50-48 # 16: LITTLE CHICKEN, LITTLE CHICKEN, THIS IS NOT A CAUTIONARY TALE AND YOU ARE NOT HALLUCINATING; THE SKY REALLY IS FALLING; OR, NOTES ON THE R

(Originally published 1/21/08)

50-48 # 16: LITTLE CHICKEN, LITTLE CHICKEN, THIS IS NOT A CAUTIONARY TALE AND YOU ARE NOT HALLUCINATING; THE SKY REALLY IS FALLING; OR, NOTES ON THE RAZORBACK BASKETBALL TEAM (with a light dusting of lolcat, Chris Bosh, zombies, John Steinbeck, and hard-core rap, all for your reading pleasure!)

Wickid vampyr skillz, we don't has dem. K-thnx! I resort to lolcat here because it hurts too badly to talk about our shitty, shitty basketball team in the Queen's English. I am two clicks from the freaking psychotherapist. Okay, okay, okay. No more lolcats. Well, maybe one more.

Ugh. Even those funny little felines (and that one chicken) can't erase the grotesquery of our poor play. Let's try this, courtesy of my favorite National Basketball Association player not hailing from the University of Arkansas, Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors. That full-on hilarity doesn't get you? Try these highlights. The best part about those highlights is the consistent refrain of "mutha fucka" repeated by whatever conglomerate of drug addicts and whoremongers is passing for the film's resident rap band. I'm not exactly sure why I'm trying to convince you that Chris Bosh is great, as it has nothing to do with Razorback sports, but I feel as though while I'm going I ought to present the third tier in my three-tier case for his awesomeness, even though I don't have a link. In one of the Disneysport commercials for the network's NBA coverage, Chris Bosh is playing farm animal bingo. An otherwise ill-conceived and ineffective advertisement begins with Bosh deadpanning, "Brown cow. Bingo!"

Wait, wait, wait. Before I get off of this topic, try THIS BOSH HIGHLIGHT VIDEO. I just found this. The basketball is less important. The rap song is worth the effort of clicking. In it, the rapper attacks poetry as a homosexual exercise! Some of my favorite lines in this homophobic, misogynistic rant: "I'm running up in your church to smack crosses." "You rhymin' about flowers and shit, and poems on the mike for twenty hours and shit." (In particular, the rhyme scheme of "shit" and "shit" really gets me here. Also, the poetic thought that must have gone into that scheme, formulating everything in his poem just right so that he could call poets fags.) I've never heard anyone who REALLY hated poetry so much! Oh, and the piece de la resistance: "Snatch your fuckin' poetry book and kick the mike off." I submit to you that any song that takes as one of its principal themes snatching someone's poetry book cannot be all bad.

Okay, back to the living nightmare that is Razorback basketball. This week the Hogs dropped a laugher to a terrible South Carolina team at home. Then, not content with their shittiness, the team then proceeded to Athens, Georgia, where they were blown out by an even MORE terrible Georgia team in front of seventeen Bulldogs fans and a security and ball-boy coterie that must have numbered in the tens. Intimidating! (Of course, I did notice on the television broadcast that Georgia has procured themselves a blow-up bulldog monstrosity similar to our own Boss Hog. Perhaps it was this gargantuan creature that scared our players into what I can only interpret here as catatonic shock.) We stink on fucking hot ice, and I am not going to provide any links about the games for you because those links should only be used as punishments for sex offenders. You heard it here first: the season is over. We will not make the NCAA tournament. On the bizarre otherworldly chance that we did sneak in to the tournament due to an outbreak of the T-Virus amongst decent basketball teams, we would not make it past the first fucking round. If you're interested in tracking our plummeting RPI, you may do so HERE. Right now I am reading the old favorite The Winter of Our Discontent, and its appropriateness is staggering. We are all like Ethan Allen Hawley. We are become Ethan Allen Hawley. And this is the winter of our discontent.

Seriously it's like this kid is describing me. (Clicking on this one will make your life better!)

I will be at the Hogs' game against LSU this Saturday in Baton Rouge and will provide a 50-48 exclusive report at its conclusion. But I will do so holding my nose, pretending that the fake piece of paper that Microsoft Word presents on the screen actually smells like the steaming pile of shit that serves as the most convenient metaphor for our play.

Let's move on. I don't want to talk about Hogball anymore. I have enough to be depressed about. For one thing, I'm depressed about the preposition I dangled at the end of that last sentence. Were I any sort of competent chronicler, I would have told you that "I have enough about which to be depressed." But I didn't. Because I suck. Just like the Hogs suck. (Aaaaahhhhhh! It's spreading! Just like the T-Virus!!!!!!!)

Okay. Sorry again. No more lolcats. No more Chris Bosh. No more zombies. No more rap about snatching someone's poetry book.

Razorback football news is less dire! Yipee! Darren McFadden might be gone, but Ryan Mallett officially left Michigan and enrolled at the UofA this week! Not only that, but our other major quarterback recruits, Jim Youngblood and Tyler Wilson, have both embraced the transfer and assured Razorback Nation that they will be coming to Fayetteville in the fall. (Of course, the transfer was not without its problems. Ryan busted a sprinkler head in his dorm room and flooded it with four inches of water. Ah! Capricious youth…)

The media seems on board with the transfer. And Tennessee seems to be shitting itself . These are good things.

In addition, the official football schedule is out, and Tulsa is on it! Gus is coming!

But alas! Even these bits of football news cannot mask the brutal reality of our horrible basketball team. But this can: CLICK HERE! It's a mock-up of the new Texas super-jumbotron going up at their football stadium. This site allows you to type in whatever message you want. It will then appear on the jumbotron hovering above the Texas players. This can quite literally provide HOURS of fun. I am living proof of this. There is a virtually limitless panoply of insulting things to type about Texas on a giant jumbotron. It's like therapy. It's like yoga without the nagging insistence on spirituality. Give it a try! If you have trouble thinking of the perfect insult with which to pummel the unwitting players, might I suggest you start with these:

50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS