Local Columnist Breaks Character for Final Installment

Abandoned as an infant high in the mountains of Colorado, James was taken in and raised by a family of marmots. They trained him in the art of satire, but warned him: ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ He didn’t understand the truth of their words until his adopted rodent brother, Donald Trump’s hair, turned to the dark side.

James could only sit by and watch, helpless and appalled, as his evil brother meme’d his way to the White House. Forever changed by what he had seen, James fled to The Netherlands and vowed to always use his powers for good.

Hi,

I’m James, and for the past three years I’ve written satirical columns for the Ukrant. You may know me from hits like ‘5 Reasons Why Dutch People are so Tall. You Won’t Believe Number 4’, ‘Time Between Classes Too Short: 15 Minutes Insuficcient to Travel to Yantai’, and ‘Occupied Container Homes Accidentally Shipped to Germany’.

In truth, I have no idea whether or not those are hits, but they were sure fun to write. In fact, I had a great time writing all of my columns, and I sincerely hope that sometime during the past three years I made you chuckle at least once.

But now this is the last thing I’ll write for the UKrant, so I figured I should come clean:

My first column was an introduction that claimed I was raised by marmots, and that Donald Trump’s hair was my adopted rodent brother. I know it may surprise some people, but that was actually not entirely truthful. I did know Trump’s hair when we were kids, but he wasn’t my brother, he just lived three burrows down from me.

The cat, Professor Doerak, was never awarded a Nobel Prize, it was just a picture of one printed out and glued to some cardboard.

Dutch people aren’t tall because a witch put a curse on William of Orange, it was actually a warlock.

Finally, had I been hired as Rector Magnificus, though I would have changed the name of the position to Rectum Magician, I never intended to install a nude beach on the Zernike campus, I actually would have tried to do a good job.

Groningen is a wonderful city, full of fun contradictions. It’s urban, but also kind of in the middle of nowhere (at least by dutch standards); sometimes the city feels huge, yet you can bike across it in half an hour; and the RUG is somehow both deadly serious and extremely silly at the same time.

The city’s dual nature means it’s great for jokes, but it also means that everyone still there has something extremely special. There isn’t another city like Groningen anywhere else in the world, and now that I’m gone I suspect I’m going to end up missing it dearly.

Good luck to all of you. I hope you find happiness.

This is James Young, signing off.

Engels

Abonneer
Laat het weten als er

De spelregels voor reageren: blijf on topic, geen herhalingen, geen URLs, geen haatspraak en beledigingen. / The rules for commenting: stay on topic, don't repeat yourself, no URLs, no hate speech or insults.

guest

0 Reacties
Inline feedbacks
Bekijk alle reacties