The Way We Live Now: Beneath our proper stations. Respectable PR men and attorneys are now voluntarily doing so-called "other" jobs, like common hippie layabouts. The actual hippie layabouts are complaining because they lost their second jobs, to attorneys.

The Way We Live Now: Well we ain't living like astute professional money managers, that's for sure. We won the lottery but spent it all at casinos and now our personal "Financial plan" reads "Cash4Gold." Is that bad?

Wait a second! The government last year told us we needed to bail out banks and then, after we did, insisted the nation had done the right thing. But that was just a lie and did more harm than good.

We're taught to shoot for the stars, to be ambitious. Well screw that, because, as swindler Marc Dreier demonstrates, no matter how hard you try to be the best, someone will always be better.

The Way We Live Now: Jobbing differently. Gone is the stuffy old paradigm where we "get up and go to work" and "clock in at a certain time" and "act professional." In its place: all types of crazy shit.

If this recession has you down, take heart in the fact that "chief creative officers" at America's biggest ad agencies are still able to charge people almost a thousand bucks an hour.

Survey says that 70% of online publications will start charging for their oh-so splendid content.

The Way We Live Now: Mired in interdemographic battle. Urban hippies, just taking up space. Stay-at-home moms, who quit the rat race. Blue collar hardhats, fallen from grace. Let's all have a Battle Royale.

Ken Lewis was once a whiz banker who helped build Bank of America into a titan. Then he organized that Merrill Lynch deal, things went south and now he's resigning. But his woes continue.

The Way We Live Now: Anesthetizing ourselves with cute trends. Mancession? Let's talk about it! Recession sex? A trend for the ages! Cooking school food from scratch? It must have some significance! Just don't mention our hopeless, soul-sucking economic demise.

To increasingly impoverished Main Street, U.S.A., Britney Spears recently spent $3,000 on candy. Riot!

The Way We Live Now: Breaking astounding barriers of the mind and soul! Money scientists have discovered who has it worst in this recession: the poor. That's right, the poor. Surprise. It is the fault of cows—girl cows.

Hooray! Even social networking sites have caste systems. Richie rich folk who live in urban areas use Twitter and Facebook more than their poor, younger country bumpkin counterparts, who still use something called MySpace. [Computer World]

The Way We Live Now: Rootin-tootin! Hot as a tamale! The market is booming! Stocks are soaring! Investors are throwing, literally, packets of money, as projectiles! They hit companies and companies merge together! Bulls are running the streets! Dangerously!

We take our eye off the Detroit News for a few days and what happens? Former NYT movie critic and amateur cigar smuggler Elvis Mitchell is found to owe the IRS half a million bucks. Slow down, Elvis!

Weep, struggling members of the creative underclass, for your secret aspirations are drawing to a close: this may be the very last month of Conde Nast, Luxury Version. Coming soon: Conde Nast, Wailing Version.

As reported : Twitter will soon cross the $100 million fund-raising mark.

The Way We Live Now: Forced into a life of crime. The System doesn't want us to go straight. Madoff's scam barely even hurt anyone. Spectacular helicopter heists get all the attention. Meanwhile, our big beet business plan gets torpedoed!

The Way We Live Now: Typically. Everyone gets poor and next thing you know couples are splitting up, families are crowding into small apartments, rich kids are battling poor kids, and everyone's giving up their career to sell beer. Typical.

Rejoice, Internet masses! Godly website Facebook has been forced to abandon Beacon, an advertising program that also published "updates" on your page. Don't worry, though, because founder Mark Zuckerberg and company have a new revenue scheme.