Where's my piece of the pie?
So I'm sitting at work one day recent, underpaid and underappreciated as usual. But to make up for it, I'm overworked, so it balances out.
I'm sitting there minding my own business (never a good thing for a reporter to be doing by the way, since it’s my job to be in other people’s business) when I read about nationally syndicated writer Armstrong Williams getting paid $241,000 to promote President Bush’s No Child Left Behind bill and I think to myself, that was a waste of money, I’d have done it for less than a tenth of that.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if the government is going to bribe people to promote something it feels needs to be promoted (or, as they called it in Nazi Germany, propaganda), the smart money is spending $5,000 for 48 columnists to give their support to the bill. Heck, find a young columnist fresh out of college, possibly someone who has been married less than two years and whose wife is getting her Master’s degree, and dangle the prospect of making a quarter of his yearly salary by writing two or three columns about something and WHAM, you’ve gotten your message in 48 markets across the country.
In unrelated news, as of Sunday, I’m now closer to 50 than I am to zero. Turning 26 wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be, at least, not at first. Despite the fact that there are kids in middle school who weren’t even born when I started middle school, I felt ok with the prospect of turning old.
That was until I played racquetball with Official Brother Monday afternoon. I’ll admit I’m not in the best shape, but unfortunately, my mind doesn’t recognize that fact. In my mind, I’m still the guy who played soccer 4-5 times a week, often for two hours or more, and could still go play a game or two of basketball afterwards.
As it turns out, I’m but a shell of that person. After falling behind 3-0, I rallied to take a 6-3 lead. Official Brother battled back to make it 8-8 and then the wheels fell off. My lungs were burning and I was gasping for breath. What happened to the guy who once played 280 minutes of soccer in a weekend?
Unfortunately, he’s been located under five good years of nothing but watching sports and eating potato chips.
Unfortunately, my life has turned into a Bruce Springsteen song:
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days.
However, I do plan on getting into decent shape. However, as friends of mine have told me, “I am in shape. Round is a shape.”
What I’m Watching: Law & Order: SVU
What I’m Reading: Double Play (actually, I just ordered it, I’ll start reading it next week)
On Deck: Dilemmas of a poor sports fan.
I'm sitting there minding my own business (never a good thing for a reporter to be doing by the way, since it’s my job to be in other people’s business) when I read about nationally syndicated writer Armstrong Williams getting paid $241,000 to promote President Bush’s No Child Left Behind bill and I think to myself, that was a waste of money, I’d have done it for less than a tenth of that.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if the government is going to bribe people to promote something it feels needs to be promoted (or, as they called it in Nazi Germany, propaganda), the smart money is spending $5,000 for 48 columnists to give their support to the bill. Heck, find a young columnist fresh out of college, possibly someone who has been married less than two years and whose wife is getting her Master’s degree, and dangle the prospect of making a quarter of his yearly salary by writing two or three columns about something and WHAM, you’ve gotten your message in 48 markets across the country.
In unrelated news, as of Sunday, I’m now closer to 50 than I am to zero. Turning 26 wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be, at least, not at first. Despite the fact that there are kids in middle school who weren’t even born when I started middle school, I felt ok with the prospect of turning old.
That was until I played racquetball with Official Brother Monday afternoon. I’ll admit I’m not in the best shape, but unfortunately, my mind doesn’t recognize that fact. In my mind, I’m still the guy who played soccer 4-5 times a week, often for two hours or more, and could still go play a game or two of basketball afterwards.
As it turns out, I’m but a shell of that person. After falling behind 3-0, I rallied to take a 6-3 lead. Official Brother battled back to make it 8-8 and then the wheels fell off. My lungs were burning and I was gasping for breath. What happened to the guy who once played 280 minutes of soccer in a weekend?
Unfortunately, he’s been located under five good years of nothing but watching sports and eating potato chips.
Unfortunately, my life has turned into a Bruce Springsteen song:
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days.
However, I do plan on getting into decent shape. However, as friends of mine have told me, “I am in shape. Round is a shape.”
What I’m Watching: Law & Order: SVU
What I’m Reading: Double Play (actually, I just ordered it, I’ll start reading it next week)
On Deck: Dilemmas of a poor sports fan.
posted by Luke at 9:30 PM
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