Thomas Hardy, flush with the wisdom that comes from being a Victorian’s Victorian in Victorian England, argued in his typical Hardyesque prose, “The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.”
Martin Luther King, flush with the giddiness that comes from being a revolutionary’s revolutionary in the Civil Rights South, argued with his typical Kingesque flourish, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
These are, quite obviously, two very different worldviews. The question for we Razorbacks is which ontological path should we spend our quiet afternoons lazily meandering down. Well, here’s some tools with which to make your decision:
EXHIBIT A: Thomas Hardy was a brilliant “Renaissance man,” so to speak, maintaining a successful career as an architect along with his writing. Not only did he receive the Order of Merit, but he also managed to score a major prize from the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was a tremendous influence on British letters, and without his literary output, it’s entirely possible that D.H. Lawrence’s semi-pornography and Virginia Woolf’s supreme brilliance would never have seen the light of day. Among his own gifts to the universe were Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
EXHIBIT B: Martin Luther King was a Southern Baptist preacher who cribbed his dissertation.
Check and mate. Martin Luther King’s success stemmed from a rhetorical brilliance that Hardy couldn’t have dreamed of matching. But in the great game of secular logic, well…
Conclusion? This disastrous losing streak, continuing as it does with no end in sight, has scarred us all for life. No fulfillment in later, sunnier seasons will ever fully wash it away.
So, let’s talk about something else! How about some highlights from the 50-48 Great Escape From Lafayette Whirlwind Tour this weekend?
- I was almost attacked by three wild horses.
- It turns out the horses weren’t wild, and I got to pet them.
- Petting horses is awesome.
- I held a two-week-old baby and didn’t drop it on its head, thereby disfiguring it for life.
- Holding two-week-old babies is not awesome.
- An overabundance of those peppermints that sort of dissolve in your mouth as you suck them. It was, dare I say it, a veritable peppermint orgy.
- The Veronicas!
- Admitting you like The Veronicas is not awesome.
- There was a crazy game of poker!
- Admitting you like O.A.R. is at least a little more awesome.
- Maybe not. I don’t know from music.
- I’d like to make it one of 50-48’s ancillary goals to get “music” (or, perhaps, “popular music”) eternally removed from the list of fine arts. Sure, it’s kind of an art, like cooking is an art. You learn a skill and memorize the function of your instruments, then follow a fucking recipe to create an output. Everyone ends up with subtle variations one way or another, but in the end, green bean casserole is still green bean casserole. It all tastes the same. Same with music. It all ultimately sounds the same. It’s cooking with different utensils. That’s why the bulk of artists, writers, filmmakers, etc., are generally an educated, intelligent bunch. Musicians are fucking idiots and college kids. There’s a reason for that. If you can follow directions, you can be a musician. It’s a hustle. A dodge for creativity.
- I have no patience for music.
- Still, here’s one more fun song.
- I am sometimes a hypocrite.
- On that subject, the scar of disappointment talk notwithstanding, I’d still blow any member of the Razorback football team if he asked nice enough.
- I got off on a tangent there. Time to get back to my highlight reel.
- Skinamax!
- Porno is awesome.
- Tyrell Motherfucking Fenroy.
- I attended the Cajuns game against archrival NLU this weekend after suffering through the Hogs lackluster ass-raping at the hands of the Pilipino Circumciser and his comrades, and star running back Tyrell Motherfucking Fenroy rushed for 297 yards and 3 touchdowns. He would have had thirty more yards and another touchdown if the incompetent gaggle of Sunbelt Conference officials hadn’t made a bogus holding call that didn’t even affect the outcome of the play.
- He amassed those stats on 20 carries.
- That’s 15 yards per, for you non-mathematicians.
- It was McFaddenesque.
- Every time Tyrell broke another long run, I screamed and hollered and made the general ass of myself that I normally do at such contests, even though I was sitting amongst the NLU faithful.
- The young lady who attended the game with me was an NLU alum and was temporarily frightened that I was putting her life in danger.
- I was able to reassure her through the time-tested method of lying.
- She did not know the rules of football, so the lying project was very easy.
- I am sometimes a liar.
- On that subject, I’d like to go ahead and rescind my offer to blow the football team. That might have been a lie. But if Darren or Felix or Peyton or Matty-Ice are reading this: I am a phone call/plane ticket away, boys. And if it’s Matty, I’ll even bring the coke.
- Colombian eight-balls are not hard to find if you know where to look.
- Don’t do drugs.
- Unless that’s your thing. We here at 50-48 don’t give a fuck what you do in your spare time. Still, just like listening to popular music makes you stupider every time you do it, so too do drugs make you stupider every time you do them.
- I am sometimes overly moralistic.
- And I have no patience for music.
- Nor do I have patience for losing.
- If we don’t win another game soon, I’m going to kill myself.
- I will leave a suicide note here at 50-48, demanding in one way or another that all 50-48icans go back and study all the previous posts to gain a sort of scriptural perspective on the ultimate meaning of my generally pathetic life.
- In lieu of flowers, I will demand that all 50-48icans buy Matty some blow.
- You see what’s happened here? Even when trying to change the subject, the losing surges forward like an overwhelming cloud, devouring all the topics in its path. And we’re back to disappointment again.
- We here at 50-48 are incredibly disappointed.
- The German poet Freidrich von Schiller once noted, “Disappointments are to the soul what the thunder-storm is to the air”
50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS
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