Cowboys and Rangers: The Black Hole Cluster

Normally in this humble blog space you will find interesting topics like tips on how to make your web applications awesome, what new technologies are out there for you to use, or how to write proper SQL procedures. But today we shall be taking a little detour to talk about one of the greatest upcoming disasters of all time. No, not Windows 7. No, not Duke Nukem Forever (Rest In Peace). No, not even 12/12/12 from the Mayan Calendar. Nay, we shall be speaking about our true impending doom – The Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers having a game on the same day.

For those not in the know, and wanting to be in said know, our Ayoka office is located in the growing city of Arlington, Texas. Yes, the rumors are true – the people who designed this city are the fruit of many loons. It’s because of these warped minds that we have such great things to call ourselves. The biggest city without mass transportation, the town where principals come to retire (there are over 60 schools including 6 high schools), the suburb of infinite strip malls, the only place on Earth where you can go into a book store for some educational books and then walk next door and see strippers – take your pick. Having lived in this city my entire life, I’ve come to have an understanding with the quirky flaws of our fine city. Seriously, who needs to be going over 20 mph trying to merge onto Highway 360 South from Division Street? Not somebody from Arlington!

But what takes the cake is this new Cowboy’s Stadium, also affectionately known as the Big White Beetle (BWB). This beast stands about 300ft in height and can be seen from nearly anywhere in the DFW Metroplex. Now it’s not that I’m mad that the Cowboys will be coming here to play in Arlington, because we need something to hire all the people from the local GM plant. The price tag is also not a focus of blame, and the fact that the city’s smokers are killing themselves to finance the world’s largest television screens is beautiful irony. What really colors my britches is where they put that colossus of metal. Yep, you guessed it. Right next to the Rangers’ stadium!

I had assumed that the people making these decisions were literate, but apparently they don’t know how to read a calendar (and luckily this blog post). For non-sports fans, the baseball season and football seasons overlap during August and September and similar to hefty people buying 1 ticket on an airline, there’s no escaping the squeeze. How they thought this was a good idea, the world may never know. But the city goes ahead and invests into this futile assumption that if they build another bridge or two, widen up Division and Collins Street, that everything will be just peachy for us all. What they don’t realize is that widening your arteries isn’t going to let the red meat clog them any less, and our city will still have a heart attack every Sunday.

In fact, saying a heart attack is an understatement. A heart attack would feel like pleasant numbness compared to what we will see up here in the fall. Be ready to party on September 20, 2009 because it will be the end of the world, or at least the end of Arlington, as we know it. Regular folks will sit and tell you, “It’ll be okay. The Rangers play at 2 and the Cowboys will go on at 7pm. It’ll be just fine.” But don’t listen to those crazed madmen, as the Borg known as Jerry Jones has radiated their brains with beefy banknotes until it dribbled out of their ears. Let me whip out my crystal ball and picture for you what will really happen.

It’s a hot summer afternoon, just like any other Texan Sunday. Since it’s the 2nd half of the season, droves of fans will be leaving the Ballpark in Arlington thanks to the Rangers losing, because of their pitchers loaning their arms to the 1-armed midget club. It’s as traditional as the sun coming up the next day, and you can set your clock to it. But the fans, for some reason surprised that their Rangers once again threw away a perfectly good season, hop into their cars for the drive home saying, “Man, that game sucked! And they were so good a month ago. Let’s hurry and get home. I really could use a beer.”

Meanwhile true Texans will be arriving on the scene. As any true Texan knows, you are only allowed to do three things on Sunday: go to church, drink beer/party, and watch Cowboys Football. Anything else is just blasphemy. Tons of metal trucks and cars race over to the ceremonial tailgate parties, but as they arrive, all of the Rangers fans will be racing away from their dark loss. In this middle of this mess, you can hear the Cowboys fans to say, “Who’s driving away from the Cowboys on a Sunday? Keeping me from my tailgate party is a sin! And where’s my beer?”

Just as you thought it couldn’t get worse, church bells can be heard off in the distance. All of those nice people that have been going to church all day are now driving home. But the clusterf#ck has begun, spreading out beyond the mere 2 stadiums in our fair city. Slamming their brakes on the way home they exclaim, “I was just in church for 8 hours! Why did God put me in traffic? Somebody get me a beer!”

But it’s all too late now. Thanks to the law of Samuel Adams (Traffic * People^Beers Consumed = Size of Mess), our grand city has now been enveloped into a Black Hole Cluster, slowly spreading at the rate of natural stupidity. It sucks in everything in its path and no one is safe. There will be people walking through the Walmart across the street exclaiming, “I’m in a grocery store. How did traffic get in here? Hey look, there’s beer on sale!” The black hole will have stretched into Lincoln Square, where all the little puppies in the pet shops will be shouting “Bark! Woff woff arf? Yaaar!? (Translated: We don’t even drive cars! How did we get into a traffic jam? And who put beer into our water bottles?)” But in black holes, nobody can hear a drunken puppy scream.  Homeless people will crawl from their derelict shelters mobbing the people stuck in their cars and trucks asking, “Please sir, could you spare me some change? Oh, can I also have a sip of your beer?” Priests will be coming out of their churches exclaiming, “From the book of John, Chapter 3, Versus 3-5: Thou shout avoideth traffic, thy work of the devil. Thou shall repent by giving me 2 Hail Mary’s and a brew.” And you can hear small voices coming from the stadium planning office saying, “Wow, this was a great idea! Nobody can get anywhere! Too bad I’m all out of beer.”

As the entire city is at a standstill, drinking their beers and cursing the traffic, one lone man steps into the epicenter of the chaos: Princess Tony Romo. Walking out onto the field at the start of the game, he throws a good pass and takes a hit like a man in the same play (something which never has happened before). Thanks to those new High Definition TVs that can be seen from space, everybody is able to see this once in a lifetime event causing them all to gasp in awe at the same time, sucking all of the air out of Arlington and imploding the heads of everybody within a 50 mile radius like a Total Recall rerun, which shatters part of the atmosphere due to lack of air pressure, forcing the Earth to veer off course and straight towards the Sun to doom us all!

So there are many lessons to be learned here. No matter how much they pay you, never put 2 stadiums right next to each other if their schedules overlap. The cost of a beer at either stadium is worth a six-pack at the store. If you are stuck in a cluster, Walmart makes for great parking. And most of all, if the world ends on September 20, 2009, you can all blame the city of Dallas ;-).

I’m so angry from writing this; I think I need a beer…