemy that turns coffee and a rough outline into an actual paper.”

I yank off my hoodie, fling my window open wide and hang myself out like wet laundry. Have you ever tasted *****? Vile stuff really.
The forty degree breeze feels like heaven and my eyes begin to focus. I peel off my leggings to let my entire skin tingle with cold.

My Keurig beeps confidently. I found a couple of peanut energy bars in my bookbag and rip them open like a ****** who’s discovered a forgotten stash. I devour them so quickly it’s like a magic trick - then I brush my teeth.

I take several slow deep breaths. I can DO this, I assure myself, but my outline looks adequate at best. I need this done so I can relax with a super bowl party pizza Sunday.

The song “Data & Picard,” sets me to dancing, “It’s better to have loved and lost..” Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard pronounces, perfectly auto-tuned to the music.

I love this song. I love the night. I love the challenge.
I set myself to the task and finish, three hours later, as the sun breaks into morning.

I re-post this most every year on Super Servile Sunday:

                                          Super Servile Sunday

O sink not down to that corrosive couch,
Docile before the Orwellian screen
That regulates the lives of the servile,
Dictating dress and drink, demeanor, dreams

Declare your independence from the sludge
Of vague obedientiaries who fling
Away their empty lives in submission
To harsh, diagonal inches of rule

Poor weaklings chanting tainted tribal songs
In chorus hamsterable, huddled, heaped
While costumed in their masters’ liveries
And feeling little while thinking even less

The very model of the State’s non-men
Predictable and dull, submissive ghosts
Crowded, herded through cosmic cattle chutes
Reflected in dim, noisy nothingness.

But you…

But you, O you, be not of them, but be
A wanderer in the moonlight, one known
To God and to His holy solitude.

O sink not down in that corrosive couch,
Docile before the Orwellian screen
That regulates the lives of the servile,
Dictating dress and drink, demeanor, dreams;

Declare your independence from the sludge
Of vague obedientiaries who drowse
Away their empty lives in submission
To harsh, diagonal inches of rule

Poor weaklings chanting tainted tribal songs
In chorus hamsterable, huddled, heaped,
While costumed in their masters’ liveries,
And feeling little while thinking even less

The very model of the State’s non-men,
Predictable and dull, submissive ghosts
Crowded, herded in cosmic cattle chutes,
Reflected in dim, noisy nothingness

But you, O you, be not of them, but be
A wanderer in the moonlight, one known
To God, there in His holy solitude

It's that time of the Patriot's year
Postseason playoff games are in full gear
The road to the Superbowl, I cheer
But not for the big, bad grissly bear
That takes every opponent's fate without fear
That's right the big bad bear without peer
I'm snickering the Patriot's to cry a tear
Nothing would make me so happier, I swear
Fricken, dicken, bitchen Patriots beware
To see another Bostonian tea party, I glare
I do show respect at the Patriot's lair
Brady and Belicheck what a podded pair
Steady, stoic and simulcast, condescending I declare
You see a Patriots playoff loss is so rare
Their team profile is beyond compare
A well oiled machine that wear
Goliath close over David with regular fare
The road to this year's Superbowl Sunday, I say a prayer
That the other teams flag is flying patriotically in the air

Logan Robertson

1/11/2019