Way back in October of aught-eight, we published the Gawker Guide to a Journalism Career. Lots of things have changed since then. For the worse, mostly! Time for an update. Aspiring journalists and other masochists, read on.

Here, the victims of the Great Magazine Die-Off of 2008-2009. We did this once in March, and then again in April. Good lord. It keeps getting bigger. [Pic by Anna Edwards. Click to enlarge.]

The good news: one shot of tasty swine flu vaccine is all it will take to save you from the dreaded pig virus this year! The bad news: All the medicine is going to special interests.

Arizona has been on a crazy streak this week. Judge not, coastal elites; if you had vodka in your tampons and crystal meth in your highlighter, you'd be crazy too.

Three Disney World employees have died at work in the last month and a half. Disney World is a hellish soul-eating death vortex.

The Way We Live Now: Suffering in relativity. Allen Stanford has no air conditioning. Haitian boat people are drowning. Baghdad security guards are getting killed. And back in Queens, we're barely scraping by, workin' in the Yak shop.

Floundering Conde Nast has hired McKinsey & Co. to help them "rethink" the way they do business, which usually involves layoffs. Not to worry, Conde Nasties! Our worldly readers will help you survive this trying time.

This week started with Goldman Sachs making billions in profits, and starting the Wall Street Pay Machine back up. Now, JPMorgan Chase has also posted a spectacular second quarter profit. Well. What could go wrong?

The Way We Live Now: Under the thumb of the papacy. The Pope is calling for some super-Illuminati to rule the world economy. No need, dude; we had one already, called Ikea. And it's laying people off.

The Way We Live Now: Not the way you think. It's not a pay cut; it's the new work-sharing. It's not stealing; it's the new honesty. It's not homelessness; it's the new camping.

Like hostages whose will for freedom has been completely sapped, slack-jawed Americans aspire only to befriend vapid, idolized television personalities while downing grease-laden comfort food, a new poll has confirmed:

What's the worst part of the decline of newspapers? Oh maybe it's all the innocent people who will DIE. Every time you don't buy a paper you practically slip the noose around a condemned man's neck!

If it makes you feel any better, the new trend is hippies breeding new strains of deadly viruses in their closets:

Happy May Day! Have you marched in solidarity with any workers today? No? Well, it was raining. We forgive you.

Where are insurance giant AIG's bailout billions really going? The White House doesn't want to tell us. But the Wall Street Journal, bless its Rupert Murdoch-owned heart, found out anyway: Foreign banks, lots of them!

"American Boy" singer Estelle probably went into music for some soulful reason, but now you have to wonder, if it's all just Crystal Light commercials, why should anyone go into music at all?

We talk about the ongoing death of the newspaper medium a lot around here, because we are evil bloggers who hate the paper industry and, furthermore, are personally responsible for every beat reporter laid off in the past five years, because their CEOs decided to cut their jobs after reading about how bad their industry is here, on the blogs. Well, at least we have numbers on our side—the side of darkness and unemployment. How bad is the outlook for newspapers in 2009? How about epically, historically, never-seen-before bad? Is that bad enough? Because that's how bad it is:

• Hey, what a miserable week. Like, for the markets. All the markets. We blame the media! Ha ha, just kidding, we blame fatcats (well, some of us blame fatcats). Actually we're kinda tossing blame around pretty freely. But we couldn't do it without you! Nor could we do it with you but these people might.

The multi-tentacled jellyfish menace is loose in New York waters and nothing you can do will stop it! Quickly, swim, swim for shore, damn you! The floating blobs of fury are breeding as we speak. A swimmer died during the New York triathlon last weekend, and while doctors say there's no evidence a jellyfish sting was involved, the media is doing its part to keep you safe; no fewer than four newspapers today run stories about jellyfish, and how you definitely should not PANIC about their invertebrate invasion. They're replacing sharks as the media darlings of the sea!

Cary Tennis: Your Source For Stone Cold Crazy Advice. The Salon advicemonger and generally confused and confusing man today receives a sincere question from a girl about her hard-partying friend, who gets drunk and cheats on her boyfriend, most recently by having "consensual, unprotected sex with one of the Marines" that she met on a night out. What should she do to help her friend? Cary Tennis makes sure she regrets that she ever asked that question. Because Cary Tennis can read her friend's mind: