Being unemployed is great, The Daily Show comes on at 9 and then I cry. The 2004 box office smash You Got Served has been running on HBO as of late. Featuring brothers Marques and Omarion Houston of Immature and B2K respectively, You Got Served is a great way to waste an hour and a half, and an even better way to waste 7 hours high. Congratulations you’ve made it to the second paragraph. Most have probably stopped by now thinking that this is nothing more than a sophomoric rant about how I have a degree in Advertising, no paid job, and have just spent two weeks as an unpaid media intern at the rodeo where a pig was electrocuted; but those fuckers are wrong! Jokes on you fuckers, go fuck something. Seeing as this is the philosophical issue of Buckley (this is going to run in the April issue of Buckley magazine) I’m going to pose this thought: I think everyone should be unemployed for a substantial period of time at least once in his or her life. I graduated from UT Austin in December and as of now, like right, right now- it’s 9:50am and I’m listening to Les Savy Fav and in about ten minutes my search for not just a job, but a career will commence. Impressed by my usage of the word “usage?” You should be, I’m a copywriter. Every day since late January has begun like this. Emailing contacts, checking Craigslist, and Monster.com, calling people, meeting with people, hearing these people compliment you on your work only to say there are no positions open. It is frustrating, extremely frustrating, but before you or I give up think about this: at least you’re not in a wheelchair. Seriously, being in a wheelchair would suck, hard. Not even JFK was in a wheelchair, and he was shot in the back of the head. * I mean I may be unemployed but at least I’m bi-pedal, and when I really think about it, the more I love stairs. Have you ever thought what it would feel like to look at stairs in a wheelchair? I’m 0 for 1 in analogies today, but I can only imagine it’s like looking at a test labeled: Rocket Science. Also, yard work; ever seen someone in a wheelchair doing yard work? Probably not, because as its title suggests: it’s yard work. A dropout, an ex-con, an addict, maybe a dog or two, a man who has signed a written guarantee that he will kidnap you children, take them to Tennessee, raise them as his own, then make them come back and kill you when they turn 18 will be hired for yard work, but Franklin Roosevelt? Get real, liberal Vadge. “Isn’t water skiing fun?” “Why doesn’t life suck?” Both are questions that I love answering, and if given the choice of being unemployed a couple more days, weeks, months or having to fall onto a toilet seat the rest of my life I choose the first. This is just my way of putting things into perspective. It may sound whacky, even offensive to some, maybe, but that’s how I have survived this process of tolerating a major void in my life. When I do find a career that pays, this period in my life will be an experience that I will cherish, that’s right liberal Cooter, cherish. It’s forced me to learn, forced me to swallow my pride, and forced me to appreciate the menial things in life. For those in my similar situation find your perspective and stick with it. For those in my similar situation and in a wheelchair- wow.

(* Analogy made while wasting 7 hours watching You Got Served)