It’s a matter of record that I’m not the sports fanatic I once was. Even my passion for The Ohio State, in particular Buckeyes football, has waned to the point of disinterest. It’s neither the game nor the Everyman’s game-day experience it used to be.
I’m not sayin’ that you shouldn’t keep lovin’ sports, okay? And yeah, Go Bucks. I simply can’t summon the enthusiasm to join you.
I see that the Buckeyes’ 2024 season opens this Saturday against Akron. Looking down the schedule, conference play begins September 28th, interrupted by one non-conference game — Oregon, on October 12th.
Except that beginning this year, Bucks-Ducks is “Big Ten” game.
I knew this was coming. It chaps my ass.
Let’s get a few things straight — the Big 10 should have ten teams, period. Big 10 football is played in the Midwest. Smash-mouth battles are to be undertaken on Saturday afternoons by farm boys and sons of steel workers.
Anything else is heresy.
When the conference added Penn State in 1990, I grudgingly accepted it. JoePa and all that. (We were hoping for Notre Dame, but they knew they couldn’t hang. Wussies.) And Nebraska in 2011? Hmmm.. okay, the ‘Huskers play ball as Woody and Nature intended. As long as Iowa’s here already, I mean.
Three years later, it became clear that the assclowns running the “Big Ten” had been dropping acid on a regular basis. They decided to expand into two states known for crabs and toxic waste, adding Maryland and Rutgers.
No school from a state that touches an ocean belongs in the Big 10.
I no longer could take the conference seriously. And this year, it gets worse.
Hey, remember the Pac 8? Pac 10? Good times. Those schools were Rose Bowl opponents and the well-deserved butt of jokes that often invoked “Froot Loops” in the punchline, only occasionally showing up on the regular-season schedule. Now four Left Coast teams — Oregon, Southern Cal, UCLA and Washington — have joined the “Big Ten.“
(Which now has 18 teams.)
I’ll pause here to give you time to prepare your rebuttal. Tell me all about “realignment,” how it makes financial sense, how it makes the conference “stronger.”
Kiss my ass. There’s nothing good about this. The Big 10 — as I knew it, as it should be — is no more.
This morning I got started before 7:30am and worked in the cabin as long as I could. My primary purpose was to better define the building materials we’ll need — take measurements, count things, do math, make lists. It wasn’t “work” in the physical sense, but the exercise was essential.
It made my brain hurt.
When I’d finished that, I hung up my measuring tape and looked over at the pile of woodstove parts, where my eyes came to rest on the FUBARed telescoping stovepipe. I figured I had just enough time to see if I could put it right.
I gathered what I needed to do the job — sawhorses, drill, jigsaw. A two-by-four to steady the work. Set up outside, I drilled a hole for the saw blade, then began cutting.
I didn’t have to scribe a line — I simply followed the original seating rim pressed into the pipe. The new saw blade went through the metal like it wasn’t even there. Butter. A few minutes later, I had the fresh edge I was after.
Back inside, I pulled out the crimping tool, laid the pipe down on a storage tote and began working my way around the just-cut end. I overlapped each crimp with the previous one, to ensure that I covered the edge evenly, and when I was done I went around the whole thing again.
The result looked good. But would it fit?
It fit.
That felt amazing — take something I’d screwed up, devise a solution and execute a fix that worked. I bought a tool that I’ll use again, not a new part. I came away with a lesson, too, one that I’d like to pass along to you.
Ignore the YouTube videos telling you how to crimp with a claw hammer, needle-nosed pliers, etc. — just buy the damned crimping tool.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB