Nautical shipping lanes have been taking some heavy hits during the recession, which may or may not end at some point. It hasn’t been easy for anyone, certainly, but purveyors of goods through this archaic means have been especially hard hit. Consolidation and perpetual mismanagement have made it all but impossible to turn a profit as a shipping agent. It’s all over Slate and the BBC if you don’t believe us.
But the unsung victims of this crisis are people like you: terrifying monsters of the deep who prey upon sailors and their goods so that they may decorate their massive underwater caves and devour the sweet flesh of man at their leisure.
You’re a ten-ton giant crab with a Bachelor’s in Drama and Political Science and you’ve been doing this for fifteen years. But tomorrow the bank is going to call to foreclose on your undersea cave lease and you’re going to be left with some awkward decisions.
Since your income has been completely stymied over the last several months you can’t manage a financial solution to the situation. And you’re not pretty enough to seduce a bank owner and let him have his way with you in exchange for allowing you to keep your home. That limits your options to a bloody rampage through your financial institution, ending only when you stand covered in blood over your opponents, shrieking wordlessly into the sky, or moving out of your beloved cave filled with ancient treasure and moving on land where you hope to get a temp job.
You’ll strongly consider the former option, but then you’ll remember that those fucking bankers hired the Kraken to help defend them against sea monsters like you, and while you are a pretty big badass you’re no match for the Kraken. And as preferable as it might seem to just end it all in a big throw down with that epic beast, you’ll decide that you like living a lot more than you like being seen as powerful, so you’ll opt to wander ashore.
Once ashore you’ll register with a Randstad office in Seattle and they’ll get you set up with an office assistant job in Bellevue. It’ll be soul crushing and horrible, but you’ll be alive. Some days, of course, you’ll think back and wonder what it would’ve been like to perish in an epic battle with one of the greatest monsters ever to live (and your idol!) but as time goes on those days will come fewer and farther between until one day they seem to stop altogether.
Congratulations on Redefining Failure!
Showing posts with label The Recession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Recession. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Congratulations on Washing Off Courtney Love!
Professional star fucking isn’t what it used to be anymore. Before the days of Heidi and Spencer Pratt being a celebrity actually meant something, and star fucking was a dignified profession. But ever since the rise of reality TV it’s become unclear just what a star fucker is anymore and what the point is nowadays. As a result professional star fuckers have fallen by the wayside.
You’ve been hit particularly hard. As a male star fucker there was a time when you would’ve made a living nailing chicks the like of Daryl Hannah, but of late most attractive and intelligent celebrity women have no trouble finding mates who match their status and aren’t intimidated by their fame. As a result you’ve been fucking your way through people like Amy Weinhouse and Paula Poundstone just to make ends meet.
Tonight you’re going to hit rock bottom.
You’re going to get a call from your agent at 8:00 PM, Pacific time, telling you to show up in a suit jacket, jeans and a t-shirt at an address in Hollywood. You’ll introduce yourself as Courtney Love’s biggest fan and smile your broadest, handsomest grin and she’ll let you in.
After twenty minutes of awkward conversation she’ll remove her underpants to “get your opinion” and you won’t have the heart to tell her that she got it wrong. You’ll hop to attention, do your duty as an American, collect a check from her manager on your way out and drive home as fast as your Honda Accord can manage so that you can try in vain to scrub off the scent of her sex.
We won’t describe it here, not for the purpose of remaining a tasteful publication about horrible shit happening to awful people, but because it will defy language. It will be as if an extra-dimensional stain has spread across worlds and is localized on your groin.
Four days later you’ll finally get rid of it with the aid of steel wool and some Ajax.
Congratulations on Washing Off Courtney Love!
You’ve been hit particularly hard. As a male star fucker there was a time when you would’ve made a living nailing chicks the like of Daryl Hannah, but of late most attractive and intelligent celebrity women have no trouble finding mates who match their status and aren’t intimidated by their fame. As a result you’ve been fucking your way through people like Amy Weinhouse and Paula Poundstone just to make ends meet.
Tonight you’re going to hit rock bottom.
You’re going to get a call from your agent at 8:00 PM, Pacific time, telling you to show up in a suit jacket, jeans and a t-shirt at an address in Hollywood. You’ll introduce yourself as Courtney Love’s biggest fan and smile your broadest, handsomest grin and she’ll let you in.
After twenty minutes of awkward conversation she’ll remove her underpants to “get your opinion” and you won’t have the heart to tell her that she got it wrong. You’ll hop to attention, do your duty as an American, collect a check from her manager on your way out and drive home as fast as your Honda Accord can manage so that you can try in vain to scrub off the scent of her sex.
We won’t describe it here, not for the purpose of remaining a tasteful publication about horrible shit happening to awful people, but because it will defy language. It will be as if an extra-dimensional stain has spread across worlds and is localized on your groin.
Four days later you’ll finally get rid of it with the aid of steel wool and some Ajax.
Congratulations on Washing Off Courtney Love!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Congratulations on Finding Dinner!
Due to some statute of limitations issues related to some totally non-violent prior offenses you live in Yellow Knife, Canada, far, far away from Federal Marshals and people in general.
For about a quarter of the year life isn’t so bad. Mosquitoes are everywhere and constant daylight all but promises madness, but sometimes you get a swim in and you get to grow a sweet beard and not take shit from anyone about it.
But for the other three quarters of the time you barely eke out a living, assailed by the elements, local wildlife and the occasional smuggler trying to bring in weapons grade nuclear materials. The elements are, naturally enough, the biggest threat of the three.
Yes, we’re quite proud of that pun.
The first few years it was rough for you. As a programmer you really didn’t have much physical prowess or any knowledge of survival skills. All you really brought along for the ride was your sweet, sweet beard.
But with time and effort you quickly became a part of the wild, and for the last year and a half or so you’ve been doing fairly well for yourself.
But it turns out that Al Gore movie wasn’t bullshit at all, and life has been getting harder and harder as food becomes more and more scarce in your area. Sure, the summer is slightly longer, but weather patterns on both ends of the seasonal spectrum are becoming increasingly harsh with leads to erratic animal behavior and unreliable food sources.
That means despite all your experience surviving in the wilds this year is going to be the hardest you’ve ever had.
Tomorrow night you’ll be out in the woods tracking caribou with your homemade bow and arrow. They’ll be a ways ahead of you and moving steadily away, but necessity will guide your steady strides. You’ll be inching closer and closer to the herd and eventually you’ll be able to all but smell them just ahead of you.
You’ll move into a clearing where they’ll be gathered, milling around a large object you won’t recognize at first. You’ll be so transfixed on the herd, the bow in your hand, your eyes on a fatted bull caribou.
All you’ll be able to see are the little slats of his ribs, covered with muscle. You’ll start breathing in pattern with him, inhale, exhale, draw, then release. You won’t realize what they were staring at until the herd has scattered around the large, kicking male as he breathes his last, blinking in agony as his heart fails him.
That’s when you’ll see what they were gathered around: a refrigerator. You’ll have no idea what it’s doing in the middle of the woods and from what you’ve gathered it wasn’t plugged in to anything.
You’ll creep up to confirm your kill and, while you’re there, you’ll open the door cautiously. After all, it’s a fridge in the middle of the woods. Who knows what could be in there. It could be full of raccoons, for god’s sake (filthy woodland bandits) and then you’d be involved in exactly the sort of hyjinx you came up here to avoid.
But when the door opens you’ll see that it’s simply filled with frozen dinner after frozen dinner. The entire thing will be stuffed full of them. There’ll be enough to feed you for a year. Or there would be, if you had a microwave.
You’ll laugh a hearty chuckle from the font of your recently acquired woodsiness as you heft the caribou carcass over your shoulder and turn from the fridge. You would’ve liked it to have something more useful, maybe some beer, but ah well.
You’ll formulate a plan to drag it back to your house and find a way to rig up some solar paneling and order a microwave from Best Buy’s website, but your plans will take a back seat to the irony of all that wasted food sitting inexplicably just below the arctic circle.
Life truly is full of mysteries, you’ll think, as you walk past the plane crash a few feet away, completely oblivious to the wreckage as you haul home your kill, excited to make jerky.
Ah well. Congratulations on finding dinner. If you do end up getting solar paneling installed we recommend that you get a coffee machine too. It might help you be a little less oblivious during these long winter months.
For about a quarter of the year life isn’t so bad. Mosquitoes are everywhere and constant daylight all but promises madness, but sometimes you get a swim in and you get to grow a sweet beard and not take shit from anyone about it.
But for the other three quarters of the time you barely eke out a living, assailed by the elements, local wildlife and the occasional smuggler trying to bring in weapons grade nuclear materials. The elements are, naturally enough, the biggest threat of the three.
Yes, we’re quite proud of that pun.
The first few years it was rough for you. As a programmer you really didn’t have much physical prowess or any knowledge of survival skills. All you really brought along for the ride was your sweet, sweet beard.
But with time and effort you quickly became a part of the wild, and for the last year and a half or so you’ve been doing fairly well for yourself.
But it turns out that Al Gore movie wasn’t bullshit at all, and life has been getting harder and harder as food becomes more and more scarce in your area. Sure, the summer is slightly longer, but weather patterns on both ends of the seasonal spectrum are becoming increasingly harsh with leads to erratic animal behavior and unreliable food sources.
That means despite all your experience surviving in the wilds this year is going to be the hardest you’ve ever had.
Tomorrow night you’ll be out in the woods tracking caribou with your homemade bow and arrow. They’ll be a ways ahead of you and moving steadily away, but necessity will guide your steady strides. You’ll be inching closer and closer to the herd and eventually you’ll be able to all but smell them just ahead of you.
You’ll move into a clearing where they’ll be gathered, milling around a large object you won’t recognize at first. You’ll be so transfixed on the herd, the bow in your hand, your eyes on a fatted bull caribou.
All you’ll be able to see are the little slats of his ribs, covered with muscle. You’ll start breathing in pattern with him, inhale, exhale, draw, then release. You won’t realize what they were staring at until the herd has scattered around the large, kicking male as he breathes his last, blinking in agony as his heart fails him.
That’s when you’ll see what they were gathered around: a refrigerator. You’ll have no idea what it’s doing in the middle of the woods and from what you’ve gathered it wasn’t plugged in to anything.
You’ll creep up to confirm your kill and, while you’re there, you’ll open the door cautiously. After all, it’s a fridge in the middle of the woods. Who knows what could be in there. It could be full of raccoons, for god’s sake (filthy woodland bandits) and then you’d be involved in exactly the sort of hyjinx you came up here to avoid.
But when the door opens you’ll see that it’s simply filled with frozen dinner after frozen dinner. The entire thing will be stuffed full of them. There’ll be enough to feed you for a year. Or there would be, if you had a microwave.
You’ll laugh a hearty chuckle from the font of your recently acquired woodsiness as you heft the caribou carcass over your shoulder and turn from the fridge. You would’ve liked it to have something more useful, maybe some beer, but ah well.
You’ll formulate a plan to drag it back to your house and find a way to rig up some solar paneling and order a microwave from Best Buy’s website, but your plans will take a back seat to the irony of all that wasted food sitting inexplicably just below the arctic circle.
Life truly is full of mysteries, you’ll think, as you walk past the plane crash a few feet away, completely oblivious to the wreckage as you haul home your kill, excited to make jerky.
Ah well. Congratulations on finding dinner. If you do end up getting solar paneling installed we recommend that you get a coffee machine too. It might help you be a little less oblivious during these long winter months.
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