Yeah, I know. Times are tough. The economy is tanking. The devaluing of the American dollar is forcing employers to lay off their workforce. Other companies are reducing hours or encouraging employees to do something stupid so they can fire them or intimidate them into voluntarily quitting so they don’t have to be liable for unemployment benefits. Either way, shit sucks right now. And if you’re reading this, your life probably sucks too.

Using my Toys-R-Us Magic 8 Ball/Criss Angel psychic-guru powers, and mastery of something most women don’t understand called “logic”, I have pinpointed careers that are lay-off proof. Even in times of economic strife these careers will always be in demand. Granted, if I was a smarter person I would have pursued these careers and followed my own advice, but alas, I’m a raging dumbass. So take my advice because it’s obvious I don’t and look at me. I’m a writer. Not even a good one. You know how much I get paid? Here’s a hint: it’s between $-1 and $1.

Divorce Attorney

I’m not good with numbers and I hate statistics but I’ll say roughly 65% of people who are going to get married this year will ultimately get a divorce. If I adjust that percentage with my misogynistic view towards women, then roughly 98% of women will do something stupid warranting a divorce. Actually, that number is a little low, 99.9%. There we go. Now, since dumbasses who have dated for a couple months automatically think their little princess/sweetheart/lover/transsexual hooker is the one for them for eternity and forever more, they decide to get married. Way to go, idiot. Now the only person that can make your lawfully wedded union cease is a divorce attorney. Or God. And I’m sorry, but God hasn’t been around these parts for a long, long time.

This is how a divorce attorney will see your failed marriage

If I was a divorce attorney, every time I saw one of those stupid “Just Married” stickers on the back of some idiot’s Geo Metro I’d hear the sound of a cash register. $$ Cha-ching, cha-ching $$, money in my pocket.

Most of the idiots who get married are between the ages of 18-25 (which includes 3 out of 3 of my ex-girlfriends), that means they don’t understand basic logic. Half is yours, half is mine. But everybody wants to win and nobody will settle for half. Enter divorce attorney. He collects 20% of your money and then he drives his Ferrari Modena and parks it on his 145ft yacht and docks it on his island. Recession, what recession? He’s a divorce attorney. You morons pay him to solve your stupidity and he gets rich.

Drug Cartel Member / Drug Dealer

Forbes Magazine recently listed top billionaires in the world with the specific intent to make us common folks jealous with envy. Forbes caused quite a stir when they added reputed drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera to their list of billionaires. For those of you who don’t dabble in the transaction and selling of metric tons of tasty drugs, he is probably the world’s foremost uncaptured and wealthy drug lord. And the sad part? He is very good at it. So good that even with a tally of 7 million dollars on his head (2 mil in Mexico and 5 mil in our crappy economy), no one knows where he is. He isn’t the only billionaire drug cartel leader, either. He just has a better publicist than the others.

I bought this dope Bomber jacket at Ross - Dress For Less!

Now follow my logic with this. The American economy is FUBAR. Marriages are failing because once wealthy socialites now have to do something unimaginable, like say, get a job. Jobs are being lost very quickly in lieu of our recession/depression. Normal middle class families are now struggling to maintain above the poverty line. All of this is compounding with no adaquate relief in sight. So what the fuck do you do in times of emotional desperation? Do you pick yourself out of it and get three fast food jobs to make ends meat? No, you do drugs, lots of them. The neat thing about drugs is there is a 100% chance you’ll probably get addicted if you pick the good ones.

And where does your welfare check, unemployment check, food stamps, and whatever money you can steal from the neighbors go to afford your new-found drug addiction? That’s right ladies and gentlemen, your local drug dealer. And where does he send it? Back to the Mexican cartels. It’s not a bad time to be a renegade bandito, si?

Every time you see a bill with a red PAST DUE stamped on it, snort another line. If that doesn’t work find a suitable vein. And if you’re really ballsy, play Oxycontin Roulette. If you survive, tell me who wins. Oh wait, you can’t. You’ll be in a drug-induced coma. No financial worries if you’re unconscious, right? So if you want a job that will survive the turmoil of a global recession, then sell some drugs, hustler. Someone will need what you’re selling. Trust me on that. Anybody want to buy some Loritabs? Worst case, if you fail at slangin’ drugs you can always become a ghetto rapper.

Liquor Store Owner

Now cooking up meth in the back of your neighbor’s stolen RV in the middle of the desert probably isn’t your idea of a career path. When you were in high school you didn’t tell your career counselor, “when I grow up, I want to be on the TV show COPS and run around with my shirt off and get busted for cooking meth and stealing my neighbor’s lawn gnomes and stashing them in his RV”. Or maybe you did. Point being is, some people aren’t cut out to be drug dealers. However, those people might be better suited to own a small business. Now here is where Nick’s wisdom kicks in: sell booze. Sell a lot of it.

Most people are morally righteous puritans with a varying degree of right and wrong. They may see sniffing 132 ounces of pure Bolivian cocaine as “wrong”, but going to the liquor store and buying a bottle of Papov Vodka and chasing it with their Percocet as “right”. People don’t walk into a liquor store with the intention of holding a taste testing contest. Fuck no, they go there to get fucked up. And in San Diego, California (where I sell drugs, err “live”) there are what I call “intoxication factories” on every street corner. In fact, I can count six liquor stores (not counting grocery stores that sell alcohol, too) within two blocks. And I can assure you none of them are going out of business any time soon. In fact, Price Liquor just got a brand new sign. I wonder how they could afford that in such desperate times. Oh wait, because people want to get fucked up and forget they put their 401K in a guy name Bernie Madoff’s investment firm.

I drink more than an Irish rugby player so I understand the allure of booze. I drink to forget I fucked my ex-girlfriend. So far it’s working. I don’t even remember having an ex-girlfriend. In fact, I don’t even know where I am right now. Curse you, Steel Reserve and your 8.1% per vol/alcohol that tastes like marinated horse jizz.

Nutritionist / Fat Person Consultant

Somehow, some way, even in times of uncertainty people are still fat. I don’t know how that is. I go out to my local Safeway or Kroger and I can barely maneuver my shopping cart around ‘Ten Tummy Tammy’ who is drooling and fixated on the triple chocolate fudge cookies. I can’t even afford the $3.29 for the cookies WITH my club card. I have to budget my food stamp money on Ramen noodles, pure uncut Bolivian cocaine, and cheap malt liquor.

What ginormous fat people don’t realize is they’ll never be healthy no matter how much exercise and Tai Bo they do. They are going to either get fatter or die. Since eating is more important than breathing they’ll do whatever they can to prolong their fat existence. In order to do so, they need to pretend they can lose some weight by eating fat free/diet products. Enter Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Healthy Choice, and the truckload of other companies piggybacking off the broad shoulders of human sloths. Why not get into this business? People gotta eat, right? Since over half our country (I just made that figure up but I’m probably right) is overweight, then that means job security.

Hell, create a product with measurable commercial potential. Like water. I could slap a diet sticker on it and my super babe and I will be raking in the cash. We’ll have so much ‘fat people money’ we could buy a liquor store.

Then maybe buy some drugs. Sell those and then we can become a government and encourage idiot couples to marry each other and then we’ll make you feel guilty if you don’t put a $10,000 ring on some whores fingers from Zales and if she doesn’t have the nicest Louis Vuitton handbag then all her pretentious friends will make fun of her and you don’t want your pretty, cock-sucking little bride to be unhappy, do you Mr. Consumer Man? Economy = back on track!

When you become rich and famous because you read this, send me my royalty payments in Steel Reserve malt liquor. It smells like fermented gopher piss and it could probably power a generator, but I know the IRS won’t confiscate it.