The Way We Live Now: Hitchhiking out of Dubai. Our only possessions: Bargains from Black Friday. That's it. No splurges, no handouts, no bonuses. But no crime! Which is nice.

The Way We Live Now: Artistically. And it's totally worth it. I mean, we didn't really think we'd have to live the "starving artist" thing so literally. But who needs $18,000 shoes or nice Christmas trees? We eat art!

The Way We Live Now: At home. With Ma. And Pa. And the leaky basement pipes, and the laundry machine, and our broken dreams. And the jug we rent from the United Homeless Organization. It's a living, hey! Amirite?

Playboy, which is really just hobbling along waiting to be sold at this point, is outsourcing its non-editorial production duties to AMI, which now has the weirdest stable of publications in the business.

The Way We Live Now: Solution-oriented. Problem: We're hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. Solution: Hoard gold, buy life insurance, and kill ourselves.

"I'd rather see more coffee shops and restaurants open than bodegas and nail salons," said one dude opening a coffee shop in Crown Heights, currently home to many bodegas and nail salons. There is so much beef now.

Nancy Cartwright is the voice of Bart Simpson. She is also a famous Scientologist. She is also selling her son's bedroom furniture for $500. Need some shelves?

The Way We Live Now: Same as ever. Hard times have been around for years now! But nobody was paying attention. The Christians were fighting unions and the yuppies were building dream homes and everyone else? Peanut butter jelly time.

The Way We Live Now: Ho-ho-ho-ping for a holiday miracle. Cause Santa is totally unreachable and all our Christmas money's going towards tuition and the luxury gourmet superdeluxe business we invested in is "in the red," like Rudolph. Fuck him.

The Way We Live Now: Letting go of my Eggo. The worldwide Eggo shortage might be humorous if it weren't so god damn serious. It happened right along with the worldwide pumpkin shortage. Just in time for Thanksgiving. And breakfast.

The Way We Live Now: Reveling in our common poverty. This recession has a bright side. The races are united as poors. Prison's a free diploma. And our new job robbing offices takes our mind off the gnawing, omnipresent hunger.

The Way We Live Now: Rearranging the fundamental tenets of reality until everything is just fine. GM's losing billions, which is a huge success. Our wallets have totally disappeared, which is a mark of progress. We're cannibalizing each other. Delicious!

The Way We Live Now: Bootleg. Quality is dead. Authenticity has been taken out to the trash, then stolen by scavengers and sold for one hit of whale penis leather—bootleg whale penis leather. What would Ed Hardy think?

The Way We Live Now: With total disregard for everything, except our own selfish desire for precious money. You're hurting your families. You're falling behind the rest of the world, wasting time gambling and tinkering. What's wrong with you?

The Way We Live Now: On the move. There is nothing tethering us to this dusty, tortured, goforsaken country any more—no jobs, no safety, no prospects. Once we hit the lottery or rob somebody or something, hello, vacation!

The Way We Live Now: Virtually well. Not "virtually" like "almost," like "we're almost living well again, thanks," because, whoa, not even close. We mean "virtually" like "in a virtual world." Mentally transport yourself to Affluenceville, population (your name)!

Funemployment! It has been the exclusive province of not just the rich, but also those lucky bastards who received the mythical "severance pay." So how are those severance checks holding up now, hmmmm?

The Way We Live Now: Frugally. Frugality is the new "Buzzword," for both rich and poor! It makes rich people sound good, and for poor people...well, it's necessary, really. Doesn't mean you can't be fabulous, though! The rich, we mean.

The Way We Live Now: Too insidery. Business was better in the old days, when you used to be able to make money at it. We're bringing it back, throwback style: Crime, big bonuses, and screwing the natives, huzzah!

Rejoice, all ye long-term unemployed former holders of now-nonexistent jobs: Your Congresspersons are granting you 20 more weeks of unemployment benefits. You'll need them!