Here is an artist's rendition of the football beast awakening from his slumber deep within the earth. In the first part he's busting through the earth, then in the second part he's all mad and starts picking up villagers and eating them, and then in the last part he's purging last season so he can begin this season anew. * We don't know why he looks like a transsexual clown. He's supposed to be a lot more menacing. * We apologize for the color scheme; we were limited by what Kristen at Chili's brought to table with our chips and queso - it was only 4 crayons held together with a rubber band. There were 2 shades of green, so you can see that that had an impact on the grass, which has texture. We kept the rubber band.   Quick quiz: which one is Appalachian State's mascot, Yosef?   Just like "engineers" are "people who make engines," the term "mountaineers" comes from people who make mountains. We couldn't find any documented mountain-making by people, so we figured it was a euphemism. We did find an illustration of "people who make mountains" - caganers, popular Catalan Spanish Christmas figurines depicting people relieving themselves. These figurines are then placed into the Nativity. What better way to say "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" than to have a small figurine soiling the labor and delivery barn? After this game, LSU licensing will approve the Danbury Mint Armanti caganer, so you too can relive the 2nd quarter, every single Christmas. Deep below the domed hieron of Gridironica, the great gears - gilded wheels, suspended on unending oiled pillars - casually breath into a new notch, splaying a playful light across the arches of the chamber. A heavy oaken door stands at one end, and a flickering light passes through the stained glass transom. The click of a lock, the opening of a clasp, and the sound of a heavy door against the floor reveals a hooded figure. The man slowly crosses the catwalk that spans the machine, and he continues to the platform just above the largest gear, turning beneath him, and for each semi-turn, a satisfying "chock" resonates within the chamber. The man sets the lamp on the platform, and the rolling light reveals on the wheel the beautiful etchings of past battles. He lowers to one knee and removes a small pouch from beneath his robe; he carefully unties the pouch and waits for the right moment, studying the gear's teeth as they move below him. The end of each tooth has a small indentation, and he smiles as he remembers one member of the council referring to the gear as "Bama teeth." But it's time now. As a massive tooth settles beneath him, he overturns the pouch and empties the contents into the indentation. the day is marked, and the chamber is filled with an unmistakable smell: freshly-cut grass. The man in the high white hat walked across the purpureal plains of Gridironica, and a drunken, ambling crowd followed...their steady march intensifies with each day, stirring the beast below. The sleeping beast is now awake, and the hunger has returned; like those chili-filled hot dogs (Frank-N-Stuffs!) that once made it to market, it's a confusing time but one that promises hidden treasures and interesting textures and even more compelling gut rumbles. It's time to quit poring over piddly newspapers from far reaches to find praise and slights, it's time to quit sending expletive-laden missives with gratuitously inappropriate photo attachments to ESPN personalities (sorry, Fowler) and it's time to quit watching grainy AC/DC-backed montages. Ladies, gents, folks in between...it's time to put your mouth around the shop vac and get out the badbads...it's game time. This week's melee pits the defending national champion Tigers against the mountain men of Appalachian State, who are the defending champions of that "Did you see the ESPN ticker at the bottom? Who in the hell is Elon?" conference. The Mountaineers made news last year by posting the biggest upset of all time, until it wasn't. Congrats on beating Michigan! That same achievement has worked out fantastically for Jim Tressel. Though the Tigers jettisoned talented-but-troubled quarterback Curtis David Walters, IV (at least that's what his ID said), they return Cerberus at quarterbacks, Hydra at running backs, and Chimera on defense (though instead of a goat in the middle, it's a flaming rhinoceros studded with razorblades, and impaled on the blades are jellyfish, and in the velum of each jellyfish is a swarm of hornets). We should note that if it was a goat, we'd name him "Laurinaitis." We would also paint him to look like My Little Pony and show him off to all of the little children and then we would videotape the children's faces as took down and cooked the goat. Ok, not really but now you know how the Mountaineer fans are going to feel when they see the game. But don't think about it in terms of the goat because mountain people like to eat goat. Just imagine that the goat is being slow-cooked over a low heat with a nice spice rub but the kids think it's My Little Pony. Okay, now freeze the kids' faces in your head and that's the feeling we're talking about. The Mountaineers bring their lightning-in-a-"doc-do-I-gots-the-ticks-here's some of my urine"-jar quarterback Armanti Edwards and their Tecmo Bowl "Handoff to Bo Jackson" offense to Death Valley, where the Mountaineer players can finally hear what a big crowd is supposed to sound like. The HotHotHotties will also experience firsthand ESPN's chasm of endless gnarled hatred for LSU, manifested in the 4 p.m. kickoff time, where gametime temperatures are expected to be about 373 Kelvin Sheppard. It's not often we get actual mountain folk to head down here, so we should be wary of these strange visitors, with their thin air and their fancy mouths and their hair. Why the caution? what do we really know about these people? Did you know that Appalachian State plays in the Southern Conference, where schools like LSU and Alabama once played? Mountainfolk, thank your lucky tooth that you don't have to play Alabama - jeez, that team is coached by the most powerful coach, probably ever. Did you know that when Appalachian State stole the refrain from Buster Poindexter's seductive and melodious cruise ship anthem "Hot, Hot, Hot" for use in their own sexy promotional video, they weren't really taking anything from Buster Poindexter because that's not his real name? His real name is David Johansen and he was with the band the New York Dolls, and he was also the Ghost of Christmas Past cab driver in the beautifully written movie, Scrooged, which also starred Bill Murray, who was in Wild Things with Kevin Bacon, who also beat Michigan. Did you know that when Press Maravich left LSU, he landed at Appalachian State, coaching the Mountaineers basketball team from 1972-1975? He led his squads to a nauseating .182 record, including a squalid .143 conference record...embarrassing the solid program that previous coaches had built, men like Flucie Stewart, Clyde Canipe, and Belus Smawley, all of whom attributed their success to having the most "mountain man"-like names possible...men who lived by lantern and had feet like a hair-covered bag of crullers. We're unsure if there's a lesson here, but if there is, rest assured, Ricky Jean-Francois would destroy it. Did you know that the Appalachian State fight song is Hi Hi Yikas, which begins, "Hi-Hi-y-ike-us, Nobody like us." We can totally see where "HOT HOT HOT" was not in line with the Appy State musical motif. The next line in the song is "Guess I'll go eat worms." There's a cool movie about worms...stars Kevin Bacon, natch. The mountain men don't have to worry about the massive worms, however, as the Tiger fans have their own way of creating Tremors. Did you know that Appalachian State's yearbook is called The Rhododendron? Bees that feed on rhododendrons can produce honey that has both hallucinogenic and laxative properties. If we were going to have a book based on those properties, we would entitle it "2008 Alabama Media Guide." Break out the banjos. It's time to watch these gears go 'round again. It's not the heat, it's the humidity, and Chad Jones: 38 HOT HOT HOT: 17 LSU is the only program to win 2 BCS Championships. What would other SEC schools do if they had 2 crystal footballs? Alabama: Add them to their 43 championships, as the 2 crystal footballs are pretty much theirs anyway, since both championships were won with ye-angry-dwarfe-who-shan't-be-named's players. We sure hope we've sent an ornate "Thank You" note to them for letting us borrow the trophies, and a satellite photo of their Spring Game to be autographed in furious dwarflligraphy. Arkansas: Use them as props in a new "The Future is so Bright..." campaign. At the campaign's introductory press conference, Coach Petrino would hold them aloft and place them over his eyes and say, "All I can see is the future!" A reporter would remark that he looked like a fly, like one you might find buzzing around a dog carcass. The press conference would abruptly end, Coach Petrino would hurriedly scribble a "l8r" note in a nod to his predecessor, and shortly thereafter would lead the Furman Paladins to a 3-8 season, where he would average over 43 points per game. Auburn: Attempt to protect them with a yellow sheet, which would then be mysteriously picked up. Florida: Use them as the gain mediums in surgical lasers, eliciting cheers from intact Filipino penises everywhere. The lasers can of course also be used to cut off those itchy "below the mid-thigh part" of blue jeans, and also etch the number "15" near your heart, or near your Phillipines. Georgia: Place them in a black bra, have the whole team make out with them, and then put them in a glass case on a trophy stand that reads "SEC EAST CHAMPS, KINDA." Kentucky: Add some spice to this markedly blingless display of deep fried awesome. Mississippi State: Wrap them in a mesh laundry bag and hang it from the locker room exit in a makeshift tribute to Jackie Sherrill. Ole Miss: Salt and pepper shakers, of course. Neither will go used, since all you really need is Cream of Chicken and Durkee's. South Carolina: "Pick up those White Tees and use these instead. Now hand me my Wuerffel iron." Tennessee: Christen them "Dustin" and "Britton" and then melt them down, and then, er, reblow them into a crystal Heisman. For Tee Martin, natch. Vanderbilt: The knobs on that silver hutch are looking a bit middle-class... Welcome to The Trough, a place that really gets to the meat of LSU's opponents. Ok, not so much the meat, but the sinewy gristle and thick connective tissue. We then feed these funbits through a grinder to get a coarse meaty bounty, and that's what is on display here. It should be a given that while The Trough is loosely related to LSUChicageaux.com, it's more like a Baton Rouge uncle than a Tuscaloosa cousin. In other words, what's in The Trough is obviously not endorsed by any official LSU entity. They've got better sense than that.