I am for sale.

We are experiencing an employment crisis at the moment, people. Naw, that be a euphemism; it's more of a pit-deep, anxiety-breeding, can-I-borrow-your-shoulder-to- lean-on financial crisis. The likes of which I've never before experienced. And, yes, which I never plan to again.

A month ago my thoughts travelled along the the lines of search, be patient, a dignified and possibly extravagant job will avail itself in no time. Something quirky, obscure, a job that yielded stories apt to regale the friends with. A private investigator, perhaps. (Errol Morris did that for a bit). A clown. Chaffeur, even. Alas, a month later and I have absolutely, unequivocally nothing. Intuition tells me this ought to be somehow liberating, eking out an existence beyond the miasma of corporations and commerce. Except that eking don't float in urbania -- ever tried cultivating a roost of organic vegetables on a gum-splodged footpath?

A hike through today's employment pages saw me circle four possibilities:

- Car cleaner/detailer
- Private home cleaner
- Florist
- Qualified care giver

Seductive, right? Seductive like dirt. I can visualise myself in the latter 3 -- cleaning while connected to an iPod; acquainting myself with the finer points of botany; big-buddying a swarm of intellectually disabled kids, cheers and cries emanating as they scatter the last of their bowling pins. Strike! High five! Feel our wrath! Hang on. These are romanticised visions. How often have things actually turned out the way you imagined them?

Truth is, it's a battle to just bestir myself to call these wretched places. On the phone yesterday, in response to to my inquiries, one gentleman exclaimed, 'Ha! You're kidding, right?' Huh? I want a job. Where's the humour in that? 'It was in Saturday's paper. That's four days ago. Four.' I mumbled something about being away all weekend, which I wasn't. 'Ever heard of a telephone? Ring-ring-ring. You know?.' There I was, suffering the crude, barbed taunts of some faceless nobody of a car dealer. To think that I'd called to try and wrest a job out of him, a job comprised of the vacuuming, shampooing, and glazing of rich strangers' cars. Urgh.

God, I respect your sense of humour, severe as it is, but I don't wanna be poor no more. Give me a mission, sign me up. All I ask is that you spare me the smalledt shred of dignity. Just grant me that much, you old fucker.