May 27, 2005

Quitting the Day Job?

Quitting the Day Job?

Naturally, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” receive colossal piles of e-mail from rabid fans each and every day. Loveable scamps from as far away as Detroit constantly deluge us with delightful e-missives chalk-a-block with blandishments about the glories of our humble “website.”

Frankly, other than the uppers we take, these heartwarming e-epistles are what get us through the morning. Other than Tuesday, which is our coffee day.

A few weeks ago, however, we were on the receiving end of a rather less friendly e-mail. Some fellow, who would have remained nameless had we not decided to inform you that it’s Carl Meyer of Sarasota (FL), unpleasantly informed us that we, for lack of a better word, suck.

Unsurprisingly, dear reader, we found this e-letter quite distressing. In fact, it led to something of a crisis of conscience here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly.” In order to face the perspicacious criticism of Mr. Meyer, we were going to have to engage in a great deal of deep thinking.

Which, to be honest, is problematic, since we are pretty much shallow thinkers.

Anyway, dear reader, the Official Self-Conscious Ruminations Department here at “The Hatemonger’s Quartelry” spent the better part of the last fortnight pondering Mr. Meyer’s scabrous attack on the crack young staff.

Perhaps, the Official Ruminators opined, Mr. Meyer is really on to something. Perhaps, they further averred, the crack young staff, like Bruce Springsteen, has already experienced its “glory days.” Perhaps, they considered, the crack young staff, like Steve Winwood, would not find a way “back in the high life again.” Maybe we had peaked with our humble post about Bridget Newman’s vagina.

As you can imagine, these depressing thoughts were, in a word, depressing. And yet, they managed to get us thinking about alternative occupations. To be honest, despite our deep-pocketed financial backers, we haven’t exactly struck it rich. Could the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” be frittering away its coruscating talent composing a feckless “weblog”?

Yeah, probably. But what job would be more suited to the talent(s) of our humble band of editors, authors, et al.?

As a result of all this painful cogitation, we decided to create a list of alternative career paths for the crack young staff. Below you’ll find this list of a few potential positions, along with our typical smart-aleck comments about them.

“The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official List of Potential Occupations, Along With Typical Smart-Aleck Comments About Them:

1. Stand-up Comics : This could be the most obvious career for manifold members of the crack young staff. After all, we have all kinds of deeply original stand-up material for potential audiences. For instance, did you realize that men and women are completely different in so many ways? We have, and boy are some of those ways really funny. In addition, the traffic in Los Angeles is a real bitch. And what’s with New Yorkers? They’ve got so much attitude.

2. Plumbers: These fellows make an awful lot of money. And yet, it would be rather depressing to spend our careers as high-powered versions of Drain-O. Plus, as much as we’re the crack young staff, we don’t delight in showing off our posteriors. Well, at least during the day.

3. College Professors: In many ways, this seems like the ideal job. Just like pretty much everyone else on God’s green earth, we enjoy pretending that we have embarked on a selfless career devoted to education, when in reality we really spend about three hours in the office per week. Luckily, approximately 47 percent of the crack young staff is from a so-called underrepresented minority. That will make it much easier to land a gig at some Ivy League institution. Or perhaps U Penn. Unfortunately, however, the underrepresented minority group from which they hail is Amish. As far as we can tell, there’s no rush to fill Media Studies Departments with buggy-loads of Amish folk.

Posted at May 27, 2005 12:01 AM | TrackBack