Stuff Giant Cockroaches Like
You may remember Stuff White People Like, the uberpopular blog that gently (and sometimes not so gently) satirized a certain kind of white person -- you know, the kind of person who shops religiously at Whole Foods, who pretends to like Classical music, who has a whole closet full of NPR totebags, and who won't shut up about their Moleskine notebook. Founded in early 2008, and almost instantly famous, Stuff White People Like has more or less ignored the economy crumbling around it; it still radiates a cheery prosperity that may have as much to do with the site founder's incredible success with both the blog and its spun-off bestselling book than with the current state of white people (and everyone else) in America.
Now there's a new blog for these dreary times: Stuff Unemployed People Like, which chronicles the small pleasures enjoyed by those forced into the trendy if unfortunate new lifestyle of the job-free. Yep, if you don't have a job to go to, you too can skip showers, drink yourself into a stupor, and even hole up at home every time you get a monster zit. "Without a job, and no places to go or people to see, the unemployed can now suffer through their breakout from the safety of their own home, desperately searching for the perfect acne treatment towards clear skin [on the internet]," the blog explains. "Sometimes ski masks are donned so as to not startle the postal worker."
As you may have gathered from that little quote, there's only one problem with Stuff Unemployed People Like: like unemployment itself, it's really not all that funny. It's actually rather depressing.
No, if you want to read something truly funny about the lifestyle of the unemployed, you need to turn to one of our greatest literary classics: Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Granted, it's not a bum economy that gets poor Gregor Samsa canned from his job; it's the fact that he's turned into a giant cockroach. But aside from this small detail this darkly humorous novella tells a tale every unemployed person will recognize at once. And it even has a happy ending! (Well, sort of.) It's short. So read it. If you're unemployed, you've likely got some time on your hands.
--David Futrelle