50-48 #23: THUS SPAKE 50-48

(Originally published 3/9/08)

50-48 #23: THUS SPAKE 50-48

"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, somewhere in the depths of the cold, cold winter of 1882. "And do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the Übermensch: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…" Well, against the best guesses of many a philo major, flush as they certainly are with stringy beards, a habit for nicotine, and the virginity of Dulcinea, Zarathustra turns out to be correct. Übermensch has descended. We have seen the next step in a Lamarckian version of human evolution, and we have become joyously lesser in comparison. This doesn't portend doom. It isn't a dark day. Rather it is like looking up at the stars in the clear night sky, or looking down on the earth from the comfort and temperature regulation of an American airplane. You realize your smallness, your insignificance, but the fact gives you comfort, wraps you in a dark blanket of downy meaninglessness, and whisks you away to sleep like your mother's best nursery rhymes.

Who is this Übermensch? you might be asking. And what the fuck do I care, as I am devoid of stringy beard and virginity? I spent my youth beating up philo majors, you might be thinking, not listening to them. Well, #1) 50-48 applauds your moxie. #2) The Übermensch turns out to be a Razorback!

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: No offense, Pete, on the philo major thing. And no offense, Chet, on the virgin thing.]

On Friday, the Razorback baseball team defeated Sienna 14-5 in the cold air of a Fayetteville afternoon. Hog Senior Aaron Murphree used the occasion to take out all of his frustrations for being picked on in elementary school, for being turned down by the captain of the cheerleading squad, and for failing that junior college math test that he could have passed had he just tried a little harder. He hit 3 homeruns, giving him ten for the ten-game season. His third cleared the god damned batter's eye in centerfield, measuring 485 feet.

On Saturday, he hit another one, giving him 11 in 11 games. He has hit a homerun in his last 5 games. His feats are unprecedented in the annals of Razorback baseball. Thus the Übermensch jive. Thus the misprojection of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

[And in this day and age of technological enhancement, the author feels it incumbent upon him to defend Murphree's virtue, though he has no specific proof. Remember, four short years ago, our season was semi-derailed when steroids came to the Baum locker room. I choose to believe that the former controversy has created an atmosphere of paranoia and disgust when it comes to chemical enhancement. It isn't like the players are implanting cellular telephones that run on blood in their arms, or anything like that. That would be crazy.]

And so the baseball team is 10-1 going into today's game, and will be taking on the by-god #1 Arizona State Sun Devils on Tuesday night. Fear not. We are ripe for giant-killing. Still, complacency is the tool of the devil. We must remain ever-vigilant on the long road to Omaha. We can think of our success so far as a cesium clock, slowly losing half a second every 30 million years. That seems pretty good, but science says NOPE. Loss is a loss is a loss. We must kill the cesium clock within us, and carry on to an NCAA championship with the even greater precision of a Japanese mercury model, whatever that means.

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: Speaking of the Diamond Hogs, the media guide is online: CLICK HERE.]

It seems as though this is the best spot to make the transition to discussing the basketball team, but I just don't have the heart. We completely fucking sucked at Ole Miss, then looked like five flailing Übermenschs on Saturday against Auburn. Thinking about the basketball team makes my head hurt. So instead, I will tell say this: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CORNFLAKES! Even when Hogball disappoints, you can never have a bad week when one of your favorite foods has a birthday. (The above link will tell you all about the thrilling Gilded Age tale of the genesis of cornflakes, but for a far more colorful rendition, see T. Coraghessan Boyle's The Road to Wellville.)

Let's see...How else can I take up basketball space without talking about the basketball team? How about this ballad dedicated to men's undergarments? How about this kitty cat cartoon? How about the comic semiotic reinterpretations of real life terrorism warning signs?

Those are all good. But instead, I think I'll introduce you to the new official house music of 50-48. Tegan and Sara are the best Canadian identical twin pop duo since Sonny and Cher. [AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sonny and Cher might not have been identical twins. They also might not have been from Canada. I have no way to verify this information either way.] Here's one of their SONGS. Here's their MYSPACE page, which plays more of their songs. Feel free to send emails of thanks, but as a blanket response, allow me to say this: YOU'RE FUCKING WELCOME.

Before I abandon this week's email, giddy with excitement that before this day is over I will, in fact, have eaten homemade sloppy joes, it's important to bring up a few football facts: #1) The Hogs-Aggies series is now officially official, as first reported here at 50-48. #2) Football video game advertising culture is funny. #3) Emmitt Smith is still a dumbass.

Next week, 50-48 will have exclusive coverage of the SEC basketball tournament. I am predicting either mind-blowing success or mind-numbing failure. Or both. That is to say, more than anything else, Hogball is definitive proof that Chaos Theory isn't the steaming pile of shit we sometimes make it out to be. 50-48 will also have exclusive coverage of the Diamond Hogs' upset of #1 Arizona State. It will have exclusive coverage of sloppy joes. It will have exclusive coverage of our own glowing Übermensch and the evolutionary declension of everyone else in the face of his Nietzschean prowess. Aaron Murphree will excel. We will recede. We will subsume our identities within his, living vicariously through his magnanimous capacity. We will tell ourselves that this is precisely what sports is for. That this is the sweet release of fandom. It is why we buy tickets, travel to games, spend money and money and money. We need Aaron Murphree. We are become Aaron Murphree. Only through our sublimation to his greatness can we ever expect to see the shining stars again, to see the world floating below us through the comfort and temperature regulation of an American airplane. He will wrap us in a dark blanket of downy meaninglessness, and there we will find comfort, even when the basketball team makes us want to jump headfirst into an electrical fire. He will whisk us away to sleep like our mother's best nursery rhymes. We will be small. And our smallness will make us big.

50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS

[EDITOR'S NOTE: "Exclusive," within the context of the 50-48 paradigm, should be understood to mean "mimicked" or "common" or "elementary," with the possible exception of its use in relation to sloppy joes.]