The Way We Live Now: Counterintuitively. The recession is discombobulating your normal expectations. Prices for worthless schools go up. Lawyers turn to pimps. Everybody wants to be abused. Dildos are not what they seem!

After the New York Times announced that it's cutting 100 more newsroom jobs, guess what happened, virally? Many commenters begged to be allowed to pay for the paper's online content! Is this the NYT's salvation? Ha, no.

The Way We Live Now: There's a high probability that it's not "in poverty!" Five-sixths of us are not officially languishing in the fetid cesspool of government-defined economic despair. There's always that one out of six, yes. That happens occasionally.

The Way We Live Now: In a new way. Which is not to imply it's a worse way. It's just new, and different. Corporate America hasn't been doing so well. They need...a "new deal," if you will.

The Way We Live Now: Beneath the weight of a solid gold world. We're so wealthy that we are literally throwing money away. At least, those of us who aren't living in our cars. The point is, kill Christmas!

The rapidly evolving conventional wisdom about the hazy future of New York magazine continues to evolve rapidly! Perhaps Bruce Wasserstein's family would be less likely to sell off the mag if they had, say, an extra $188 million?

The Way We Live Now: Lightheaded, from exhaustion. We can only survive on boiled shoe leather so long before our faculties grow weak. We got no home. We suck at crime. We've been reduced to recycling our own trend stories.

The New York Times Co. has found it in its corporate heart to keep the Boston Globe. Why? Because the company's union-busting cutbacks totally worked.

The Way We Live Now: Tip-top! "Wall Street on Track to Award Record Pay." Meanwhile, we're cutting the pay of non-Wall Streeters in half, and lowering the minimum wage. The rational market at work!

War and profit have long been pals. Governments and corporations make scads of dough on invasions, attacks, contracts and such. So why shouldn't some of that profit help recruit a record amount of new, financially strapped soldiers, right?

The Way We Live Now: Doggedly. Are hot dogs the solution to our nation's unemployed ex-con crisis? No, not at all. But it's a thought. Similarly, happy ads won't restore our rotten financial institutions. But they'll make you $$$mile!!!

Executives at Goldman-Sachs aren't known for their largess. But now, after the company and its powerful ties to DC have been dragged through the mud, officials may throw coin charity way. Sound good? Yes and no and maybe.

Disney, realizing that its shopping mall outposts are under performing, will soon join forces with Apple to make every visit an "experience." So they're calling on Steve Jobs.

The Way We Live Now: Basking in economic glory. Nobel Prize for economics? Check. Wall Street's highest point of the year? Check. The rest of our nation's crumbling economic infrastructure, from Wichita to Vegas? Check minus. That's still one check!

Amanda Ernst, the new editor of Mediabistro's Fishbowl NY, was on the Today Show this morning! Topic: How to deal with her crushing poverty as she tries to survive on a paltry Mediabistro wage.

Can someone please explain why Vince Vaughn's so popular? Seriously. Despite horrid reviews, his movie, Couples Retreat, which starred other, non-advertised celebrities like Jason Bateman, made $35 million this weekend. The recession sure isn't deep enough, huh? [Reuters]

The Way We Live Now: Just stringing things together until we can get the hell out of here. Out of this terrible recession, we mean. Take it from us—don't drop out of school or be unemployed or in prison.

Most of the serious bidders for Businessweek have dropped away, leaving Bloomberg as the leading candidate. We know BW's not exactly a fountain of profit these days. But would Bloomberg really gut the magazine's entire staff?

Oh oh oh, merry Christmas, it's a semi-credulous story in the New York Times about Harvard students and deprivation. Our nation's greatest treasures (Harvard students) are quite literally going to die, from poverty!

The Way We Live Now: Drunk, hungry, and resentful. Governments want liquor companies—but why not Jewish delis? Baseball teams pay lots of money to good baseball players, sure—why not to me? Is that fair? And where's my sandwich?