It's Superbowl Monday.

I feel like 2005 is finally over and I can start the new year.

I remember the first superbowl.

I wrote a book about one superbowl.

E PLURIBUS UNUM. Working as a janitor in a department store. Book is about going from New Orleans, where the sold-out Super Bowl is being played, to Biloxi, to watch the blacked-out game on television.

Now, it's the only game Brenda and I watch. We don't know the players, we don't know the teams. I don't know some of the products advertised. Don't know what they are, don't know what they do.

Yesterday, we went to The Red Bar.

We ate lunch and left after the first set.

The place was crowded, and Brenda had some work she wanted to do in the yard.

When we got home, she was too tired to do anything--she went to Janice and Donny's Saturday--so we vegged out until the game started.

We watched some of the pregame show. There wasn't anything else on.

I got some chicken wings at Colonel Sanders.

They weren't very good.

I was surprised by how many commercials there were, how expensive they looked, and how wrong some of them were. At least for selling to my demographic.

Just because you spend a lot of money on something doesn't mean you won't get it wrong.

Or maybe they've written my demographic off.

I thought Seattle outplayed Pittsburgh, the first half, but they fell apart at the end of the half. They lost time-management discipline.

Same thing happened at the end of the game.

The half, I'd never seen the Rolling Stones before.

It looked silly to me.

I wouldn't go to Tommy Oliver Stadium to see them if I got in free for selling hotdogs.

That's one good thing about the empty nest. I don't have to sell hotdogs in Tommy Oliver Stadium. I don't have to go to Thanksgiving parades.

The empty nest reminds me of the merry widow. It's sad, but it has its good points. It's a relief.

Super Bowl XL reminded me of Rome, in its decadent period. The worship of consumerism and hype. Gladiators. Foreign wars. Rich and poor.

It's never been easy to be poor.

I wonder what Super Bowl L will look like.

Will the division between rich and poor be even greater? Will we still be fighting endless foreign wars? Will TV be lies and bullshit with high production values, star names, and exploitation of whatever formula genre is cyclically selling best?

Will it be more of the same?

What else would it be? Less of the same? Something different? Something new? Don't hold your breath.

If I die writing UNTITLED just write THE END where I died and call it UNFINISHED.

It's never finished. You just stop.

STOP ME, BEFORE I WRITE MORE.

Bah, humbug.

The superbowl is worse than Christmas.

And next is the Winter Olympics, from Torino, Italy.

It's never over.

We don't even get a rest.