Fuck you

Isn't it a little ridiculous that people still try to stigmatize office workers? Maybe sixty years ago, during the era of the "Company Man," you could tell a lot about somebody by where they worked, but the offenders weren't alive then. No, these self-aggrandizing mavericks are from the slacker generation. You know, the ones who started Apple, Google, Starbucks, and Paypal. There's a quote from Mission Hill that I can't remember, but it goes something like this: "while I was busy living my generation's dream of fighting the system and living through art, everyone else in my generation was out getting jobs."

Here's my surprise for all these 30 year olds who think they're looking down at professionals: every teenager, from every generation, dreams that they will be the first person to earn a living just doing whatever they feel like. Most of those people, however, grow up. It's very romantic that you're living in a paint-covered studio apartment with furniture that you found in the basement. You are so kafkaesque. I was in college, too. Then I grew the fuck up. I thought to myself, hey, you know what would be fun? Being able to buy an iPod. Maybe I'll go out and get a real fucking job and I'll have the money to do that. You know what else would be neat? A trip to Europe. Too bad I can't afford plane tickets when I'm still making $7 an hour.

You know why people get paid to do things? Because someone out there wants what they're offering so bad, that they'll pay to get it. You have a debit card? Surprise, asshole– you're paying someone to be your banker. (And I know full well that you pay $200 a year in overdraft fees.) You want to buy a piece of shit car with the quarters you scrounged up? Good for you. The government knows you're an idiot, though, so just to be safe they're going to require you to spend hundreds of dollars a year on car insurance. That money will be given to–guess who–someone who works at the insurance company. And if you want to live somewhere other than your parents' house (actually, even then), you're either going to be paying a property management company to buy an aparment for you, or you're going to need a realtor to sell you a house. And guess fucking what.

When you were eighteen, there were all sorts of exciting words to describe people like you: cool, exciting, unpredictable, artsy, deep, ambitious. Unfortunately, after a few years of actually going to our college classes, learning a trade, and being successful, we became a bit smarter, and we learned that those very poetic-sounding ambitions of yours were missing a vital piece: common sense. I'm not saying there isn't a market for emo punk-rock guitarists who don't spend more than ten minutes writing their songs, I'm just saying that they have plenty of NOFX albums to go around in the four dollar bin at Borders. Yeah, you're still living the life of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, except that it's all a farce, it's just bullshit posturing that would only fool you and a fifteen year old you (which, due to your complete lack of evolution, are the same thing).

But look at the bright side– while I'm working a "nine to fiver" that pays me triple your salary, with vacation time and bonuses, that allows me to go home at five o'clock and write my own songs, which are better than yours, with equipment you can't afford, and then I can get shitfaced and call in sick the next day, and they'll pay me my wages anyway, no questions asked, and despite the fact that you get all sorts of self-destructive co-dependent needy bimbos to have meaningless sex with at the cost of constant haranguing and possibly violence, litigation, and herpes thrust upon you, I can get a tight, wet nineteen year-old any time of the night because my ironed clothes scream out that I have real value... you know what, now that I think of it, there isn't a bright side.