HOLY FUCKING SHIT: This is the second time poverty has seemed appealing. The first occurred in some high-school daydream about the unjust sentence of having to work for a living; this latest happened while perusing job listings on Craigslist, pondering the excruciatingly unjust sentence of having to work for a living.

Pardon me — I’m in the throes of some serious pre-graduation, WTF-am-I-gonna-do-for-rent paranoia, and sometimes it really takes over. Like Tourette’s with the dehumanizingly euphemistic jargon of employment ads (TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN YOUR CAREER! EXCELLENT COMMUNICATION SKILLS A MUST …) bleeding from some fear puncture in my mental landscape, causing me to twitch and writhe as little pops (GOOD SALARY!) and bangs (THREE YEARS EXPERIENCE REQUIRED) explode out of that thing, and I shake my way all fearful and tortured through the last weeks that I should be enjoying. So sorry — FUCK MONEY AND BUYING THINGS AND RESPONSIBILITY! $30K/YEAR! — if I sometimes go a little bit crazy.

Like that thing about poverty, I didn’t really mean that. I want a job. I want to work and buy things and pay taxes like everyone else. What I meant was that it’s just so freaking hard to face up to it — The Hunt — over and over again. Yet the failure to hook up a job for after graduation makes the search increasingly dire with each passing week.

Desperate men take desperate actions; my computer loads to the San Diego Craigslist writing jobs page, which I nonetheless check every 15 minutes. Having interviewed and coming close but failing to land a couple ideal reporting jobs — YOU STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLES — I’d actually look forward to, I now compulsively surf the mindless shitbanger listings for the jobs I’ve most feared having to deal with since I was old enough to feel the sting of a wasted day.

I CANNOT STAND THE IDEA OF GETTING ONE OF THOSE. It’s only for a year, OK, but still: I’m skilled. I’m smart. I’m educated. I’M EVEN RESPONSIBLE, usually. So can I please get a semicool job already?

Perhaps the whole thing is different for you (science majors). You’ve all probably snagged $90k gigs at high-tech companies and are currently selecting option packages on your new G35s.

But even you had to interview — and don’t tell me you didn’t groan just a bit at the first thought of it, synching your neck up tight with a tie, printing a crisp copy of the old familiar resume to complete the necessary props for your monkey show: PICK ME! PICK ME! MY LABOR IS THE BEST CHOICE FOR EXPLOITATION BY YOUR DOLLAR!

And then when you were actually in there, sitting across the desk from the firing squad, catching bullets: Didn’t it feel like any comment (“NICE TIE”) or aside (“MY DAUGHTER …”) from your interrogator could shatter the fragile mask of professional cool you had so carefully strung together?

It’s the formalities that truly kill me. The imposing, almost threatening language of want ads (MUST DEMONSTRATE EXTREME ATTENTION TO DETAIL IN PREVIOUS WRITTEN WORKS) do, to some extent, serve their purpose of scaring off toads like myself from applying for managing editor positions at Los Angeles magazines, which they might see as beneficial (IDIOTS). But when both sides of the table are capable and complementary (read: WHEN I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THE JOB), the elaborate question setups (“What would you do if …? And if? And if not?) and repetitive questions contort what should be a relatively straightforward process into a circus of euphemisms and stiff-handshake contests so transparently theatric that it’s all the more embarrassing to fail.

Of course, the process of looking for a job is practically a lifestyle — or perhaps a disease — with its own horizons of mental paranoia and nervous habits. Symptoms include frantic Craigslisting (see above); projecting yourself into every job you run into (“I could make a better Whopper”); feeling your heart pound every time you look at the date; and the vague feeling that a life-changing e-mail could arrive at any moment in your inbox, necessitating its investigation even more frequently than you check Craigslist.

So if you think I’m crazy (you’re right) or a whiner (also correct), it’s really just that after five weeks of this virus, I NEED A FUCKING BREAK. That’s why I’m thinking POVERTY! HOMELESSNESS! STEALING! HOBOS! FREIGHT TRAINS! STEALING! BEING COLD! GETTING STEPPED ON! GOING REALLY CRAZY! SLEEPING IN CARDBOARD …

Wait.

Is it really better to sleep on the street than sacrifice a smidgen of sincerity for the few moments it takes to interview for a job? Is there more integrity in being exploited as a secretary or a bum fighter? And what am I going to do with all my CDs?

But no time for thinking now. There’s a new ad on Craigslist — “CREATIVE WRITER — ADULT PORN SITE” — that’s screaming for attention. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. CASUAL WORK ENVIRONMENT. GOOD SALARY, GREAT BENEFITS.

And so I must now quit whining to pull out my tired resume for yet another revision to the top line: OBJECTIVE: A “FUCKING” COOL JOB.