50-48 #40: FLSU
Dear friends,
SEC FOOTBALL BEGINS TOMORROW AND ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD!
Seriously. Nuclear winter could start any time now, and as long as the fumes didn’t encroach upon those beautiful Southern structures at which we worship every Saturday, I wouldn’t even notice.
And since the season’s about to get underway, 50-48 owes you one more football preview to round out the season predictions. But first! MAJOR SEC BUSINESS NEWS. Now, most punditry mavens will tell you that this is a fabulous deal that proves the SEC’s power in the college sports world. And it does. They will be right. But we here at the 50-48 Disneysport Sucks Desk don’t like it. First, it weds our fortunes to that of ESPN, who already holds contracts with gutturally inferior conferences such as the Pac-10, Big 10, Big East, Big Twelve, Etc. While we will most likely win the tug-of-war for game airtime because of the quality of play and money ESPN is doling out, that certainly isn’t guaranteed by the new contract, particularly for the teams in the second eschelon of the league standings.
Plus, as our mothers told us long ago, you are who your friends are. If your friends happen to be bizarre maniacs who explode bananas on their face, then you too are probably one potassium-rich fruit treat away from the booby hatch. Or, how about this analogy: when little fourteen-year-old Abigail Hobbs decided to fuck the devil out in the great forest of New England, it only led to misery. Do you want the Fayetteville campus attacked by Indians? Do you want all the little girls to start barking like dogs? (For those keeping score: ESPN was the devil in that analogy, the SEC was Abigail Hobbs. The Indians were the cost of doing business with evil powerbrokers. And the little girls were a sort of Greek chorus, keeping our heads on straight all the while. I picture them with little blonde pigtails, foaming at the mouth. But that’s how I picture all girls.)
All of this is to say that ESPN is evil. They aren’t the sort of outfit that we should be getting into bed with. (Or, alas: they aren’t the sort of outfit with whom we should be getting into bed. To wit.) Our great distinction amongst the other conferences is that we were ESPiNdependent. (Ha! Pun!) Not so, anymore. In addition, the deal kills our ability to create a viable SECTV, which was the league’s alternative plan to the new deal. And there were many at the 50-48 Yankee Football Conferences Suck Desk that wanted to see an SEC television network blast the everliving fuck out of the paltry ratings of the Big Ten Network. Alas, it isn’t to be. Yet.
And so 50-48 encourages its readers to look past the gigantic payoff and remain skeptical of the new media deal. The SEC has gone into the Ministry of Love, and come out touting, of all things, love. That doesn’t mean they won’t murder you in some sick science experiment whenever they get the chance.
But we’re here for something else, aren’t we? With one game to play, the Hogs are undefeated, with only the Tigers of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College on tap, coming to Little Rock. The last time Old Lou came to the Rock, they inaugurated a disastrous three-game Hog losing streak that cost me hundreds of dollars in tickets, gas, etc., only to leave me wanting to blow my fucking brains out on a long, lonely drive home from the Capital One Bowl in the middle of the night. Also, that LSU game was when I was almost forced by the dictates of justice to punch a grandmother of 70 in the face. I didn’t do it, but I did (as politely as possible) remind her that her grandchild would grow to be an illiterate, incompetent, wifebeating failure, because, of course, statistics show that 90% of all LSU fans fit this demographic. And also she was a bad grandmother. And also I hoped she had cancer.
And I still do. LSU sucks. (Note my long-lost son at the end of that video. He’s growing up so nicely!)
From their garish attire to their practically incomprehensible speech to their inability to come up with no more original cheer than chanting the only three letters they can consistently recognize, they are the dirtiest, most fickle fans in the entire conference. The frontrunners of frontrunners. The true definition of fair-weather fans. And they know NOTHING about sports, except that when the bigger number on the scoreboard is next to the pretty purple letters, it’s time to feed the alcoholic beast that no doubt destroyed his/her family years ago, and will soon land them in the “free hospital” to have their liver bled with the leeches that still pass as viable medicine in the Louisiana state capital. As the silt floats down the Mississippi River, clouding it to the point of murky inscrutability at Baton Rouge, so too is the campus that sits on its banks the gutter of waste and filth for the entire conference. They are that one cousin everyone has, but doesn’t want to admit is a relation. And now, because the team has experienced a brief bout of success, their fans—because they neither know nor know how to spell “social grace”—make themselves into idiots whose vicarious life through the team is exacerbated by the fact that 1) it is historically so bad and 2) their lives are so disgusting and pathetic that success seems all the more like the comparable bulletproof vests of education, culture, or military victory.
And on the subject of culture, 50-48 would also like to point out that Baton Rouge and its LSU campus is on the FLORIDA SIDE of the river. They are British to the point of absurdity, and the “Geaux” they put in front of Tigers should be stripped from them, a proper copyright bestowed to my beloved Cajuns 45 miles away. Of course, these criticisms are angels dancing on the heads of so many pins, because LSU fans (to say nothing of graduates) could not possibly comprehend the polysyllabic words that make them.
Wow. I’m full of piss and vinegar today, aren’t I?
There’s good reason, friends. LSU will be seeking revenge after last year’s glorious victory, which proved our superiority but also launched the glorious blog you’re reading today. The Hogs will not be cowed by the massive drop in the employment and literacy rate as LSU and its fans travel into the Rock. The team will steel itself, playing Mikhail Gorbachev to the killer zombies of Old Lou. (Trust me, that video is awesome.)
Final Score: Arkansas 50, LSU 48. Sound familiar, you Tiger shitheads?
GEAUX Cajuns. Go Hogs. Football begins tomorrow, and football will set us free.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
50-48 #39: BEIJING HUSTLE
50-48 #39: BEIJING HUSTLE
Here’s one of the great big pieces of proof that Jesse Owens was better than all of us: “I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.”
We Razorbacks would do well to listen to Jesse’s dulcet tones. Because we have some competing against ourselves to do. First, we’re going to have to play basketball this season without Patrick Beverly, who (probably) got busted for drugs and is off the team. He’ll go try his hand in Europe, before fading swiftly into oblivion, where he will remain obscure to all but the mothers of his illegitimate children. God speed, Patty. We hardly knew ye.
But this is yet another installment in 50-48’s season preview. We’re here for football talk. The Hogs next two games after their mesmerizing defeat of Gus Malzhan’s Tulsa Golden Hurricane (singular, for some idiotic reason) are against Cackilack and State. Two inevitable victories in pressure-packed road games. But how, you might be asking, can 50-48 possibly preview these games in interesting ways? How can it draw in its readers and keep their attention? What sort of hook, narrative arc, dogmatic jive or hustle might it employ to trick me into thinking that the words—inevitably destined to include, “Steve Spurrier can eat a box of baby goats, and those sweet little baby goats will all have special goat herpes, and so then Spurrier will walk around his remaining days through Columbia sporting massive little hairy tin-eating sores all over his mouth and pubic region,” or something to that effect—“matter,” if in fact I can ever really get a solid grasp on the word “matter” in all of its existential (to say nothing of physical) splendor (which of course I can’t)? 50-48’s answer: OLYMPICS!
That’s right, everyone: 50-48 has Olympic fever. It has been following the Hogs’ 10 track athletes with great interest. But even more than that, it recognizes in the spectacle a healthy relation to its college football preview. Originally, 50-48 decided to take little Nastia Liukin and big Michael Phelps, mash them together, then pull them apart to make an Olympic Oulipian formula, with every sentence of the Cackilack and State previews having an Olympic word somewhere embedded within. It was going to taunt Beijing with its austerity and dexterous grammatical fleet feet.
But then it changed its mind, realizing after painful reflection that such an exercise really wasn’t all that interesting at all. So instead, it will just keep the Olympics in the back of its mind as it bangs out the following paragraphs. It realizes, even as it types, that this is a sort of hustle on top of the original hustle, a preternaturally Faustian squaring that only serves to mitigate the trust that it has developed with its dear readers over the past months. But 50-48 would respond that whims are the stuff of whimsy, both grammatically and spiritually, and so anyone seeking the latter would do best to stomach the former with the good grace of a Nervous Nellie at a solemn dinner with the in-laws.
If it makes you feel any better, the Chinese Olympic hosts have plenty of moral faults that these sacred contests are obscuring at every turn. I’m not talking about Tibet or Darfur. I’m talking about pedestrian safety. 50-48 refuses to validate such behavior with Olympic themes.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Chinese are also the traditional hated rivals of the Japanese. But, that said, there shall still be no more bizarre Japanese giantess fetish video hyperlinks in this week’s installment. We’re calling a moratorium and keeping them in our private perversion vault. Them’s the breaks.)
(EDITOR’S NOTE AGAIN: You know what? It’s been a long, horrible, lonely day. Fuck it. One more crazy giantess video.)
(EDITOR’S NOTE ONE MORE TIME: I don’t get it either. Weird, huh?)
Anyway: Steve Spurrier can eat a box of baby goats, and those sweet little baby goats will all have special goat herpes, and so then Spurrier will walk around his remaining days through Columbia sporting massive little hairy tin-eating sores all over his mouth and pubic region. Wouldn’t that be great? Well, regardless, when we head to Columbia this season, Ball Coach will be hoping desperately for a win, as his chronically overrated team will again underachieve and be knee-deep in trying to salvage its coach’s reputation. Cackilack is our perpetual SEC East opponent, coming into the league as they did in 1992, with us, the Maine to our Missouri, so to speak (if I might be so free as to drop a Jacksonian-era slave compromise reference on you). We see them every year. We usually beat them, and we’ll do it again. Riding high the wave of our gloriously unexpected undefeated season, in which we’ve scored triple digits in every game, had a naked space alien dance party, and managed to win five games in hundred-point reduction declensions, Cackilack and their ardent yet patient supporters will be no match for the new Petrino juggernaut. Besides: you know Cackilack: PRETTY BUT DUMB. Their uniforms (and cheerleaders) are spectacular, but they couldn’t find our offense with a map (so to speak). Arkansas wins, 750,000 to 0.
Then it’s off to Starkville, where it’s all about MAROON. State is getting some national attention because they reached and won a bowl game last season, but those down south realize that they are probably overrated and should retain their general station at or near the back of the pack. But remember, though Starkville might be the most desolate place on earth, and their head coach can sometimes be a cartoon of a real human being, this is the same school that castrated a fucking longhorn before going out and whipping Texas back in 1992. For that, they will have 50-48’s undying eternal devotion. (For an in depth discussion of Mississippi State bull castration, including its various forms and outcomes, CLICK HERE.) Still, there can’t be any mercy when you’re working on an undefeated season. The Hogs will use the banding method in place of the traditional knife to castrate the Dogs in fantastical style. Final score, Hogs 1,000,000, newly-deballed Dogs 0.
Here’s one of the great big pieces of proof that Pierre de Coubertin---creator of the modern Olympics—was smarter than all of us: “Olympism is not a system - it is a state of mind. This state of mind has emerged from a double cult: that of effort and that of Eurythmy - a taste of excess and a taste of measure combined.” Excess and measure, indeed. We will need talent in excess and confidence in measure if we are to bring about the football results we all hope for this year. We want more than anything else to WIN. But Coubertin has a message for that, as well: “The important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.”
True enough, Pierre, and we’d all do well to remember it. But 50-48 would like to briefly defend its veritable blood-lust for victory by reminding everyone that Pierre de Coubertin died in 1937, before the Nazis marched in and set up shop in Vichy, the Hot Springs of southern France. Would he have been so cavalier with the victory/combat metaphor after watching his countrymen fold like so many metaphorical houses of cards? Texas is RIGHT THERE! Staring over the Rhineland of Texarkana, gritting their pseudo-fascist teeth. We could, at the same time, very well be a Poland or Czechoslovakia, sitting ducks waiting patently for the rest of the SEC to move in and take us. Meanwhile, Oklahoma just looks on, contemplating its next move and appeasing the southeast every step of the way, a pot-shaped state of Chamberlainesque Indians passing the peace pipe and looking the other way. I love competition as much as the next guy, and I understand the good fight mentality, but is it really worth GENOCIDE!?
WAKE UP, ARKANSAS! We must step down from the lofty pedestal of Olympic idealism and get back into the sloppy gutter that is Southern Fried Football. Playing for the love of the game makes you Vanderbilt. (Sorry, Pete.) And it is not good enough.
And here it’s only taken me two paragraphs to fall off the Olympic beam. Shit! Jesse Owens would be pissing himself were he not resting peacefully in the sweet ether of death. Let me see if I can’t climb back up and give us a flawless dismount. I started with an Olympic champion, and I’ll end with one.
Here’s one of the great big pieces of proof that Wilma Rudolph was better than all of us: “When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.”
There. That’s better. And you know what she’s talking about there? That thing—that one simple, shining thing—that makes up the constitution of that ethereal realm hovering above three gold medals, serving as the shining beacon that would be the founding document of the rest of Wilma’s life? Of all of our lives? The answer to that great quest for meaning that we all strive to achieve in our 76.45 years on the planet?
Yep. You guessed it. The ethnic cleansing of Texas.
Enjoy the rest of the Olympics, 50-48ians. Go Hogs. Go World.
Ahem.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
Here’s one of the great big pieces of proof that Jesse Owens was better than all of us: “I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.”
We Razorbacks would do well to listen to Jesse’s dulcet tones. Because we have some competing against ourselves to do. First, we’re going to have to play basketball this season without Patrick Beverly, who (probably) got busted for drugs and is off the team. He’ll go try his hand in Europe, before fading swiftly into oblivion, where he will remain obscure to all but the mothers of his illegitimate children. God speed, Patty. We hardly knew ye.
But this is yet another installment in 50-48’s season preview. We’re here for football talk. The Hogs next two games after their mesmerizing defeat of Gus Malzhan’s Tulsa Golden Hurricane (singular, for some idiotic reason) are against Cackilack and State. Two inevitable victories in pressure-packed road games. But how, you might be asking, can 50-48 possibly preview these games in interesting ways? How can it draw in its readers and keep their attention? What sort of hook, narrative arc, dogmatic jive or hustle might it employ to trick me into thinking that the words—inevitably destined to include, “Steve Spurrier can eat a box of baby goats, and those sweet little baby goats will all have special goat herpes, and so then Spurrier will walk around his remaining days through Columbia sporting massive little hairy tin-eating sores all over his mouth and pubic region,” or something to that effect—“matter,” if in fact I can ever really get a solid grasp on the word “matter” in all of its existential (to say nothing of physical) splendor (which of course I can’t)? 50-48’s answer: OLYMPICS!
That’s right, everyone: 50-48 has Olympic fever. It has been following the Hogs’ 10 track athletes with great interest. But even more than that, it recognizes in the spectacle a healthy relation to its college football preview. Originally, 50-48 decided to take little Nastia Liukin and big Michael Phelps, mash them together, then pull them apart to make an Olympic Oulipian formula, with every sentence of the Cackilack and State previews having an Olympic word somewhere embedded within. It was going to taunt Beijing with its austerity and dexterous grammatical fleet feet.
But then it changed its mind, realizing after painful reflection that such an exercise really wasn’t all that interesting at all. So instead, it will just keep the Olympics in the back of its mind as it bangs out the following paragraphs. It realizes, even as it types, that this is a sort of hustle on top of the original hustle, a preternaturally Faustian squaring that only serves to mitigate the trust that it has developed with its dear readers over the past months. But 50-48 would respond that whims are the stuff of whimsy, both grammatically and spiritually, and so anyone seeking the latter would do best to stomach the former with the good grace of a Nervous Nellie at a solemn dinner with the in-laws.
If it makes you feel any better, the Chinese Olympic hosts have plenty of moral faults that these sacred contests are obscuring at every turn. I’m not talking about Tibet or Darfur. I’m talking about pedestrian safety. 50-48 refuses to validate such behavior with Olympic themes.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Chinese are also the traditional hated rivals of the Japanese. But, that said, there shall still be no more bizarre Japanese giantess fetish video hyperlinks in this week’s installment. We’re calling a moratorium and keeping them in our private perversion vault. Them’s the breaks.)
(EDITOR’S NOTE AGAIN: You know what? It’s been a long, horrible, lonely day. Fuck it. One more crazy giantess video.)
(EDITOR’S NOTE ONE MORE TIME: I don’t get it either. Weird, huh?)
Anyway: Steve Spurrier can eat a box of baby goats, and those sweet little baby goats will all have special goat herpes, and so then Spurrier will walk around his remaining days through Columbia sporting massive little hairy tin-eating sores all over his mouth and pubic region. Wouldn’t that be great? Well, regardless, when we head to Columbia this season, Ball Coach will be hoping desperately for a win, as his chronically overrated team will again underachieve and be knee-deep in trying to salvage its coach’s reputation. Cackilack is our perpetual SEC East opponent, coming into the league as they did in 1992, with us, the Maine to our Missouri, so to speak (if I might be so free as to drop a Jacksonian-era slave compromise reference on you). We see them every year. We usually beat them, and we’ll do it again. Riding high the wave of our gloriously unexpected undefeated season, in which we’ve scored triple digits in every game, had a naked space alien dance party, and managed to win five games in hundred-point reduction declensions, Cackilack and their ardent yet patient supporters will be no match for the new Petrino juggernaut. Besides: you know Cackilack: PRETTY BUT DUMB. Their uniforms (and cheerleaders) are spectacular, but they couldn’t find our offense with a map (so to speak). Arkansas wins, 750,000 to 0.
Then it’s off to Starkville, where it’s all about MAROON. State is getting some national attention because they reached and won a bowl game last season, but those down south realize that they are probably overrated and should retain their general station at or near the back of the pack. But remember, though Starkville might be the most desolate place on earth, and their head coach can sometimes be a cartoon of a real human being, this is the same school that castrated a fucking longhorn before going out and whipping Texas back in 1992. For that, they will have 50-48’s undying eternal devotion. (For an in depth discussion of Mississippi State bull castration, including its various forms and outcomes, CLICK HERE.) Still, there can’t be any mercy when you’re working on an undefeated season. The Hogs will use the banding method in place of the traditional knife to castrate the Dogs in fantastical style. Final score, Hogs 1,000,000, newly-deballed Dogs 0.
Here’s one of the great big pieces of proof that Pierre de Coubertin---creator of the modern Olympics—was smarter than all of us: “Olympism is not a system - it is a state of mind. This state of mind has emerged from a double cult: that of effort and that of Eurythmy - a taste of excess and a taste of measure combined.” Excess and measure, indeed. We will need talent in excess and confidence in measure if we are to bring about the football results we all hope for this year. We want more than anything else to WIN. But Coubertin has a message for that, as well: “The important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.”
True enough, Pierre, and we’d all do well to remember it. But 50-48 would like to briefly defend its veritable blood-lust for victory by reminding everyone that Pierre de Coubertin died in 1937, before the Nazis marched in and set up shop in Vichy, the Hot Springs of southern France. Would he have been so cavalier with the victory/combat metaphor after watching his countrymen fold like so many metaphorical houses of cards? Texas is RIGHT THERE! Staring over the Rhineland of Texarkana, gritting their pseudo-fascist teeth. We could, at the same time, very well be a Poland or Czechoslovakia, sitting ducks waiting patently for the rest of the SEC to move in and take us. Meanwhile, Oklahoma just looks on, contemplating its next move and appeasing the southeast every step of the way, a pot-shaped state of Chamberlainesque Indians passing the peace pipe and looking the other way. I love competition as much as the next guy, and I understand the good fight mentality, but is it really worth GENOCIDE!?
WAKE UP, ARKANSAS! We must step down from the lofty pedestal of Olympic idealism and get back into the sloppy gutter that is Southern Fried Football. Playing for the love of the game makes you Vanderbilt. (Sorry, Pete.) And it is not good enough.
And here it’s only taken me two paragraphs to fall off the Olympic beam. Shit! Jesse Owens would be pissing himself were he not resting peacefully in the sweet ether of death. Let me see if I can’t climb back up and give us a flawless dismount. I started with an Olympic champion, and I’ll end with one.
Here’s one of the great big pieces of proof that Wilma Rudolph was better than all of us: “When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.”
There. That’s better. And you know what she’s talking about there? That thing—that one simple, shining thing—that makes up the constitution of that ethereal realm hovering above three gold medals, serving as the shining beacon that would be the founding document of the rest of Wilma’s life? Of all of our lives? The answer to that great quest for meaning that we all strive to achieve in our 76.45 years on the planet?
Yep. You guessed it. The ethnic cleansing of Texas.
Enjoy the rest of the Olympics, 50-48ians. Go Hogs. Go World.
Ahem.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
Monday, August 11, 2008
50-48 #38: SIGMUND FREUD IS A TOTAL DOUCHE BAG
50-48 #38: SIGMUND FREUD IS A TOTAL DOUCHE BAG
In the grand pantheon of Austrian psychiatrists, Sigmund Freud usually seems to be the only one visible from the lofty heights of Vienna’s cafes and cobblestone streets. And, in particular, fin de siecle Vienna, who sucked at the teat of Freud for far too long, creating a sort of malignant dependence that has kept him in the collective mind far past his usefulness. Well, he wasn’t the only one. Alfred Adler was also doodling in a notebook as future Nazis poured out their feelings while lying on a couch. He too slinked around Viennese coffee shops, experimenting with marijuana and anticipating the death of god.
Adler was the guy who came up with the inferiority complex. [Or, to be more specific, he authored the concept of “inferiority feeling,” which is often destructively and falsely called the “inferiority complex.” Linguistic wrong turns such as these drive the editors of the DSM crazy, so to speak. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The editors of the DSM also hate the term “crazy,” particularly when proffered as a diagnosis for mental illness. For example, they would totally hate this statement: “Hootie’s wife is fucking crazy.” Even though she is. Crazy. Crazy, crazy.)] It was Adler who noted, “Imperfect preparation gives rise to the thousand-fold forms that express physical and mental inferiority and insecurity.”
Bobby Petrino probably has this quote tattooed on the back of his eyelids. If I ever get close enough (lucky enough) to make out with him, I’ll check.
Anyway, god is in his heaven and all is right with the world: The Hogs have started practice. They have new uniforms. (Don’t like them.) They’ve had a scrimmage. And it’s almost time to start the season. Our preparation will be perfect, and our feelings of inferiority will dissipate with every snap and call.
But let’s get to the meat of it, shall we? The subject of today’s installment is not Razorback Training Camp. (For more on Razorback Training Camp, CLICK HERE.) It is the “University” of Mississippi game on October 25. (For Ole Miss “University” propaganda concerning Hootie, CLICK HERE.) This game will be one of two uncomfortable homecomings this season, the other being Nick Saban returning to south Louisiana. Saban really might get sniped by some drunken maniac. Hootie won’t. Arkansas is far classier than LSU. But, that said, I’m not classy. And if I’m there, and I see Hootie’s wife or 300-lb bull dyke pal, I’ll punch them in the face. I will dish out the cosmic justice that ghosts and spirits dish out in Victorian literature.
So Hootie has spent the off season putting the back of his hand on young men’s balls, then offering them football scholarships. He has run off Orgeron’s four-star recruits and replaced them with Hootie-style two-stars. He has learned to love a new helmet. But he has not prepared his football team to win games.
On September 13, the “University” of Mississippi plays 1-AA Samford. That one’s a victory. There are NO OTHER WINS ON THAT SCHEDULE. Memphis, Wake Forest, and ULM are the “University”s three other non-conference games, and all three of those teams are better than Ole Miss. Vanderbilt is better than Ole Miss. (Right Pete?)
As for the Arkansas game, Hootie and his little team have no chance. Hootie will probably piss himself in the locker room, sucking all the confidence from his squad. And no amount of ball-cupping will bring it back. His wife will be less afraid, because she’s pure concentrated evil. So Hootie will bring her into the locker room for an inspired “bring the wood” speech. But the team will all cower as she begins swinging the 2x4 around the room. So Hootie, in a state of panic, will bring in the 300-lb bull dyke. BUT THAT WILL NOT GO WELL. Eventually, Hootie’s two toughest recruits will BEGIN ARGUING. And the whole thing will devolve into SOMETHING CRAZY.
When they finally get onto the field, the game will GO TO THE DOGS.
So, felled by Japanese giantesses who magically turn into anime characters in the locker room, the Rebels never really manage to put anything together on the field. Hootie will venture into the dark world of insanity at halftime, avoiding his team by having an INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIP WITH A LIGHTSWITCH. What with the catfighting, the giantesses, Godzilla, puppyball, and crazy lightbulb bullcrap, the Rebels will not be able to mount a second half comeback. Final score: Hogs 1,000,000,000 Rebels 0. Hootie then challenges the Hogs to an ASIAN BREAKDANCE BATTLE, but we beat the hell out of him in that, too. He then slinks back to Mississippi, where being an illiterate shithead doesn’t carry the stigma that it does in other places.
Wow! My love for those hyperlinks almost matches my hatred for Hootie! That was great! Hey everybody! Here’s a song about FUCKING A UNICORN! Woo hoo!
And so, to sum up: Hootie sucks. Ole Miss isn’t a real university. And as the Rebels fumble through a functionally flawed training camp, replete with ball-cupping and giantess fetishes, the Razorbacks’ perfect preparation will help them avoid the thousand-fold forms that express physical and mental inferiority and insecurity.
Not that they need it to beat Hootie.
Hootie totally sucks.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: Wow! you might be thinking. That was great, but I was really hoping for more cuss words. NO PROBLEM!
PPS: Suck it, Hootie.
PPPS: You too, Freud.
In the grand pantheon of Austrian psychiatrists, Sigmund Freud usually seems to be the only one visible from the lofty heights of Vienna’s cafes and cobblestone streets. And, in particular, fin de siecle Vienna, who sucked at the teat of Freud for far too long, creating a sort of malignant dependence that has kept him in the collective mind far past his usefulness. Well, he wasn’t the only one. Alfred Adler was also doodling in a notebook as future Nazis poured out their feelings while lying on a couch. He too slinked around Viennese coffee shops, experimenting with marijuana and anticipating the death of god.
Adler was the guy who came up with the inferiority complex. [Or, to be more specific, he authored the concept of “inferiority feeling,” which is often destructively and falsely called the “inferiority complex.” Linguistic wrong turns such as these drive the editors of the DSM crazy, so to speak. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The editors of the DSM also hate the term “crazy,” particularly when proffered as a diagnosis for mental illness. For example, they would totally hate this statement: “Hootie’s wife is fucking crazy.” Even though she is. Crazy. Crazy, crazy.)] It was Adler who noted, “Imperfect preparation gives rise to the thousand-fold forms that express physical and mental inferiority and insecurity.”
Bobby Petrino probably has this quote tattooed on the back of his eyelids. If I ever get close enough (lucky enough) to make out with him, I’ll check.
Anyway, god is in his heaven and all is right with the world: The Hogs have started practice. They have new uniforms. (Don’t like them.) They’ve had a scrimmage. And it’s almost time to start the season. Our preparation will be perfect, and our feelings of inferiority will dissipate with every snap and call.
But let’s get to the meat of it, shall we? The subject of today’s installment is not Razorback Training Camp. (For more on Razorback Training Camp, CLICK HERE.) It is the “University” of Mississippi game on October 25. (For Ole Miss “University” propaganda concerning Hootie, CLICK HERE.) This game will be one of two uncomfortable homecomings this season, the other being Nick Saban returning to south Louisiana. Saban really might get sniped by some drunken maniac. Hootie won’t. Arkansas is far classier than LSU. But, that said, I’m not classy. And if I’m there, and I see Hootie’s wife or 300-lb bull dyke pal, I’ll punch them in the face. I will dish out the cosmic justice that ghosts and spirits dish out in Victorian literature.
So Hootie has spent the off season putting the back of his hand on young men’s balls, then offering them football scholarships. He has run off Orgeron’s four-star recruits and replaced them with Hootie-style two-stars. He has learned to love a new helmet. But he has not prepared his football team to win games.
On September 13, the “University” of Mississippi plays 1-AA Samford. That one’s a victory. There are NO OTHER WINS ON THAT SCHEDULE. Memphis, Wake Forest, and ULM are the “University”s three other non-conference games, and all three of those teams are better than Ole Miss. Vanderbilt is better than Ole Miss. (Right Pete?)
As for the Arkansas game, Hootie and his little team have no chance. Hootie will probably piss himself in the locker room, sucking all the confidence from his squad. And no amount of ball-cupping will bring it back. His wife will be less afraid, because she’s pure concentrated evil. So Hootie will bring her into the locker room for an inspired “bring the wood” speech. But the team will all cower as she begins swinging the 2x4 around the room. So Hootie, in a state of panic, will bring in the 300-lb bull dyke. BUT THAT WILL NOT GO WELL. Eventually, Hootie’s two toughest recruits will BEGIN ARGUING. And the whole thing will devolve into SOMETHING CRAZY.
When they finally get onto the field, the game will GO TO THE DOGS.
So, felled by Japanese giantesses who magically turn into anime characters in the locker room, the Rebels never really manage to put anything together on the field. Hootie will venture into the dark world of insanity at halftime, avoiding his team by having an INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIP WITH A LIGHTSWITCH. What with the catfighting, the giantesses, Godzilla, puppyball, and crazy lightbulb bullcrap, the Rebels will not be able to mount a second half comeback. Final score: Hogs 1,000,000,000 Rebels 0. Hootie then challenges the Hogs to an ASIAN BREAKDANCE BATTLE, but we beat the hell out of him in that, too. He then slinks back to Mississippi, where being an illiterate shithead doesn’t carry the stigma that it does in other places.
Wow! My love for those hyperlinks almost matches my hatred for Hootie! That was great! Hey everybody! Here’s a song about FUCKING A UNICORN! Woo hoo!
And so, to sum up: Hootie sucks. Ole Miss isn’t a real university. And as the Rebels fumble through a functionally flawed training camp, replete with ball-cupping and giantess fetishes, the Razorbacks’ perfect preparation will help them avoid the thousand-fold forms that express physical and mental inferiority and insecurity.
Not that they need it to beat Hootie.
Hootie totally sucks.
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: Wow! you might be thinking. That was great, but I was really hoping for more cuss words. NO PROBLEM!
PPS: Suck it, Hootie.
PPPS: You too, Freud.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
50-48 #37: OF HUMAN BONDAGE
50-48 #37: OF HUMAN BONDAGE
Take, for example, the cloister of a small apartment. The walls act as barriers closing off a set amount of space. But that space holds all of the resident’s possessions, all his favorite things—and by acting as his storage and living space, seems wholly adequate for his needs. Were he to draw those same dimensions with a stick in an open field, or with chalk on the street, the reality of its miniscule size would become apparent. “I live in a space,” he might say, “that isn’t even as wide as the street!” So the walls of the apartment function as constraints by disallowing motion outside of their boundaries, but in so doing, they figuratively enlarge the space in the resident’s mind—an enlargement that is both personal and mnemonic. The walls and the things contained within them serve to stamp time for the resident in a way that equivalent spaces in, say, the street do not.
The group Oulipo attempts to build similar linguistic walls in the creation of literature—the act of broadening through limitations. And, in the formulation of author Peter Consenstein, those attempts serve as conscious transformations of literary memory. His Literary Memory, Consciousness, and the Group Oulipo argues that writers of the Oulipo group place constraints on their writing as a method of recalling literary forms, marking time through experiment. This creation of freedom through constraint is not only functional for Consenstein, it is spiritual. In making his case, Consenstein reverses the prevailing analysis of Oulipian work as playful, formulaic, and therefore necessarily impersonal. He argues that the retransformation of literary forms and the emphasis on the consciousness of the endeavor make Oulipo’s project inherently personal, and it is that fundamental personal quality combined with the group’s production of these reinvented forms that creates a superior form of memory. “The result of what occurs when the logic of a literary constraint meets language’s own logic is the final product of the Oulipian laboratory; it is what is meant by ‘potential’ literature.”
Well right on, buster.
Oulipo—Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (the Workshop of Potential Literature)—was founded in 1960 by French authors Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais who sought to create artificial formulas and constraints, based mathematical algorithms and pattern theory, to force writing to grow in specific directions. You’ve all probably gathered at its banks through Umberto Eco, who clearly snags the bulk of the international renown.
No matter. The point of all this gobbledygook is to say that 50-48 will, for today, attempt to broaden through limitation. It seems the previews have been moving in a Malthusian declension, leaving we here at 50-48 with less and less time to feed you more and more game previews. So we’ve decided to give you five brief previews in one installment. The catch? Each paragraph (one devoted to each game) will be absent the next alphabetical vowel. An Oulipian constraint! So, for example, the second paragraph detailing our inevitable victory over Christian Philippino-circumciser Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators will contain no ‘e’s. This thicket becomes all the more sticky when it is noted that we will be skipping the Ole Miss game (Hootie’s going to get him one all to himself, brutha!) and replacing it with Tulsa the following week. Therefore, the first paragraph—sans ‘a’—is the Alabama game (4 fucking ‘a’s!) and the fifth paragraph—sans ‘u’—is the Tulsa game (even the mascot has a ‘u’!).
Can we do it? Probably not. We usually find ourselves so far from Le Lionnais, he might as well be Timbuktu (or perhaps the Pacific Ten Conference, water polo aggregation that it may be). But we’re going to give it a shot. It is a beautiful Saturday here in the Great Big Beautiful South, with the sun shining down on pretty girls drinking cool beverages, with music and laughter and possibility, possibility, possibility. What better way to spend it than by hiding from all of that and trying idiotic word games with football preview paragraphs?
There is no better way.
So here goes:
The Crimson Tide will endure their second schedule under Nick the Dick, formerly of LSU, in 2008. Prospects look good. Their recruiting is through the fucking roof. They seem to be getting better. But come on. Seriously. The mighty former-Injuns of ULM (nee NLU) dropped them. Should we be cowering? Me thinks not. Remember: when the Tide rolled to the Ville in 2006, they got their butts provided to them on one fine silver serving dish, courtesy of 8 million missed kicks. (Hootie, if you remember, mounted the stupid music podium, choosing like the fool he is to conduct the fight song from there. Honestly, the only thing he’s good for is one pristine entry into this Greek blowjob contest. But he’d surely find some method for fucking it up, just like he fucks up everything else. Oh, tip for his 2x4 wielding cunt sidekick: should you ever desire freedom, divorce, following yet more text-romps with newswomen, TRY THIS.) The Hogs romp following their disembowelment of the Longhorns, 500-0.
Ain’t no 180º schwa in Philippino dick, right? That symbol is POPULAR for words. ALL of Florida’s stars carry said symbol in his (plural) linguistic calling-thing. Gators suck. Hogs shock world. South Louisiana Kim is sad. Hogs 400 – Florida 0. (Gators suck, gators suck, gators suck.) (Fill up a tub. Any tub.)
After the Hogs’ conquest over the Gators, they travel to Jordan-Hare, home of the Auburn War Eagles. The team should do well. They are led by an Arkansan at quarterback—yet another Arkansan that Dale let sneak away. But the Hogs aren’t scared, of Burns or of Arkansas-bred Coach Tommy-Tubby. Auburn generally tanks versus the Razorbacks, and should do so once more. We are to the Auburn endzone what DEA agents are to underwater drug boats. We shall go. We shall conquer. We shall plant our flag, and no one shall doubt our loyalty when we do so. (There’s a joke to be made there, but we won’t make that joke. That joke’s sooooooo old, anyway.) Arkansas 300 - Auburn 0.
Then it’s the Blue Ridge State’s capital, where a battle will take place between each team that defeated LSU last year! Kentucky watched all their best players leave the team after their last game, thereby making themselves a relatively easy target. The Wildcats should be easy pickings for Arkansas. We will surely pwn them. New quarterback Curtis Pulley might be alright, but he surely isn’t as talented as the last guy. Even with a likely-crappy defense, we will handle him just fine. Besides, failure at Kentucky is like staring at dead baby penguins. And there aren’t any humans that like staring at dead baby penguins. Arkansas 200 – Penguin-killing Infidels 0.
Finally, after a good Hootie-killing, the Hogs welcome back the greatest offensive coordinator in school history—Coach Malzahn, who now plots the offense for Oklahoma’s Golden Canes. He will (rightly) receive a standing ovation as he enters Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium, and since Coach Petrino has class, he will take it all in stride. Still, Coach Malzahn isn’t playing Hootie this time, so even his brilliant football mind won’t do the trick. He will be Gwendoline, roaming the land of Yik-Yak. He will be a steaming hot poo-poo platter in the north of Italy. He will be a ballooning preacher in the Brazilian hinterland. And he will fail. Hogs 100 - Canes 0.
Whew! I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, then came out the other side! LET’S CELEBRATE! SOME MORE! YET AGAIN! WOO HOO! AND DRUNKENLY FROM THE DECK OF A CRUISE SHIP!
Thanks Ouvroir de littérature potentielle! Vowels rule. And (according to this pundit’s predictions) the Hogs are still undefeated. May our restraint breed voluminous growth in the trying months ahead. May our vices make us virtuous. And may we conquer.
(“I live in a space that isn’t even as wide as the street!”)
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: I’m headed out on a fabulous mid-western baseball and comedy tour this week, so our next update might be a bit belated…Remember your St. Augustine: “Patience is the companion of wisdom.” You see? If you hang on long enough, my laziness will make you all rocket scientists! Hooray!
Take, for example, the cloister of a small apartment. The walls act as barriers closing off a set amount of space. But that space holds all of the resident’s possessions, all his favorite things—and by acting as his storage and living space, seems wholly adequate for his needs. Were he to draw those same dimensions with a stick in an open field, or with chalk on the street, the reality of its miniscule size would become apparent. “I live in a space,” he might say, “that isn’t even as wide as the street!” So the walls of the apartment function as constraints by disallowing motion outside of their boundaries, but in so doing, they figuratively enlarge the space in the resident’s mind—an enlargement that is both personal and mnemonic. The walls and the things contained within them serve to stamp time for the resident in a way that equivalent spaces in, say, the street do not.
The group Oulipo attempts to build similar linguistic walls in the creation of literature—the act of broadening through limitations. And, in the formulation of author Peter Consenstein, those attempts serve as conscious transformations of literary memory. His Literary Memory, Consciousness, and the Group Oulipo argues that writers of the Oulipo group place constraints on their writing as a method of recalling literary forms, marking time through experiment. This creation of freedom through constraint is not only functional for Consenstein, it is spiritual. In making his case, Consenstein reverses the prevailing analysis of Oulipian work as playful, formulaic, and therefore necessarily impersonal. He argues that the retransformation of literary forms and the emphasis on the consciousness of the endeavor make Oulipo’s project inherently personal, and it is that fundamental personal quality combined with the group’s production of these reinvented forms that creates a superior form of memory. “The result of what occurs when the logic of a literary constraint meets language’s own logic is the final product of the Oulipian laboratory; it is what is meant by ‘potential’ literature.”
Well right on, buster.
Oulipo—Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (the Workshop of Potential Literature)—was founded in 1960 by French authors Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais who sought to create artificial formulas and constraints, based mathematical algorithms and pattern theory, to force writing to grow in specific directions. You’ve all probably gathered at its banks through Umberto Eco, who clearly snags the bulk of the international renown.
No matter. The point of all this gobbledygook is to say that 50-48 will, for today, attempt to broaden through limitation. It seems the previews have been moving in a Malthusian declension, leaving we here at 50-48 with less and less time to feed you more and more game previews. So we’ve decided to give you five brief previews in one installment. The catch? Each paragraph (one devoted to each game) will be absent the next alphabetical vowel. An Oulipian constraint! So, for example, the second paragraph detailing our inevitable victory over Christian Philippino-circumciser Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators will contain no ‘e’s. This thicket becomes all the more sticky when it is noted that we will be skipping the Ole Miss game (Hootie’s going to get him one all to himself, brutha!) and replacing it with Tulsa the following week. Therefore, the first paragraph—sans ‘a’—is the Alabama game (4 fucking ‘a’s!) and the fifth paragraph—sans ‘u’—is the Tulsa game (even the mascot has a ‘u’!).
Can we do it? Probably not. We usually find ourselves so far from Le Lionnais, he might as well be Timbuktu (or perhaps the Pacific Ten Conference, water polo aggregation that it may be). But we’re going to give it a shot. It is a beautiful Saturday here in the Great Big Beautiful South, with the sun shining down on pretty girls drinking cool beverages, with music and laughter and possibility, possibility, possibility. What better way to spend it than by hiding from all of that and trying idiotic word games with football preview paragraphs?
There is no better way.
So here goes:
The Crimson Tide will endure their second schedule under Nick the Dick, formerly of LSU, in 2008. Prospects look good. Their recruiting is through the fucking roof. They seem to be getting better. But come on. Seriously. The mighty former-Injuns of ULM (nee NLU) dropped them. Should we be cowering? Me thinks not. Remember: when the Tide rolled to the Ville in 2006, they got their butts provided to them on one fine silver serving dish, courtesy of 8 million missed kicks. (Hootie, if you remember, mounted the stupid music podium, choosing like the fool he is to conduct the fight song from there. Honestly, the only thing he’s good for is one pristine entry into this Greek blowjob contest. But he’d surely find some method for fucking it up, just like he fucks up everything else. Oh, tip for his 2x4 wielding cunt sidekick: should you ever desire freedom, divorce, following yet more text-romps with newswomen, TRY THIS.) The Hogs romp following their disembowelment of the Longhorns, 500-0.
Ain’t no 180º schwa in Philippino dick, right? That symbol is POPULAR for words. ALL of Florida’s stars carry said symbol in his (plural) linguistic calling-thing. Gators suck. Hogs shock world. South Louisiana Kim is sad. Hogs 400 – Florida 0. (Gators suck, gators suck, gators suck.) (Fill up a tub. Any tub.)
After the Hogs’ conquest over the Gators, they travel to Jordan-Hare, home of the Auburn War Eagles. The team should do well. They are led by an Arkansan at quarterback—yet another Arkansan that Dale let sneak away. But the Hogs aren’t scared, of Burns or of Arkansas-bred Coach Tommy-Tubby. Auburn generally tanks versus the Razorbacks, and should do so once more. We are to the Auburn endzone what DEA agents are to underwater drug boats. We shall go. We shall conquer. We shall plant our flag, and no one shall doubt our loyalty when we do so. (There’s a joke to be made there, but we won’t make that joke. That joke’s sooooooo old, anyway.) Arkansas 300 - Auburn 0.
Then it’s the Blue Ridge State’s capital, where a battle will take place between each team that defeated LSU last year! Kentucky watched all their best players leave the team after their last game, thereby making themselves a relatively easy target. The Wildcats should be easy pickings for Arkansas. We will surely pwn them. New quarterback Curtis Pulley might be alright, but he surely isn’t as talented as the last guy. Even with a likely-crappy defense, we will handle him just fine. Besides, failure at Kentucky is like staring at dead baby penguins. And there aren’t any humans that like staring at dead baby penguins. Arkansas 200 – Penguin-killing Infidels 0.
Finally, after a good Hootie-killing, the Hogs welcome back the greatest offensive coordinator in school history—Coach Malzahn, who now plots the offense for Oklahoma’s Golden Canes. He will (rightly) receive a standing ovation as he enters Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium, and since Coach Petrino has class, he will take it all in stride. Still, Coach Malzahn isn’t playing Hootie this time, so even his brilliant football mind won’t do the trick. He will be Gwendoline, roaming the land of Yik-Yak. He will be a steaming hot poo-poo platter in the north of Italy. He will be a ballooning preacher in the Brazilian hinterland. And he will fail. Hogs 100 - Canes 0.
Whew! I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, then came out the other side! LET’S CELEBRATE! SOME MORE! YET AGAIN! WOO HOO! AND DRUNKENLY FROM THE DECK OF A CRUISE SHIP!
Thanks Ouvroir de littérature potentielle! Vowels rule. And (according to this pundit’s predictions) the Hogs are still undefeated. May our restraint breed voluminous growth in the trying months ahead. May our vices make us virtuous. And may we conquer.
(“I live in a space that isn’t even as wide as the street!”)
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
PS: I’m headed out on a fabulous mid-western baseball and comedy tour this week, so our next update might be a bit belated…Remember your St. Augustine: “Patience is the companion of wisdom.” You see? If you hang on long enough, my laziness will make you all rocket scientists! Hooray!
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