I am a large man who likes to eat potatoes. Potatoes are likely responsible for at least 20 of my excess 30 pounds. Atkins, whoever you are, you can lick sweaty armpits after a Saturday afternoon shovelling potatoes of multiple preparation into my mouth while screaming at my LHN stream which keeps cutting out. Give up taters? It's close, but I think I'd rather give up tatas. As such Thanksgiving is one of my favored holidays (I also like Hammock day, and Cinco de Mayo). Deep fry me a bird, give me 1 of those green things which my wife makes me eat (and no more than one) then start ladling on the mash. Add in equal parts gravy and I'm ready for the game, lets beat the Aggies. All the elements of the perfect Thanksgiving evening.

Now I don't want to be mean, shallow, or ungrateful, but if mother decided that she could save a bit of time, or on a recent extreme couponing bender decided to pick up 10 packs of powdered Mash which the store paid HER for, and then had the nerve to serve it on Thanksgiving of all days in place of the real thing, well, I probably wouldn't be flying halfway across the country 'to see my family' next year. If you try and serve me some watery, salty, gritty, tasteless, potatoish, slush, even disguised in delicious gravy, you are dead to me. Don't mess with my Thanksgiving. The components of a good Thanksgiving are a careful, and well proven balance of key elements of which creamy, buttery mash potato is one of the base elements. As is yelling in your aggie family and friends face, about how bad they suck, and how Texas just whoooped their ass. Tomorrow, in this over-potatoed Longhorn's opinion, is a sad day. TCU is a poor imitation of the real thing, and honestly I cannot get much more excited about beating up on them than I did for Iowa State. I am almost ashamed to be serving fake potatoes to the nation in the Thanksgiving prime-time spot.

So I ask the simple question of my fellow barkers;