Thoughts on The Avengers

As far as comic book movies go, The Avengers is nearly perfect. With a cast of big name actors (Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey, Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo) portraying iconic comic book heroes (Nick Fury, Iron Man, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk), it is the most ambitious comic book movie adaptation to date; easily eclipsing last year’s X-Men: First Class. Featuring a handful of major Marvel characters, who each receive adequate screen time while not making the physics of any of them seem “unreal”, was surely one of the film’s more difficult tasks. The fact that Whedon pulled it off should serve notice to the powers-that-be at D.C. Comics that their universe, long bolstered only by the recent successful Batman movies (I refuse to accept television’s Smallville as a significant representation of the D.C. Universe) desperately needs a cohesive direction for its major characters (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash) that can culminate in a Justice League of America super-movie.

While The Avengers was nearly perfect, the fanboy in me believes that there were a few opportunities missed:
1. I’m pretty sure I never heard the phrase, “Avengers assemble!” This despite the fact that the phrase is the film’s UK title.
2. This movie, the final fight of which occurs in New York City, was DYING for a Spider-Man cameo. In fact, I was quite surprised when Spider-Man wasn’t part of the after-credits scenes. I realize that the Spider-Man reboot has not yet occurred BUT how cool would it have been to see Spidey saving civilians in the background during the hectic fight scenes? Marvel, if you are going to consolidate your universe, don’t half-ass it!
3. No mention of mutants? It would have been very easy during the scenes showing the destruction of NYC on various television screens/news reports to show mutants native to New York City battling the alien invaders.
4. Loki’s true form, that of a frost giant, was not revealed. A perfect time for that would have been during Loki’s (brief) battle with the Hulk.

I realize that those are all nit-picky fanboy gripes. So here are my non-fanboy gripes:
1. The 3D made the action sequences seem too animated, even for a comic book movie.
2. The invading aliens, who apparently possess impressive technology, do not have defense systems which can automatically track and destroy an incoming missile?
3. Apparently English is the standard language of the universe. Loki and Thor at least should have been bickering at each other in some archaic language.

Despite these gripes, the movie earns its A grade. In fact, Whedon’s success handling this multi-franchise mega-flick has given me a new hope that someday we might see the holy grail of Marvel ensemble stories, The Secret Wars, on the big screen. One can dream, can’t one?

The time for Bonfire to return to campus has come

With all the hype and hope surrounding A&M’s football team this year, it just occurred to me that we are missing one thing in our chase of the Big 12-2 and MNC titles this year: Bonfire on campus.

I’m no Bonfire historian. Hell, I never even went to cut or wore a pot (I’m a 3%er). I’m just an Old Ag who enjoyed going to the greatest pre-game tradition in college sports. From ’92 to ’97, I attended every Bonfire. I remember freezing my ass off when a sleet storm prevented the stack from burning quickly to the years when the stack fell in 8 minutes or less. I remember weaving through a crowd 40,000+ strong in the dark, surrounded by Ags, Old Ags, and their families, just to get a spot about 10 feet away from Bonfire’s log perimeter (the perfect distance to enjoy the view and heat). I remember waiting in line at the Taco Bell to pee as I made my way back to Duddley’s Draw on Northgate after Bonfire. And I remember the memorial in ’99, having driven into town for it from Ft. Polk, LA, while I served in the US Army. But mostly I remember that when Bonfire was on campus, we usually beat the school from Austin the next day ('92, '93, '94, '97).

It has been almost 12 years since Bonfire fell, killing 12 Aggies. Twelve is an oddly sacred number to us Ags. After all, A&M is home to the 12th Man. But New Army, despite having, from what I hear, some good off campus Bonfires, needs to experience the real thing. The team needs to experience the real thing. The alumni need to experience the real thing. The administration, especially Loftin, needs to experience the real thing. It is time for the A&M Board of Regents to get over their doubts and fears and authorize Bonfire to be held on campus once again. After all, if this is our last year in the Big 12-2 (as we hope it will be), and if the school in Austin wants to threaten to never play us again if we go to the SEC, let’s send them off the best way we Ags know how: with a Fightin’ Texas Aggie Bonfire on campus and a red-ass whoopin’ on Thanksgiving.

Gig’em!

Casey Brown, ‘96

What do you make when life gives you LeMons?

Now that this thing has sold...

What do you make when life gives you LeMons?

by Casey Brown

For every generation of racers, there is one with stunningly bad karma. For whatever reason, the racing gods torment this poor soul, making his racing life a living hell. Some say that the unlucky chap has it coming, that he deserves this ire of fate for reasons unknown. Still others blame his bad luck on chaos theory and random fortune, certain that the streak of bad luck will eventually end as it mathematically should be inclined to do. Our hero is one such man.

As many top-level drivers have, our protagonist cut his teeth racing with an autocross club. Unlike most, however, he was a member of the legendary Texas A&M Sports Car Club. Founded in 1968, TAMSCC may just be the nation’s oldest college-based automotive racing club. Home to SCCA Solo 2 national champions Casey “SoupDaddy” Weiss and Chris “Assman” Ramey, TAMSCC has produced some of the finest autocrossers and automotive engineers in the country. Indeed, quite a few club members regularly trophy at SCCA’s Solo 2 National Championships each year or go on to work for one of the Big 3. However, our hero is not one of these exalted elite.

The Brown Hornet, as he was dubbed by a fellow TAMSCC racer (despite not being African-American) due to his (dubious) resemblance to the superhero featured in the Fat Albert cartoon series, instead has a true talent for bad luck. You see, wherever the Brown Hornet goes, disaster follows, especially when it comes to cars, women, and more importantly for our purposes, LeMons. Since late 2009, the Brown Hornet has attempted to drive in five LeMons races. During four of the five races, he completed a combined total of five, yes “5”, laps. This is the story of the Brown Hornet’s first LeMons failure.

The Death of a Unicorn
It began with a dream in the spring of 2009: turn a friend’s piece of crap Mustang II, which had been sitting without a drivetrain for nearly as long as the Brown Hornet had been alive, into a LeMons race car.

The goal was to enter the car in the “Yee-Haw It’s LeMons Texas” race being held in late October of that year in Houston. After some discussion, the Brown Hornet and his fellow dreamers decided that the car’s theme would be a unicorn, for seeing a Mustang II running was as likely to happen as seeing one of the mythological creatures.

When a naturally aspirated 2.3L engine was soon procured via a trade involving a $7 Freebirds burrito ([url]www.freebirds.com[/url]) and installed into the car, the team felt that they were making swift progress. However, they had underestimated just how much work it would take to turn the derelict chassis into a running, LeMons-prepped race car. Worse, they had overestimated how much time they would have to get the car built. With other obligations getting in the way, such as attending autocrosses (the car’s owner is a perennial Solo 2 nationals trophy-winner), having jobs, and a wedding to plan/attend (the car’s owner was due to be married a few weeks before the race) and eating into their build time, the project languished.

With a mere two weeks to go before the race, the car had yet to be fully assembled. Due to LeMons’ popularity and the team's desire to procure a spot in the race, they had paid their non-refundable entry fees months in advance, long before they even had a running race car. Desperate now, they were determined to get the car finished and so threw themselves back into the build with renewed verve and gusto.

After a hectic week of all-nighters spent putting the car together, it still needed a cage. While one of their teammates was a good fabricator, he lacked the tools needed to make a cage. After explaining their plight to a buddy of theirs who is a master fabricator with years of cage building experience (he races in a late-model series in Texas and autocrosses in C-Prepared; thus, he is always having to fix his smashed up/blown up cars), the car was trailered to their friend’s shop 90 miles away for an all-night caging session.

Despite the car’s efforts to free itself from the trailer on Houston’s Beltway 8 at 55 mph, it arrived back in its home the next day with a shiny new cage installed.

With a week to go before the race and with a car with an untested engine (it had not yet been started), the team faced another crisis as their drivetrain expert, the car’s owner, became seriously ill. Bed-ridden, he was unable to work on the motor. Being a child of the modern import era, the Brown Hornet didn’t know which end of a carburetor was which and so the motor sat untouched as the team worked to finish the rest of the car. Much of the work was completed in car wash stalls late at night (well lit, lots of space, easy access to soap and degreaser).

By the time the race weekend rolled around, the car had not even been successfully started. That did not deter the team in the least as they trailered it to the track, confident (somewhat) that they could get the car running and teched in time for the race.

However, there was still one other issue to resolve: wheel fitment. For reasons that are still confusing to the author, the team needed a set of wheel adapters for their wheels. Thus, it was left to the Brown Hornet to order wheel adapters from an online vendor. Unfortunately, due to the rush, the team failed to realize that they had ordered the wrong adapters until two days before the race. Having had no time to rectify the situation on Thursday before they headed to the track Friday morning, the Brown Hornet had to locate a machine shop in the Houston area on Friday to get new adapters made. Fortunately, he was in luck as he found a shop willing to stop everything else they were doing just to fab up some adapters.

While the Brown Hornet was off dealing with the wheel spacer issue, the rest of the team was thrashing on the motor. Just 30 minutes before the start of the race, the car fired up for the first time with a sputtering, disdainful series of gasoline fueled burps. Once the motor was warmed up, which was itself a difficult feat to achieve as the carb kept flooding which caused the engine to stall, they checked the oil. To their horror, they discovered that the dipstick was bone dry despite the fact that they had already put oil in the motor. Worried that they were somehow burning off the oil, the team kept adding oil to the motor until the dipstick finally indicated a tolerable level of oil in the block. With the engine finally running and the wheel adapters on, the car was driven/pushed around the paddock with the hopes that the sputtering and flooding would resolve themselves.

 After the short test drive, which was the first time the car had moved under its own power since being parked in a field somewhere near a religious cult's compound in Waco, and the arrival of the new wheel adapters, the Brown Hornet and his teammates thought that they had at last solved all of their problems and that the car was ready to be raced.

Unfortunately, a final inspection prior to gridding revealed that the car’s wheel studs protruded PAST the new adapters! As a result, the wheels were prevented from sitting flush, an unsafe situation on the new adapters. In the machine shop’s rush, the adapters had been made 0.25” inch too short, a fact that the Brown Hornet hadn’t noticed when mounting the wheels to the adapters due to the frantic rush to get the car to grid. Luckily, they were able to procure some wheel spacers and yet another crisis, one that could have caused a wheel to come off at speed, was averted.

As the field of cars left grid and drove down pit lane, the unicorn-themed Mustang II was a sight to behold as it sputtered along…especially after it began dumping water all over the place. It was almost as if the car itself did not want to make it out onto the track, so fiercely was it protesting. The team watched dejectedly as the car puked its lifeblood out at the end of the hot pits in one last ditch effort to avoid the track.

It was while swapping the radiator hose that the car’s owner discovered why the car sputtered and burped when running: they had connected the fuel lines to the carburetor backwards. Yes, it was as the car was broken down in the pit lane from the coolant leak that they finally saw that they had hooked up the carburetor backwards.

With the hose fixed and radiator topped off, and the fuel lines replumbed to their correct locations, the car gloriously traveled down pit road and out onto the track and completed its first lap in anger.

 And what a race it was for them, if by race I mean, “Their car was pond-water slow and was a rolling roadblock to everyone else on the track.” Despite the fuel lines being fixed, the sad old four-banger that they had traded a burrito for had no power. The car couldn’t even accelerate out of 3rd gear, so bad was the lack of power. Various team members took turns making a few pitifully slow laps to see if they could figure out what was wrong, but to no avail. As the race neared its conclusion, The Brown Hornet completed two laps before the team called it quits and retired in exhausted and humiliated shame. Their car, the fabled Mustang II, had completed a grand total of 15 agonizingly slow laps.

So what was wrong with the motor? Remember all the oil they had put into it? Well, none of it had burned off. Instead, they had been fooled into thinking that the motor was low on oil because somehow they had used the wrong dipstick, one too short for the traded-for-a-burrito motor. As a result, they had put seventeen, yes “17”, quarts of oil into the motor. When they pulled the valve cover, the cam was lobe-deep in the stuff.

Despite figuring out that they had overfilled the motor with oil, when they drained the excess and started the car back up, it still lacked power. With all hope of making any meaningful laps lost, they admitted defeat and trailered the car, determined to solve the mystery later. When they finally did their autopsy, they realized that they had failed to run a compression check in the previous months and discovered that one of the four cylinders made nearly zero compression due to missing rings. The motor they had traded for a burrito turned out to be no bueno.

Despite the epic failure, the team (mostly) remained close friends and vowed to fix the car and enter it in future LeMons events. However, and probably for the best, that day never arrived and eventually the car was sold to new owners. Mayhaps they would free it from the karmic taint that the Brown Hornet had imbued it with. Only time will tell.

Why Texas A&M should SECede

With one compound sentence, Brent Zwerneman, Aggie beat writer for several different Texas newspapers, may have prodded the Aggies into SECeding. According to Brent’s unnamed A&M source, Big 12-2 commissioner Dan Beebe recently told A&M officials that “Texas holds the key to the long-term future of the Big 12 and that the Big 12 would survive without the Aggies.” If this is true, then Beebe just tried to use the worst negotiating tactic ever to keep A&M in the Big 12-2. By reinforcing Aggie opinion that Beebe and the Big 12-2 are UT’s puppets, he may have finally given the Aggies the impetus they need to break away.

So why are Aggies so anti-UT and the Big 12-2 these days (aside from the normal reason that UT as an institution is elitist and arrogant and thinks the world, i.e. Texas, revolves around them)? It is my belief that the events of last summer, when UT attempted to leave the Big 12 for the Pac-10, and promised to bring a handful of other Big 12 schools with them (one of which was A&M), put a sour taste in the Aggies’ mouths. Sure, the Pac-10 kind of made sense for the hippy-dippy crowd at UT (after all, Austin’s unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird”) but the Pac-10 would have been a TERRIBLE fit culturally for A&M. Think of Austin as an extension of the Left Coast whereas College Station has more in common with the rural south and you’ll understand why A&M would never join the Pac-10.

When the Aggies revolted against UT’s master plan and began exploring their options in the SEC, for which A&M is a cultural fit, UT was shocked that the Aggies weren’t blindly going along with their brilliant plan and threatened A&M with cancellation of the annual Thanksgiving game. Hold a sword over someone’s head and see how they like it; that’s about how well that threat went over in Aggieland and it only served to reinforce the image of UT as a bully and spoiled child to the Aggies.

As it turned out last year, UT abandoned their Pac-10 aspirations after realizing that the Pac-10 would never have let them have their coveted ESPN Longhorn Network (the Ocho?). UT then worked with Beebe to throw more financial scraps to the Big 12’s poor kids’ table to mollify the other nine members (by now it was known that Nebraska and Colorado had had enough of UT’s dominance and would be leaving for the expanding Big 10 and Pac-10 respectively). With a promise of increased revenue due to new television contracts and fairer distribution of league income, the Big 12-2 survived as a 10 team league without a conference championship.

In the end, UT got something that it had long whined about: the removal of the conference championship game (to be fair, OU had also whined that playing in the conference game had sometimes derailed their national championship contention hopes, to which the rest of the nation told both schools to, “Man up and play the damn game, Nancy”. The fact that the Big 10 and Pac-10 both expanded so that they could have such a game, and the revenue previous Big 12 championship games had generated, should have told Beebe, OU, and UT something). With the smaller, weaker conference saved, all was quiet on the Southwestern Front for almost a year.

The quiet was shattered when ESPN and UT announced during the summer of 2011 the creation of the LHN, a 20 year, $300 million venture which would add UT programming to ESPN’s family of networks. The Aggies, while maybe jealous of such a deal, could deal with such a channel existing. After all, that’s just free market capitalism at work: if ESPN wanted to pay that kind of money to partner with UT then good luck to both parties. HOWEVER, Aggies, and others around the nation, soon became incensed when UT and ESPN officials both made it clear that one of the primary goals of the LHN would be to broadcast high school football games in which athletes being recruited by UT were playing. Such maneuvering was CLEARLY intended as a recruiting advantage for UT and, as such, was deemed neither fair nor honorable by Aggies. As a result, A&M officials quickly sought rulings from both the Big 12 and the NCAA on the matter.

Another issue, that of UT using the network to broadcast UT conference games, was seen as mostly secondary (after all, if the rights to those games were not already spoken for by the conference’s existing television rights, then what harm did it due to allow the LHN to broadcast such unmarketable games?) until it became clear that UT officials were exerting pressure on other conference members to pre-schedule such games. Reportedly, Texas Tech officials responded to such pressure by telling UT to go take a hike. This is the first time Tech and A&M have been allies in anything since 1999 (the year Tech students tore down their own goalposts and shoved them into the visiting fans’ section after defeating #5 ranked Texas A&M).

During these tumultuous events, UT officials and fans have offered several arguments as to why A&M should not leave the Big 12-2:

1) The traditional A&M vs. UT game would no longer be viable if the two teams were in different conferences.

This is flatly ridiculous. A number of in-state college football rivalries exist, quite strongly in fact, despite the fact that the teams play in different conferences. Below is a list of the most prominent such examples:

• Idaho/Boise St. (have played every year for 40 years, streak ends this year)
• Nevada/UNLV (Battle for Nevada)
• Utah/BYU (Holy War, they are working to keep the tradition going and will play for sure in 2011 and 2012)
• Colorado/Colorado St. (Rocky Mountain Showdown)
• New Mexico/New Mexico St. (Rio Grande Rivalry, includes a bonfire by UNM before they play NMSU!)
• Iowa St./Iowa (Cy-Hawk Trophy)
• Kentucky/Louisville (Governor’s Cup)
• Georgia/Georgia Tech (Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate)
• Florida/Florida St. (Sunshine Showdown)
• Clemson/S. Carolina (Battle of the Palmetto State)
• Pitt/Penn St. (Pitt – Penn State Rivalry)

And to those who argue that the game will mean less if the two teams are in different conferences I say that it will mean MORE. Not only will the game continue to be for bragging rights in the state of Texas, but it could also have national title implications for two conferences IF both teams arrive for it undefeated. In the current situation, if both teams arrive undefeated, the game only matters to one conference. Even if both teams aren't undefeated but if they are both ranked, the game becomes a much more interesting spectacle to the rest of the nation, almost like an early bowl game. As such, it should command huge ratings, especially if it is still played on Thanksgiving Day.

2) The Aggies will get killed in the SEC.

While competition in most major sports will likely be stiffer in the SEC than in the Big 12-2, the myth that an 8-4 SEC team can beat the champion of any other conference is just that, a myth. Yes, A&M has lost quite a few games to SEC teams in recent years. Quite frankly, A&M hasn’t been a good team for quite some time. Arkansas State, anyone? As a result, games were lost. HOWEVER, A&M now appears to be righting the ship (especially if you drink the maroon Kool-Aid, which I have been accused of doing from time to time). In my opinion, in 2010, the Aggies should have finished 11-2 instead of 9-4. I say this because it now seems clear that Jerrod Johnson, the Aggie starter at the beginning of the year, was feeling the effects of his off-season shoulder surgery far more than either he or the A&M staff had realized or let on. Quite frankly, he should have been benched after the third game of the season, a narrow win of lowly Florida International. Had that happened, Tannehill likely leads the Aggies to a win over Oklahoma State (a game which was lost because JJ threw five picks, the last of which set up Oklahoma State’s go-ahead score) and Arkansas (A&M only lost by a touchdown despite JJ’s injured arm). That A&M is ranked in the Top Ten heading into the 2011 season should, hopefully, tell us something about the future of Aggie football. What is known is that A&M is returning more starters and more letterman than any other previous season. With experience and depth come championships. Which is a better time to move to a tougher conference: when the Aggies are down or when the Aggies are rising?

3) If A&M joins the SEC, SEC teams will have a sudden flood of recruits from the state of Texas.

Say what? Put the crack pipe down. First of all, some SEC teams are already recruiting Texas players as evidenced by their 2011 rosters (provided by ESPN.com):

• Alabama, 4
• Arkansas, 20
• Auburn, 2
• Florida, 1
• Georgia, 1
• Kentucky, 1
• LSU, 13
• Mississippi State, 4
• Ole Miss, 9
• South Carolina, 0
• Tennessee, 0
• Vanderbilt, 7

Secondly, Texas players have been getting poached by OU for decades!

• OU, 59

If A&M joins the SEC, it seems logical that A&M’s recruiting will improve compared to OU’s and UT’s. After all, in which conference would a top recruit rather play: the one that is dying or the one that has won five out of the last six national championships? With the ability to offer Texas recruits something neither UT nor OU can, the ability to play in the SEC, I believe that A&M’s recruiting would soon surpass that of those two schools. In addition, A&M’s ability to recruit in Louisiana would dramatically improve. How many kids in Louisiana would rather play in the SEC than in the Big 12-2? I would have to guess that the answer is “the vast majority” due to LSU’s influence and presence.

4) If A&M leaves the Big 12-2, it will have to pay millions of dollars in exit fees.

What if the conference no longer exists? With A&M leaving, I believe that the entire conference landscape will begin to change. The Big 10+2 could easily invite Iowa State and Missouri to join them. The Mountain West probably takes Texas Tech and UTEP. Kansas, Kansas St., OU, Oklahoma St., Baylor and UT join Tulsa, SMU, Houston, and Rice in a revised Big 12-2. With this new iteration of the Big 12-2 only having six of the original 12 members, A&M makes a case that the Big 12 is dead and therefore refuses to agree to the exit fee. When the new Big 12-2 conference withholds A&M’s 2011 season TV revenue, A&M takes the conference to court and the matter is soon resolved out of court in A&M’s favor.

5) It’s harder to win a conference championship or national championship in the SEC.

This may be so but, shit, A&M couldn’t do it in the Big 12 because a) A&M’s coaching and recruiting were terrible under Fran, b) A&M’s recruiting still lags behind OU and UT despite beating UT in recent years. Fran’s now long gone and I believe, as stated above, that a move to the SEC gives A&M a huge recruiting advantage over UT, OU, and, quite frankly, over other SEC schools as A&M will have first choice of top Texas talent (would you rather play for TCU in the Big East, UT in the Big 12-2, or A&M in the SEC?).

Frankly, A&M doesn’t need to win a division or conference or national championship every year to be successful in the SEC. Does Florida win their division and conference every year? Auburn? Alabama? LSU? No, but it seems clear that the constant high-level of competition better prepares them for the years when they can string together undefeated or one-loss seasons. Let’s not get too greedy here: for the vast majority of schools in the country, a 9-3 regular season, which I feel should be A&M’s goal every year, is not a good year, it’s a GREAT year. I feel that this is a viable goal for A&M in the SEC as early as next year (granted, I’ll feel a lot better about that if we beat Arkansas and win our bowl game this year).

Also, the fact that five of the last six national champions have come from the SEC, and some of those had one loss (and one even had two losses!) going into the national championship game, should tell us that teams in the SEC are in fact more likely to win national championships than those that are not.

6) A&M’s TV revenue will take a hit.

If A&M joins the SEC, it will allow the SEC to renegotiate their contract rights. Currently, the SEC has one top 10 TV market (Atlanta). A&M will bring two more top 10 markets with it (Houston and Dallas). Based on the increase the Pac-12 saw during its recent renegotiations, the SEC, the nation’s top conference for football, will surely be able to secure a comparable increase. Such an increase will likely take the ~$18 million each SEC team currently receives over the ~$20 million A&M is expected to receive in the Big 12-2.

7) A&M would lose important conference rivalry games.

Really? With who? I’ve already postulated that the annual A&M vs. UT Thanksgiving Day game would continue to be played. While it might be nice to think A&M has a rivalry with OU, it’s a fact that one doesn’t exist (OU dominates that series and is more focused on UT anyhow. Plus, honestly, that Boomer Sooner song that the OU band plays and the fans sing after every first down, field goal, touchdown, tackle, penalty, and food order is really annoying. Aggies won’t miss that at all). Kansas or Kansas State? Yawn. Baylor? Pah-lease. Baylor gets into one bowl game in a bazillion years and suddenly thinks they aren’t Baylor any more. The Baylor rivalry made sense when A&M was an all-male school and needed an excuse to go to Waco to poach girls (who couldn’t dance) but that need is long gone. Texas Tech? All their fans do is throw rocks and batteries at people and cars when they visit College Station (maybe Aggies should throw condoms back at them to help combat their excessively high STD rates). And who wants to go to Lubbock? Ugh, no thanks, the Aggies will happily leave Tech behind.

In the SEC, A&M would immediately have new, more exciting rivalries. A&M is already playing old-SWC foe Arkansas every year in Jerry World. A&M vs. LSU is as good as any rivalry in the SEC, especially when those games are played on campus with the attendant pre-game tailgating. A&M vs. Alabama every year would be amazing. When those teams visit Kyle Field, image the national media attention the Aggies would get when 89,000+ fill the stands. Imagine ESPN’s College GameDay circling the dates when SEC teams come to Kyle Field.

8) A&M won’t be on TV as much.

In the Big 12-2, there are five scrub teams that don’t make for compelling matchups (Iowa State, Kansas State, Kansas, Baylor, and arguably Texas Tech [because networks keep avoiding this game for some reason]). In the SEC, there would only be four non-compelling matchups (Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State). Despite the lack of national attention a Kentucky vs. A&M game would command, as a new team in the conference, especially one ranked in the top 25, such games would likely be on TV for at least for the first two years A&M is in the conference.

Finally, let’s look at the SEC on TV in another way. Below are two breakdowns of the 2010 ESPN College GameDay schedule.

• ESPN College GameDays with at least one conference team in the game:
• SEC, 4
• Big 10, 4
• Pac 10, 4
• Big 12, 2
• Mountain West, 2
• ACC, 2
• WAC, 1
• ESPN College GameDays by conference host team:
• SEC, 3
• Big 10, 3 (one of which was played at a neutral site)
• Pac 10, 3
• Big 12, 2
• ACC, 1 (played at neutral site)
• WAC, 1
• Mountain West, 1

Clearly, the Big 12, even when Colorado and Nebraska were still in the league, didn’t command as much national attention last year as the other major conferences. Is this likely to improve now that Nebraska has gone to the Big 10+2? No way.

Finally, a move to the SEC will likely mean that Brent Musburger never again has to visit College Station. That’s got to be worth something.

SECede!!!

The Proof Against Vegetables

I don't eat vegetables. Know why? Because vegetables don't exist.

Let me repeat that. Vegetables do not exist.

There is no such thing as a vegetable. As a noun, "vegetable" is a scientifically undefined word that is not used in the proper categorization of food. "Vegetable", as an adjective, merely means "related to plants", as in "vegetable kingdom". As a result, anything plant-related can be labeled as a vegetable.

So, clearly, fruits would be vegetables if vegetables existed. Does the saying, "Eat your vegetables and vegetables" make any sense? No, it's fucking ridiculous. Everyone knows that fruits and vegetables are two separate things...except they aren't.

Also, pot would be a vegetable if vegetables existed. In fact, if marijuana's proponents were smart, they would market weed's properties as a vegetable to the government in order to get the hippy-lettuce legalized. Everyone knows that vegetables are good for you, right? Therefore, weed is good for you. Ergo, it should be legal. Wow, that was really fucking easy and now I want to smoke a bowl. NORML, you can thank me later.

You know what else can be classified as a vegetable? A chair made out of wood. Do you really want to have a soup with parts of a chair in it? No, I didn't think so but you might if you ordered "vegetable soup" at Ikea.

But wait, I can hear some of you crying out in anger now, "But carrots, green peppers and onions are all vegetables!" BZZZZT! Wrong! Carrots are a plant with an edible TAPROOT. Green peppers are a FRUIT. Onions are a plant with an edible BULB.

Therefore, the only rational response is to say that "because anything plant-related can be labeled a vegetable, such a broad definition is meaningless and therefore nothing should be labeled as a vegetable." Thus, vegetables don't exist and all of you who claim to like to eat vegetables don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Epic Fucking Fail of a Day

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Dear Universe,

Why do you hate me? I've tried to be a reasonably decent person the past few years. Gave up smoking last January. I don't poke dogs with sticks. I try to help my friends out when they need help. Yet, time and time again, you fuck me.

Take today, for example. I had volunteered to drive to San Antonio for Todd to pick up his rebuilt motor for his circle track car, you know, since I am still jobless and all (despite having not one, but two, yes two fucking Liberal Arts degrees!). I figure there's one thing I am good at, and that's driving, so I was glad to be able to help a buddy of mine out, someone who has helped me for over 17 years with various car related issues.

So I meet Todd at his place at 11:30am, get the keys to his turbo diesel dually (looks like this but a different color),  

Big Fucking Truck

and get on my way. Some people might be intimidated by a bigass manual transmission turbo diesel dually, but not me. I've driven a freakin' 5-ton army truck with a 15,000 pound howitzer towed behind it through the swamps of Louisiana at night while wearing shitty night vision goggles. Since having done that, trucks don't worry me.

Now, first order of business: stop by his shop and grab a tire for the motor to sit in during the ride back. He wants me to grab one of his used bigass racing slicks for this. However, once I have said tire in the bed of the truck, I realize that putting an assembled motor on that tire would put it WAY up in the air in the back of the truck, so, being the smart guy that I am, I grab one of his old trailer tires as well, just in case.

Second order of business: get food on my way out of town. I was leery about eating in Todd's truck, but I hadn't eaten lunch yet. His wife had kindly offered me a slice or two of pizza while I had been at their house but I passed because I had eaten pizza the night before and I'm trying to work on minimizing my carb intake as part of a plan to lose more weight. Plus, I figured I could save a bit a time by eating on the road. Thus, I stopped at Sonic on my way out of town and got a burger, tater tots, and soda. Yeah, yeah, carbs, but I hadn't had a burger or tots in a while so I caved. Regular sized soda though.

Then I heard, "Would you like to upgrade to a Route 44 soda?"

No, I don't want to upgrade to a drink the size of a fucking artillery round. It's bad enough that I had caved in and ordered a real soda instead of a diet one (I only keep Coke Zero and Diet Lipton Green Tea in my apartment as part of my efforts to cut back on my carb/sugar intake), I didn't want one the size of Rhode Island.

"No, thanks, I'll pass."

"The upgrade is free, sir."

"Oh, in that case, okay."

I can quit smoking cold turkey, but I guess I can't pass up a free fucking upgrade to 44 icy ounces of soda sugary goodness. 

Food procured, I hit the road.

After making the turn from Texas Avenue onto Hwy 21, I decided it was time to taste some of the wonderful flavors of the 44 ounces of Dr. Pepper that were calmly contained in the cup holder under the gear shifter (the dually has a 6-speed manual transmission).With no traffic around me, and no upcoming lights, I reached down, grasped the cup, and began to lift it towards my mouth, my eyes on the road. Then I felt a startling resistance on the top of the cup and glanced down just in time to see the top of the cup meet the bottom of the gear shift lever, which dislodged the cup from my hand. In slow motion, I watched the 44 ounce cup of icy Dr. Pepper tumble to the left. In slower motion, I watched the lid, with straw still embedded, fly off the cup as the cup tilted past the horizontal. I remember thinking, "Oooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" as the entire contents of the 44 fucking ounce cup that I didn't want in the first fucking place flooded the truck's center console and driver's side floor mat and carpet. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck! Todd's going to kill me!, I thought as I pulled into some sort of abandoned gas station in Bryan in a neighborhood where I could probably get some badass crack if I was so inclined.

I immediately started trying to sop up the mess with the two or three pitiful squares of white tissue paper that Sonic calls napkins. Yeah, that worked brilliantly. At least they had given me napkins. If I had gone to McDonalds, they sure as fuck wouldn't have. Fuckers.

I exited the vehicle and removed the floor mat, shaking it outside the vehicle like one might a dusty rug. This worked fairly well, as the little cubes of ice that Sonic is famous for went flying. I then prioritized that the actual carpet needed to be tackled first, to avoid permanent staining. However, I was now out of napkins. Luckily, I found a fairly clean rag in the bed of the truck and I attacked the carpet.

That's when it started fucking raining. In a town in a state which has been experiencing a drought for most of the fucking summer, it fucking started raining. Not a nice, light, summer drizzle, but a full on "You want some rain, mother fuckers? I'll give you rain!" kind of rain. I could do nothing but put my head down and continue to work on the carpet.

After a few minutes of this, the carpet was as good as I was going to get it without a proper shampoo and vacuum and I was wet and pissed off, which made for an unpleasant change from just pissed off. Time to tackle the icy soda which had collected in the various spaces of the center console.

Have you ever seen the center console for a big fucking truck? There's a SHITLOAD of little areas designed to hold loose change, garage door openers, pens, knives, 44 ounce fucking drinks, etc. Of the 44 ounces, a solid 22 ended up in these cup-like areas instead of on the carpet or floor mat. I removed the pens, knives, garage door openers, and spare change from the recesses and began scooping out little cubes of ice in my hand and flinging them out the still-open door. I looked like I was bailing out a boat except instead of being in a boat and bailing out water with, say, a bucket, I was in a big fucking truck and bailing out little cubes of ice with my bare hands. Oh yeah, and I looked like a retard who's been told that pudding day has been cancelled.

Finally, with the ice gone, I could now just tackle the remaining soda that was pooled in the center console's recesses. For this, I would need a real rag. I looked at the seemingly abandoned gas station and discovered, to my surprise, that it was in fact a burger joint. Burgers meant a kitchen, a kitchen meant rags. I entered the place like I was having a normal day and asked if I could have a rag. Having witnessed my ordeal through his windows, the proprietor kindly gave me one. I repaid him by buying a soda (a nice sensible 20 ounce soda with a screw top lid). I returned to the vehicle and finished cleaning out the recesses as well as I could. Thirty minutes after I had spilled the soda, I was ready to hit the road.

Several miles later, I approached the intersection of 21 and 2818 only to find a sheriff's deputy blocking 21 westbound (the direction I was traveling), and diverting everyone onto 2818. I could see a MASSIVE plume of black smoke rising into the air from several miles ahead. When I got to the intersection, the deputy told me that 21 westbound was closed for a few miles but I didn't have time to ask him why. I turned down 2818, then cut across to 47, which took me back to 21 and I continued on my way to San Antonio. I was actually closer to the smoke at 47 and 21 than I had been at 2818 and 21, I think. As it turns out, this is why the road was closed: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/state&id=6940906

So, by spilling the soda, and wasting 30 minutes cleaning it up, it's possible that I may have missed driving right through the smoke as, timing wise, I believe I would have been going through that area just after the fire started but before emergency crews had responded and the roads had been cut off. However, this did not make me feel better about having spilled a soda in Todd's truck.

The rest of the drive to San Antonio went uneventfully, except for some slow traffic on I-35 in San Antonio due to some severe winds...and the fact that the exit I needed was fucking closed. WTF!?! Great, time to try to navigate a strange city in a big ass truck!

However, due to my superior ability to unfuck myself, I still managed to arrive at the machine shop despite having to rely on my own sense of direction instead of Google Map's. Once there, I backed the truck up to the shop area so that the guy helping me to load the motor could swing the motor into the bed of the truck with his swinging engine hoist (the hoist can do a 180 degree left to right swing, thus enabling the guy to take a motor from an engine stand and swing it into the back of a truck without the truck having to back up into the shop itself). The guy took a look at the racing slick and the normal tire and told me that using the slick would be problematic and that the motor would rest in the normal tire just fine. Yay, me! I got something right!

Then it starts fucking raining, AGAIN. While the motor is bagged to keep out water, the guy wants to double bag it like its his prom night with the school's easiest chick. I too think this is a good idea as the motor has to travel 170 miles in the back of a truck through bad weather and past a chemical fire. However, the guy doesn't want to get wet while doing this, so he tells me to go ahead and back the truck up until the bed is under the roof of the shop's awning. I've backed up howtizers with an army truck before, so I figure this is a piece of cake as long as he guides me back.

What I failed to realize is that there is a very good reason why the owner of the shop had the swinging engine hoist installed: it's hard as fuck to back up a big ass truck under that awning due to a weird angle and lack of space! I also failed to realize that the guy was not responsible for Todd's truck and that perhaps he was a fucking moron. So, while looking back over my shoulder at my ground guide, as is proper, I begin slowly backing the truck up, following his directions. Problem was, the guy was standing at the right rear of the truck to make sure that I didn't scrape the side of the truck against the swinging engine hoist. From there, he couldn't tell me that my left front fender was about to impact a 50-gallon drum that was sitting randomly outside their shop up against a fence. Because I had my eyes on my ground guide, LIKE I'M SUPPOSED TO, I too never saw the drum until the truck stopped moving. Sensing something wrong, I immediately stopped while the guy said, "Oh, fuck" in Spanglish. I didn't actually hear the guy say this because I couldn't hear him over the sound of the exhaust and rain. However, because I was still looking at him, I'm pretty sure I read his lips as he said, "Oh, fuck" in Spanglish. I could be wrong since I don't speak Spanglish.

The soda was bad enough, but denting Todd's truck while trying to do him a favor was catafuckingstrophic. Have you ever fucked something up that didn't belong to you AND the fuck up could have been avoided if, say, it hadn't been raining or your ground guide hadn't been a complete moron or if you had noticed a 50-fucking-gallon drum? It's a sickening feeling. I HATE not being able to be relied upon to do something without fucking it up. It's been years, imo, since I've fucked up anything this badly. I don't mind fucking up my own shit, but I can't stand it when I fuck up someone else's.

Unfuckingbelievable.  If I had eaten the pizza, I would not have stopped at Sonic. If I had not stopped at Sonic, I would not have spilled the soda. If I had not spilled the soda, I wouldn't have spent 30 minutes cleaning it up. If I hadn't spent 30 minutes cleaning up the soda, I wouldn't have been diverted around the chemical fire. If I hadn't been diverted around the chemical fire, I would have arrived in San Antonio long before the rain arrived and I would not have needed to back Todd's truck up. If I hadn't had to back Todd's truck up, I wouldn't have damaged the left front fender. Lesson learned: eat the fucking pizza.

The guy sure was apologetic though, but apologies, like me, can't fix fucking dents in a friend's truck. FUCK!

While the guy and his boss, who was also apologetic and sympathetic but not enough to claim any responsibility for the accident (but I did score free t-shirts for Todd and I from him), finished loading up the now-double bagged motor into the bed of the truck, I called Todd.

"I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is: I have the motor. The bad news is: I backed up into a 50-gallon barrel and dented the front left fender of your truck." Todd was surprisingly calm about the whole thing and this worried me. Great, I had a 170 mile drive back to wonder just how pissed Todd. a former champion 4H skeet shooter, was going to be about the dent. I didn't even tell him about the spilled soda. I figured I'd better keep that one to myself for now. One thing at a time and all.

I hit the road, arriving back in town 3 hours later. Get this: they had to evacuate part of the area due to the previously mentioned chemical fire. As a result, I had to take back roads into town to avoid the chemical disaster highway closures. In addition, Todd technically lived inside the fucking evacuation zone. Fuck. That. I wasn't going to let a little thing like Ammonium Nitrate keep me from delivering Todd's truck and motor to him, not after what I had done (plus, my car was at his place). I cleverly circumnavigated some road blocks when the police weren't around and arrived at Todd's house, successfully backing the truck into his driveway without hitting anything.

Having had about 3 hours to think about the damage to his truck, he was surprisingly calm...until I told him about the spilled soda. Have you ever had someone fuck something up of yours twice? In the same day? It's hard not to get angry. Todd reached that level of anger that resembled resignation. The kind of anger you have when you think to yourself, "I KNEW I should have gone and picked up the motor myself." I felt really bad, and still do, as I slunk off to my car, vowing to meet him at his shop to help install the motor into his circle track car after I grabbed a bite to eat (not fucking Sonic, I can tell you that!).

When I rejoined Todd at the shop several hours later, he was surprisingly understanding of the whole situation although I doubt I will ever be driving his truck again. After several hours spent helping to install the motor, I am happy to report that as of 12:30 A.M. on Friday, July 31st, Todd's new motor fired up. If all goes well tomorrow night sorting out the remaining few items of car prep, he will make it down to Houston on Saturday in time for practice and qualifying before the race that night.

Oh, and if anyone wants to recommend a good and fast local body shop in the B/CS area, please let me know.

Casey Brown © 2009

Osama bin Laden killed by Angry Birds

May 1, 2011

Washington, D.C.-- In a surprise press conference Sunday night, President Obama announced that the terrorist mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, had been killed by Angry Birds, the wildly popular mobile gaming application that is taking the world by storm. During the brief press conference, the President did the "Tiger Woods fist pump" and said, "Fuck yeah!" while chest-bumping Secretary of Defense Gates before explaining that bin Laden's addiction to Angry Birds allowed the U.S. to track bin Laden's location through the GPS coordinates bin Laden's iPhone was sending to Apple.

"Through the efforts of our intelligence community," the President said, "we were able to engage bin Laden in several games of Words with Friends. Once we had gained his trust, we recommended that he try this new game called Angry Birds. My family loves Angry Birds. I play it all the time to avoid dealing with the economy, health care, or federal budget crises. I knew that once bin Laden was addicted to Angry Birds, he would mistakenly leave his iPhone's GPS tracking feature turned on. Sure enough, Apple called us earlier today to report bin Laden's location and we sent him a real angry bird, ifyaknowwhatImean. Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!"

When asked to elaborate on how the CIA had located bin Laden's Words With Friends username, the President replied, "Well, we figured he would have a name like, 'Death2America' or '9-11FTW' and we were right. It wasn't that hard to find him actually after one of his family members uploaded a picture of him to Facebook and tagged him in it. Clearly, they are as confused by Facebook's constantly changing security settings as we are."

When asked how the U.S. had identified the body, the President explained, "We found his iPhone nearby, still operational and logged into his Words With Friends account. Those new iPhone cases are fucking amazing. We nailed that fucker with a precision-guided missile and the phone still works. Unfuckingbelievable. Can't get a signal in New York City but it can survive a missle strike. Apple ought to put that in a commercial."

After the press conference, the President was overheard asking DefSec Gates, "Does Gaddafi have an iPhone? We totally need to send him one if he doesn't."

Casey Brown © 2011
Originally published on Facebook on May 1, 2011 at 11:35 P.M. ET (i.e., just as President Obama was beginning his announcement)