The Future is dying, my friends, and that's not a euphemism.
The Future in this instance is the Central Florida Future and it's where I got my start...and seeing as how this is where I will end I doubt I will be asked to give any formal eulogies but hey, maybe some people better than me are double booked!
You see kids, the first newspaper I ever wrote for, my college paper, is being shut down by the man, and man, am I really starting to hate that guy! This August the fourth shall be the last publication of the means to my voice and that really sucks for a whole huge amount of reasons but because I'm self-centered I'll only talk about why it affects me.
This newspaper spring-boarded me to other newspapers which in turn spring-boarded me to other newspapers and they in turn spring-boarded me into jobs I was clearly not ready for but I can bullshit with the best of them and this in turn led to my existential crisis and I freaked out and landed on a unicorn stud farm. All of that is true except for the very last part.
I was a God with this paper if only for the fact that when I showed up to an event and someone would ask, "Who are you?" I got to answer, "I'm from the Future." I would then wait for them to tremble in fear and then say something along the lines of, "You know, the newspaper, that's how I got down here."
And now for some qualifiers...
Okay, first off, this was about twelve years ago, secondly I was a sports reporter, and thirdish, the landscape of UCF athletics a decade ago was VASTLY different. When I went to UCF they were national champions...in cheer-leading. That's not a joke, stop laughing, you're the ones making this awkward!
My first beats were track and women's tennis. Track...and women's tennis. I didn't exactly leap into Pulitzer territory with those two but it did teach me to be creative. Then came women's soccer and women's basketball. If you're starting to think I went to an all girls' school, sadly I did not. It just so happened that I got all the girl sports and I really didn't mind. Wink, wink, of course I didn't mind...
It's not like that though. At the time I was there the girls' teams were the ones you wanted to cover if you wanted to cover a winner. I told you I wasn't joking about the cheer-leading thing. And also, and this is entirely my personal opinion from my experience so please don't picket my house, but the female athletes I encountered were more willing to actually talk about the game/match/meet instead of themselves...like most of the male athletes I encountered.
The better story in sports has and always will be what was accomplished by all and not by one and I think women get this a Hell of a lot better than men do.
My writing career, and everything ever after, including this blog, owes a great deal to the Central Florida Future and the fact that it won't be around to see me turn 31 means that I'll just have to go a present short this year. DO YOU SEE HOW I COPE WITH PAIN?!
It was fun to reminisce with you kids about the old days one last time...I guess I'll get back to shoveling unicorn poop into a large mound unto a vastly smaller wheelbarrow that's just begging for trouble...sigh...
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Friday, July 15, 2016
Rainbows
Greetings and salutations, this is Biscuits...er...Charles, sorry, Dad has called me Biscuits enough to make it stick.
I wanted to reach out to the fans of the Studly Pastures and explain that Dad has gone into what he likes to call 'radio silence.' I don't get it either but it's not because of my smaller unicorn-sized brain but because this isn't the radio.
Normally this time of year is awesome around here and we're partying like it's nobody's business and I've never understood that human phrase because what happens at a party that people aren't supposed to know about? Anyways, it's normally our anniversary around here and we should be celebrating the start of our seventh year as a unicorn stud farm but instead Dad is being a jerk and just sulking around the place.
He hasn't been writing since some guy named Patton Merning decided to be a 'nutsack-dropping, Oreo-loving, human excuse for a forehead' somewhere else instead of the NFL. At least that's what Dad says, but I don't know that guy. And before that...well...we were really upset about some bad stuff that happened in the Motherland.
But we're better now because we understand things a little better now. You see, as unicorns, we are really good at understanding things about life and love and pretty colors and cool things like grass and rainbows. It was hard for us before because we did not understand why anybody would want to hurt anybody else. We're not very smart, mostly due to this large, spiraled growth coming out of our heads, but we try to learn as best we can and Dad helps us. He says that people hurt other people because they're 'dumb dumbs and not very nice at all.' He also taught me how to use this 'quote thingy'.
Anyways, Dad is pretty upset, and he has been for a while and we've all been trying to cheer him up. We asked him if he wanted to go see the Miami Dolphins play where we live next month and he said, "Why the Hell would I pay money to sit in the hot sun and watch 53 jerks be terrible at their job?" So then we said we would take him to a baseball game and he said, "Hello? Do you guys even listen to the news at all? The Rays are terrible again. Welcome to every year before 2008!"
Dad yells a lot...not at us...but around us. He's been carrying on a lot lately about the 'NBA has effectively made itself as irrelevant as the NHL due in large part to how the collective bargaining agreement was wool pulled over the commissioner's eyes.' He's also been really big on some guy named Dave or Tease? I'm not sure but he said that, "Dave or Tease's retiring year campaign is completely superficial because we all know he's a cheater but he hit those home runs that sparked the comeback for Boston in that ALCS that brought in huge ratings already and Big Baseball was freaking out because New York was up 3-0 and if they swept they wouldn't have been able to rake in the millions, and millions, and muellllliioooonnns they raked in because Boston came back and...gasp...gasp...I'm sorry for yelling but it makes me angry that we glorify someone simply because they say I can't play baseball next year." I think I nailed that. It's a long paragraph for someone with hooves.
He's getting better though I think. Yesterday was our holiday and he said we would go to the park but when he came home from work he just went right into his room. I hope he's okay.
I guess I liked all the stories and I was sad that they weren't coming anymore so I wanted to jump in here and see who was still around. I hope they come back.
I hope you're okay.
-Biscuits
I wanted to reach out to the fans of the Studly Pastures and explain that Dad has gone into what he likes to call 'radio silence.' I don't get it either but it's not because of my smaller unicorn-sized brain but because this isn't the radio.
Normally this time of year is awesome around here and we're partying like it's nobody's business and I've never understood that human phrase because what happens at a party that people aren't supposed to know about? Anyways, it's normally our anniversary around here and we should be celebrating the start of our seventh year as a unicorn stud farm but instead Dad is being a jerk and just sulking around the place.
He hasn't been writing since some guy named Patton Merning decided to be a 'nutsack-dropping, Oreo-loving, human excuse for a forehead' somewhere else instead of the NFL. At least that's what Dad says, but I don't know that guy. And before that...well...we were really upset about some bad stuff that happened in the Motherland.
But we're better now because we understand things a little better now. You see, as unicorns, we are really good at understanding things about life and love and pretty colors and cool things like grass and rainbows. It was hard for us before because we did not understand why anybody would want to hurt anybody else. We're not very smart, mostly due to this large, spiraled growth coming out of our heads, but we try to learn as best we can and Dad helps us. He says that people hurt other people because they're 'dumb dumbs and not very nice at all.' He also taught me how to use this 'quote thingy'.
Anyways, Dad is pretty upset, and he has been for a while and we've all been trying to cheer him up. We asked him if he wanted to go see the Miami Dolphins play where we live next month and he said, "Why the Hell would I pay money to sit in the hot sun and watch 53 jerks be terrible at their job?" So then we said we would take him to a baseball game and he said, "Hello? Do you guys even listen to the news at all? The Rays are terrible again. Welcome to every year before 2008!"
Dad yells a lot...not at us...but around us. He's been carrying on a lot lately about the 'NBA has effectively made itself as irrelevant as the NHL due in large part to how the collective bargaining agreement was wool pulled over the commissioner's eyes.' He's also been really big on some guy named Dave or Tease? I'm not sure but he said that, "Dave or Tease's retiring year campaign is completely superficial because we all know he's a cheater but he hit those home runs that sparked the comeback for Boston in that ALCS that brought in huge ratings already and Big Baseball was freaking out because New York was up 3-0 and if they swept they wouldn't have been able to rake in the millions, and millions, and muellllliioooonnns they raked in because Boston came back and...gasp...gasp...I'm sorry for yelling but it makes me angry that we glorify someone simply because they say I can't play baseball next year." I think I nailed that. It's a long paragraph for someone with hooves.
He's getting better though I think. Yesterday was our holiday and he said we would go to the park but when he came home from work he just went right into his room. I hope he's okay.
I guess I liked all the stories and I was sad that they weren't coming anymore so I wanted to jump in here and see who was still around. I hope they come back.
I hope you're okay.
-Biscuits
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)