The Way We Live Now: Munching on an affordable breakfast as our most valuable national institutions crumble. Culture? Broke. Harvard? Broke? Big stores? No more. Might as well shoot em up, shoot em up, shoot em up, bang.

Don't think that you're not getting hustled by the system. "$85 million for music in Cincinnati." Do you live in Cincinnati? No, of course not. And even if you did, you wouldn't spend the money on music, of all things. Maybe a couple decent offensive linemen, HAHA.

It's levity that will get us through this recession, you see. Levity and a hedge fund revival, which of course you will not be a part of. But laughing is not so easy for we, the sad clowns of poor America. Big stores are taking advantage of little people with vicious "you never spent the last $1.29 on your gift card so we are keeping it" scams. Karma is theirs: The only stores opening are tiny stores, and they're planning to eat up the big, gift card-hoarding stores like a bunch of voracious economic nanoparticles out of some implausible Michael Crichton novel.

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? Sure, go ahead. Believe whatever makes you feel better. The truth is that if the big guys are in trouble, the little guys are really getting screwed. Mighty Harvard cannot even afford to finish building the buildings it wanted to build. If they're having a hard time, do you know what that means for you, Joe Nobody? Let's just say that if you can't even figure out how to rob a jewelry store without getting shot, we hope you really like the McDonald's dollar menu breakfast, not that you'll ever be able to afford it.

They're already killing each other over falafel in the Big Apple. Be safe out there, doomed citizens.
[Pic: Flickr]