Literary Hype Thread

"Win the game."

-John P. Beilein

Going to be like a kid before Christmas.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our Michigan dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the wolverine;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest Wolverines.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in Ann Arbor, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harbaugh, Michigan, and Saint Bo!'

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

 

It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall--soon--it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Is it tomorrow 3:30 pm EST yet?!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...

 

GO BLUE!

Oh, The Places You’ll Go! – Dr. Seuss

"Who are they, that they should beat a Michigan team?!"

- Fielding Yost

The small percentage of a chance of me being productive the rest of the day just disappeared.

There is shadow under this blue rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this blue rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

As I came home through the woods with my basket of gooseeggs, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a spartan stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that conference victory which he represented.  Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of Big Ten opponent which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in football still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the teams ranked in the highest echelons of the Associated Press college football polls do. 

from "julius caesar,"

CRY HARBAUGH AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!

"Pride comes before the fall" - Mark Dantionio

"Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old."

The Odyssey, Book 22.  Fitzgerald transalation:

"You yellow dogs, you thought I'd never make it

home from the land of Troy.  You took my house to plunder,

twisted my maids to serve your beds.  You dared

bid for my wife while I was till alive.

Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven,

contempt for what men say of you hereafter.

Your last hour has come.  You die in blood."

The shortest answer is doing the thing

-Hemingway

"...there is an idea of Mork D'Antoni, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there."

“I'm a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I'm no cheek turner. I got no respect for a man who won't hit back. You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.” 

I can't focus enough for reading right now, too amp'd. Need moar pics, memes, and gifs!

/long live the Oxford comma