The Way We Live Now: Not fucking around, that's for sure. Would you be fucking around, in this day and age, when neither soothing twopenny candies nor free alcohol can calm the bloody Central Park Balloon Vendor Wars?

Today is showdown day! In one corner: the Boston Globe, a storied failing newspaper. In the other corner: the NYT Co., a storied failing newspaper company. Neither one will give in until they're both dead.

The Way We Live Now: Differently. Everything is all ass-up. Teachers are getting wealthy. North Dakota is richer than California. And Frenk Gehry can't keep a fucking job.

The government just released the latest US unemployment figures: 345,000 jobs lost in May, bringing the national unemployment rate to 9.4%. Is that good, or bad? Yes.

The Way We Live Now: Funemployed. That's the new word, really! Does it sort of make you want to get gangsters to dispose of the linguist who coined "Funemployment," then flee to live on a houseboat barge? You're not alone.

The Way We Live Now: Stably. The new economic thing is here, and that thing is stability. Car sales are stabilizing! Consumer confidence is stabilizing! One caveat: don't look for stability.

The Way We Live Now: Naked. Because stores are no longer selling "Plus Sized" clothes. All that fabric is expensive! So nude Americans sit at home, causing all the baguette stores to go broke, forcing small business owners to sell their dinosaur skeletons just to stay afloat.

The pirates that hijacked the hero crew of the hero ship Maersk Alabama last month took $30,000 from the ship's safe. Now two of the pirates are dead, and the third is waiting to stand trial in NYC. So, uh, where's that cash?

The Way We Live Now: Besieged by indignity. H&H Bagels is drowning in debt! Book fairs and organic dairies are threatened! It's a veritable Yupocalypse:

Yesterday, executives from most of America's biggest newspapers held a hush-hush meeting about the future of their dying industry. Isn't that basically, obviously, a huge violation of antitrust laws, probably? No, thanks to the corporate freedom-supporting Supreme Court!

Right this minute, executives from the largest newspaper companies in America are meeting in a hotel outside of Chicago to discuss how to "Monetize Content." Is this the first step towards a (necessary) industry-wide move to charge for online content? And, uh, is this legal?

The Way We Live Now: Chewing the cud of resentment. The New York Times has assigned all of its reporters to ferret out and write up the most awkward and awful examples of opulence, as if they were news. Hey I wonder if Per Se's kitchen is nice, still?

The Way We Live Now: Hungrily. We've been reduced to eating food that we canned ourselves. What did we can? The weeds in the garden. Mmm, minimal sustenance.

The Way We Live Now: With the shame of the defeated. We're too dumb to even figure out how to make our biggest companies go bankrupt properly. But we will obstinately stand on the power of our "luxury" brands until they sink in the financial muck and drown us, triumphantly!

The Way We Live Now: Broke. Britain's broke. Malls are broke. Even comic strips are broke. Broke, broke, broke.

In your bad-itudinal Thursday media column: Seymour Hersh hates newspapers, Paste Magazine makes bank, journalists deserve to be paid a mere pittance, and MissBehave's final goodbye email to staffers, which is not a very good one:

The Way We Live Now: Fashionably. But only for the necessities. $775 shorts for the men. Online shopping sprees for the olds. The basics.

Hello friend, my name is Ade Ogunjobi. I received your contact information in good faith from our mutual friend, Mr. Bernie Madoff, and my corporation, Toks Inc, is prepared to offer the sum of $100 trillion ($100,000,000,000,000) for Mr. Madoff's business. Please respond quickly.

The Way We Live Now: Moaning, creatively. Artists are poor. More so! But credit cards are now a responsible financial option. I think we've solved all of our problems!

The Way We Live Now: Free! The rich are selling off their possessions and "going minimalist." We've stopped building any new houses. Everyone take to the land! Nude!