The continuing saga of one girl’s plight with unemployment…(read vol I,  vol II, vol III, vol IV, vol V,  vol VI, vol VII, vol. VIIIvol IX, vol X,  vol XI, vol XII,  vol XIII and vol XIV)

I’m a prime target for pyramid schemes, Scientology, and cults in general right about now. Writing is nifty and babysitting helps but the need for some serious income is a-knocking at my door. I can’t keep Sallie Mae at bay much longer and I‘m super glad one of my BFFs is a doctor just in case my insuranceless ass needs a stitch or a Z Pack or a broken nose snapped back into place, but I‘m starting to daydream about joining the Peace Corps (since that pays so well) or joining the porn industry. As a writer or editor or something. Not as an “actress”. Gimme a few months though. If you read about the first born-again, Jewish, Scientologist porn star who has cleaned up her act and is now part of Donald Trump’s payroll — that may be me! Here’s hoping…

Hit the Jump to continue Bureaucracy for Breakfast vol. XV: Bullets vs Daydreams…

“I imagined a slew of well dressed reality TV producers twirling their mustaches, thinking of the poor souls like me watching their evil creation…”

At the start of 2011 it seemed like the economy was off to the races. Ah, the media. Not so fast Rachel Maddow. I’m sure her cushy perch in the warm, fancily lit MSNBC studio is the equivalent of rose tinted glasses and lotsa hits of vegan acid, but I watched all the newscasters chirpily telling us that things were suddenly, miraculously turning around with a sober eyebrow raised. My eyebrow. I mean, as if the excitement of Snooki dropping in Times Square on a made up calendar date can usher in a new era of prosperity? I’m usually anti-Debbie Downer but… nothing’s changed. So I’ve been daydreaming about new rackets to get into, like porn or Human Resources or ITT Tech, whatever that is. My dad’s advice of checking out the medical field and/or Human Resources suddenly sounds kinda sage. Sager than the dream of galloping into the sunset with a Pulitzer and Oprah’s approval in my knapsack. Like I said, I am Scientology’s wet dream.

Racket is my most used word right now. “What kind of racket can I get into?” occupies my thoughts as I drift from Craigslist to the coffee shop to a dark corner of my apartment and back again. A “racket” is something silly but lucrative, shady but semi-legit. It’s what smart people do. People who don’t fall into the trap of graduate school and who instead realize that running “errands” for a Don might just be a smarter route to take than paying tuition and buying notebooks and writing stuff in those notebooks for professors to mark all over before they go meet their friends for a few chardonnays to try and forget the fact that they’re red penning some daydreamy student’s essay. It’s like bullets versus daydreams. One’s real. One’s kinda not. I did think to myself the other day, “Well, at least I didn’t get a degree in Poetry.” That made me feel better for a brief and shining moment. Personally I think there’s better poetry on Twitter these days than there is in The New Yorker or in some pretentious literary journal that’s published out of some earnest activist’s office in the Rocky Mountains. Well, maybe not better, but I would rather read an inspired 140-character Twitter rant than a woe-is-me humorless ode to someone’s lost childhood or ill-formed daddy bond. As evidence I present to you:

Exhibit A: “Charlie Sheen’s behavior would suggest he has dinner reservations with Anna Nicole Smith tonight.”

Exhibit B: “The politically correct, perfect snow of Vermont

undulant under the lightly bruised, moonlit-backed-

becoming-storm-clouds slowing then speeding just above

the line of blue spruce on Mt. Mansfield here in

what I’m told is the state’s “cloudiest county”” … (it goes on)

Now, Exhibit A shockingly wasn’t published in The New Yorker and Exhibit B as a matter of fact was. Granted Exhibit B conjures up purdy images in my head but dude it’s 2011 and we have iPhones and gourmet food trucks. “Undulant”?? Seriously? Call me crazy but I prefer Exhibit A, which was a Tweet by a dude named Rob Delaney. I don’t know him, but occasionally he makes me laugh out loud. That New Yorker poet conjures up not only some decent images of Vermont nature, but also some unwelcome higher education flashbacks for yours truly. In days of old I wanted deep, meaningful yearning stuff (I lived in a neighborhood surrounded by McDonalds and Burger Kings and Circle Ks). These days? I just wanna laugh.

Snooki in all her full glory, descending on the New Year’s Eve ball drop like a faux-leopard skin wrapped beacon of elegance… gotta love the classy red cup…

Since getting laid off last spring I developed a fascination with reality TV. Not that I started watching it, but it was more like an anthropological obsession from afar. That obsession remains. The other night though I watched an entire episode of Jersey Shore and a partial episode of The Bachelor without puking or changing the channel. And I liked it. The Bachelor guy (an obvious sociopath and regrettably a Texan) told four separate, gullible women he was falling in love with them all equally and with every fiber of his being. Which isn’t saying much really. I felt a little twitchy and heart-racy, like an aughts-era Keith Richards watching people shoot up. I imagined a slew of well dressed reality TV producers twirling their mustaches, thinking of the poor souls like me watching their evil creation, getting sucked into their deviltry. I knew I needed to see the next week’s episode and embraced my fate.

I bring all this up because watching those shows got me thinking about my own obsession with reality TV. If you think about it it’s a virtual rags-to-riches democracy these days and it makes sense this is all happening when the economy sucks. Snooki and Jwoww and Chantal from The Bachelor can go from dumbass nobody to dumbass famous millionaire while the rest of us sweat about the cable bill we’re paying so we can watch these dumbass millionaires gulp free sugary drinks in some rented jacuzzi. Granted I ran away from the Jerry Springer game show that I (almost) auditioned for in May, but right after that fiasco I went online and actually applied to be one of the dumbasses on The Bachelor gulping free sugary drinks in some rented jacuzzi. They never contacted me, which totally irked my ego. I forgot about my application until… miraculously last week I got a call from a chirpy chick who worked for… The Bachelor. She asked me to audition. Given my Scientology-prone state of mind, I readily agreed. I’m not sure if I can go through with it, but it’s worth dipping my toe in the Jacuzzi water. Us unemployed writers gotta keep Scientology at bay somehow…

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