“If you’re going through hell, keep going”
– Winston Churchill
Lately, I’ve felt like sticking my head into a big pot of boiling water until the wealth of the gay-90s magically returns. Like many recent college grads my degree has failed to manifest itself into a well-paying (or anything-paying) job. In fact, all my poli-sci education has basically enabled me to do is tell you the entire history and inner workings of the European Union (it exists), quote Tocqueville and participate in juicy pillow talk about Ben Franklin. Shockingly, these are skills that employers don’t seem to be looking for. And have you had to fill out one of these stupid fucking online applications?! Here’s my Career Objective you idiot: to find a job that pays the bills and doesn’t make me want to kill myself or spend all my money on anti-depressants.
I’ve now spent hours scrolling through countless jobs that I’m either overly (like 1% of the jobs i.e. please don’t make me go back to working at TCBY like I did in high school!) or not-at-all qualified for (the other 99%), which has made me realize that even though I have a Master’s degree from a University that Albert Einstein taught at, I’m not qualified to do shit and I can’t afford to be an intern until I’ve acquired ‘shit’.
Fuck the recession. I know it will pass, it’s just that I can’t FEEL that it will pass. Ever. But I keep reminding myself that this is NOT the first recession in my lifetime and dammit, it probably won’t be the last. The media and all of the politicians (even the idiot dickhead democrats) are acting like this is the first time America has ever suffered economically, even though there have definitely been worse times in everyone’s life who is old enough to vote.
So, the next time you are out of alcohol and feeling masochistic, remember this my friend:
– When the “great” Ronald Reagan was President (okay, in some ways he really was great – just not in the ways pzeople give him credit for) the unemployment rate from 1982 – 1984 was higher than it is now, reaching 11% by conservative estimates (as high as 14% by others). And. We. Survived. AND. We venerate this voodoo-economics, deficit bombshell-spending (see next fact) President.
– President Reagan’s deficit spending makes Obama look thrifty. Not only did Reagan spend a shitload of money that America didn’t have, but he spent it on nuclear weapons, which were never even used and rationally could never ALL be used, just to intimidate an enemy that was personified as Boris and Natasha in Rocky and Bullwinkle. I’m sure that if I hadn’t been a fetus and rug-rat during these years I would have started the Tea Bagging Movement myself (okay not really, I just wanted to say Tea BAGGiNG.. he he). *Also, according to our Siberian now “comrades”, Reagan’s plan actually worked! I think I will lie down and die of shock if this somehow mystically happens with the terrorists. Seriously, can you imagine Al Queada being like, “Hey, you know those endless wars you fought all over the place– you really kicked our ass and made us end our terror-ways.”
– Fuck the deficit and taxes too. I’ve heard people say that they lie awake at night in anxiety and fear wondering how we’ll ever pay off the national debt. To those people I say drink a glass of wine before bed, get a life and take some nighttime Tylenol. It’s incredibly normal for our nation to be in debt. This country is like a perpetual teenager that just got its first credit card. Having a balanced budget like we did in the Clinton years is actually abnormal. “But it’s like the biggest debt like OMG EVER!!!!” Yeah, the debt is fucking enormous, but thankfully there are ways other than taxes to pay it off. Our nation is good at raising money – both legally and illegally. This debt will not be passed on to our children. I guarantee that they will have some other shithead’s overdrawn budget to payoff, not ours.
Okay, I feel like I’m starting to get preachy, so I better shut the hell up before some angry conservative comes over, tries to tea bag me and gets flustered when they can’t find balls (me is girl) and thus starts shooting their gun and crying about that slave rapist founding father guy and watering trees or something.
-Sammy Ostrich