50-48 #49: THANATOSIS

50-48 #49: THANATOSIS

It strikes me now as I sit down to write this installment that I barely remember the rules on how to write an update following a Razorback victory. But I’ll try to remember.

OFTEN IT IS NECESSARY TO BEGIN WITH A QUOTE, DESIGNED AS IT IS TO GROUND THE REST OF THE INSTALLMENT, PROVIDE A THESIS, AND DEVELOP A THEME THAT CAN BE RECALLED THROUGHOUT THE TEXT, FOR EITHER A POIGNANT OR HUMOROUS EFFECT:

Noted self-hating Arkansan Douglas MacArthur once argued, “There is no substitute for victory.” I’m not sure when he said it. I wonder if it was before or after he was having his ass handed to him by the teeny-weeny Chinese, scampering as he was to get back below the 38th parallel before a North Korean mercenary sent a fiery hot bayonet into his brain. Either way, I don’t think this is the right quote for us. After all, there are plenty of substitutes for victory: drug addiction, for instance. Or maybe some other form of chemical dependency. How about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? That one’s always worked for me. Or suicide? Joining a traveling circus? Chronic masturbation? And then, of course, there is the most puritan of all the answers available to us, and the one, unfortunately, that we’re probably most familiar with: losing.

Defeat is a substitute for victory.

You see? Douglas MacArthur was full of piping hot shit.

So that one won’t work. How about this one from noted periodical magnate Malcolm Forbes: “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” That’s a little more like it. I have known defeat. And all of us have in this season of troubles and doubt. But such is the lens through which we experience our victory over Auburn’s Tigers this weekend. And it is all the more glorious in its effect.

MAKE SOME BRIEF COMMENTS ON THE GAME ITSELF, HIGHLIGHTING THE PLAYS AND PLAYERS WITH WHOM YOU ARE MOST ENAMORED. DEMONSTRATING YOUR GIDDY PRIDE WILL ENDOW THE READER WITH A SENSE OF CAMARADERIE, A FUNDAMENTAL UNDERSTANDING THAT IT IS OKAY, EVEN ENCOURAGED, TO REACT IN A SIMILAR MANNER:

Matt Harris’s interception with twenty-seven fleeting seconds left in the contest gave me a spiritual erection. Or, perhaps, it was the cosmic cock ring that sustained the spiritual erection I first felt one lonely minute earlier, when Kodi Burns’s fourth-down pass sailed over the head of his receiver and ended Auburn’s potential go-ahead drive.

But none of that (what Emerson might have called my connection to the Divine Mind) could have happened without the foreplay of Michael Smith’s 35 carries and 176 yards. There are, of course, obvious flaws with Auburn’s offense, and our defensive stops were more a creature of the Tigers stopping themselves, but no one would deny that Auburn’s defense is stout. Or they wouldn’t have. Until, that is, little five-foot-seven Michael Smith took the ball 35 times and compensated for all of Casey Dick’s ugly, ugly errors. He had, as Emerson might have noted, “ma[de] [him]self necessary to somebody.”

As a sidenote, Emerson also said, “What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.” Auburn did not find this to be true.

Then again, no one at Auburn knows who Emerson is anyway.

INCLUDE A SEEMINGLY OFF-TOPIC, PERHAPS BIZARRE STORY TO KEEP THE INSTALLMENT FROM FOCUSING SOLELY ON SPORTS OR YOUR OWN ANGER AT WHOMEVER YOU MIGHT BE ANGRY AT THIS TIME AROUND. DO YOUR BEST TO MAKE THE STORY AT LEAST TANGENTIALLY RELATED TO THE BROADER TOPIC (OP CIT ABOVE), FOR THE SAKE OF CONTINUITY, BUT DON’T WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT IT IF YOU JUST GO OFF ON A RAMBLING, INCOHERENT DIATRIBE. ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT YOU REALLY LIKE RAMBLING, INCOHERENT DIATRIBES:

I have, regrettably, taken to smoking again this past month or so, a habit that I figured I had put away long, long ago. I hope to put it away again soon. But what damage it does to my consistently metastasizing heart condition is quelled in compensation by the presence outside my apartment of a cute little opossum. I go out and smoke those delicious, damaging Winstons after dark and see Scampers—I call him Scampers; it was the cutest name I could think of. Scampers is very nervous about my presence outside the apartment. His reticence has led me to believe that he is, in fact, a secret agent sent to destroy me. Or if not, he might very well be the product of witchcraft: a well-meaning but overly-curious young boy who wandered into the woods and ran across a kindly old woman with a hideous skin condition. “You’re green,” Scampers might have said. “Yes, I’m green,” she’d say, the venom that comes from hiding from society soaking the syllables of her voice and diction. “Why are you green?” “Sometimes little boys ask too many questions.” “My mom says that there’s no such thing as a dumb question.” “Your mother is a whore.” “What’s a whore?”

Oh, Scampers. You little devil.

So then, of course, the witch took him into her cottage, waterboarded him, then turned him into an opossum. So now he roams the night, hiding in the dark corners and wondering if I, too, might be a witch, waiting for my moment to call his mother a whore. Sometimes, when it seems that we’re alone, I’ll move as close as I can and whisper, “Your mother isn’t a whore, little Scampers.” But then one of my neighbors will walk by and punch me in the neck and tell me I’m a lunatic. Scampers just scampers away.

But Scampers never punches me in the neck. And he doesn’t think I’m a lunatic. He climbs up into the tree on the side of my building, then hangs upside down by his tail.

GOOD LORD. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? NOW PROVIDE A BRIEF REMINDER TO YOUR AUDIENCE THAT YOU HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN YOUR INITIAL PURPOSE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. YOU OWE THEM, IN ONE RESPECT OR ANOTHER, A PAYOFF ON THE INITIAL THESIS PRESENTED IN PART ONE. THEY HAVE, AFTER ALL, READ DOWN THIS FAR. DEMONSTRATE YOUR GRATITUDE BY NOT FUCKING THE REST OF THIS UP:

Much like the teeny-weeny Chinese, waiting as they were on pins and needles to teach a certain self-hating Arkansas shithead his manners, and much like Scampers, felled as he was by circumstances beyond his control, the Razorback football team has been (if we’re lucky) playing opossum lo these many weeks. But our patience now seems to be paying off. As each Hog sluffs off his thanatosis in his own way and time (still waiting on you, Casey!), each Hog fan gets closer and closer to the kind of cathartic release that only comes from boiling his tormentor in her own fucking cauldron.

We have suffered through tonic immobility. We have feared our tormentors and even our would-be friends. But now our fate is starting to turn.

Winston Churchill, who coincidentally was also tortured by psychotic old woman, once said this: “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”

Do you hear that Hogs? Scampers? Inner child?

FINALLY, CALL BACK A SEGMENT FROM THE OPENING SECTION OF THE ESSAY, BRINGING A CLOSE TO THE CIRCULAR PROSE AND GROUNDING THE ORIGINAL ARGUMENT WITH THE EXCLAMATION OF REPETITION, TRICKING YOUR AUDIENCE INTO THINKING THERE WAS A PLAN TO THIS WHOLE THING IN THE FIRST PLACE—THAT IT WASN’T IN FACT JUST SOME SLIPSHOD COPING-THROUGH-TYPING MECHANISM THAT ALLOWS YOU TO KILL THE MORE DIFFICULT PARTS OF THE DAY. THEN YOU CAN EAT THE REST OF YOUR CHICKEN NUGGETS:

It strikes me now as I sit down to finish this installment that the Hogs barely remember the rules on how to maintain a winning streak following a Razorback victory. But rest assured: they’ll try to remember.

50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS