The Way We Live Now: Self-pityingly. College freshmen are the recession's littlest victims. China is a bully. Our house is cold. And trying to make it in New York is worse than the Holocaust.

So every year they do a big poll of college freshmen in America, and wouldn't you know it, this year's crop is the whiniest one yet. If we were asked to do an impression of their responses, we would put on a whiny voice and go, "Wah, our class is very concerned about our ability to repay the cost of our education due to the facts that many of our parents are now unemployed and there is far less financial aid available for us and our job prospects upon graduation are bleak, wah." And when we said "wah" we'd do it in a real annoying voice.

If there's any free advice we're willing to give to college freshmen, it's to just stop whining to us, because we sure as hell aren't the ones to help you out. We got jobs when there were plenty out there. What we have to worry about is China's economy coming to swallow up everything that we know and love.

So how about a little appreciation for the rest of the world's problems, college freshmen? It's not as if you have better things to look forward to in the future. Sure, we all know what your plan is: get that art history or theater or journalism or philosophy degree and then come on up to the big city, NYC , with all your hopes and dreams wrapped in a shabby blanket, ready to take on the world, make it big, do your art, dream big dreams, live life to the fullest, all that jazz. Here is where you will be in one year: Living in a frozen, unheated, coma-inducing shitty "loft," because you really like its "atmosphere." Here's where else you will be: Unemployed (unemployment's still rising here, kids!). Here's where else you will be: literally telling a newspaper reporter that your years as a Jew in Nazi Germany and later in a Siberian prison camp were easier than living in present-day Brooklyn.

So suck on that along with your pacifiers at your "raves" or whatever the modern equivalent is, college freshmen. Things will get much worse for you soon.
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