The Way We Live Now: Weighing our options. Unwisely. Americans were never famous for our ability to make calm, sober choices. A recession is just an excuse to become a pirate! Or ask for donations! Or break outta jail!

Now will you look at this, what a thing, four fellas have decided to sail around the world, being pirates, on a boat called "Your Mom," and it will all be a big adventure if nothing else, amirite? The only thing they didn't consider: while they're making "booty" by selling t-shirts and also, who knows, maybe by literally manufacturing booty from a shipboard matter fabricator, they're sailing right into the hands of the REAL pirates, who are mighty pissed off right now.

Sure, desperate times call for desperate measures. Like placing an ad in an actual newspaper. I mean, it could work? It has a certain throwback appeal? NO. A high school sophomore put an ad in the Virginia newspaper asking for people to mail her donations for college. How did that work out? "By Monday, the last day of the ad, the only return Western Branch High School sophomore Erin Burke had gotten on her $20 investment in a weeklong classified run was 45 cents. In euros."

In euros, ladies and gentlemen. France kills the American newspaper.

But should we really blame one 15 year-old girl and her French partners for the downfall of the entire US economy? Perhaps. But before we start chopping off hands, consider this: California is just letting prisoners go now, because of not having the money to keep them in their cages. So the real question before us becomes: Do we throw this young girl into prison, only to see her escape thanks to "soft on crime" economists? Or do we round up all of America's prisoners and force them to sail around the world until they all drown?

The answer is it doesn't matter because we're all just foraging for food. Come back in a decade.