I, former United States President and advice columnist, the Giant Squid, have recently found myself without employ. Kicked to the proverbial curb. Homeless, jobless, and very nearly friendless. I wander, desperate, into the welcoming arms of the internet, seeking solutions for all that plague me.

I seek gainful employment! Currently I have none. My skills include: Attempts at world domination, offering advice through the interweb, publishing exquisite web-based magazines and newspapers, time travel, interpersonal manipulation, crushing items in my tentacles, squirting ink, wrestling with Abraham Lincoln, and typing.

Desperation is upon me like a tertiary layer of skin, though not so attractive nor pliable as my native dermis. Any Job Will Do!

If you have not the capability to offer employment, then please my dear grunt-chimps, offer advice unto me as to how I may gain said employment.

Send replies to giantsquidneedswork@yahoo.com.

I thank you in advance from the deepest cavities of my hearts.

And I remain,
Your Giant Squid

Dear Loyal Readers Who Have Not Yet Abandoned Me In My Time Of Struggle,

My Constant Readers will no doubt note the brevity of the above missive, and think unto themselves "How very short is that little jotlette? I do doubt that some such cursory scribble might come forth from so great a Squid!" I could not agree more! Please trust that, in its nascence and birth the above missive was much, much longer, euphonious and flowing and as bedecked in verbiage as a drink-besotted, "gone wild" Carnival reveller is in plastic beads. Leagues longer. It had chapters, volumes, footnotes, annotations, and an associated pamphlet with four color plates and a transparency. But Craig's List, oh that fickle, miserly and shallow mistress, rejected my plaintive cry for salvation for the length was to great for her, and my depth far too profound.

With the help of my companion Hazel, and a brief telephonic conversation with Claude regarding proper spelling and grammatical conventions, the precise and practiced outpouring of pain that was my seventeen volume creation was mutilated down to a mere six paragraphs. Circumscribed, circumcised it was, and this prevented from truly circumnavigating my current circumstances. My might has always lain in my mind, you know this by now, and no matter how razor-sharp my beak, nor how crushing my grasp, the real armament that I have carried all of these violent years has been my mind. And how—I ask of you as a teacher may ask pupils that are being made learnéd in a mechanistic American school—does one demonstrate the prowess of one's mind?

Through speech, through the staunch rhetoric of pen, keyboard and oratory.

My seventeen volume communique was a Battle unto itself, a series of salvos which could not be parried, a thrust that could not fail to fell a foe, an Unstoppable Force for which there could be no Immovable Object. Any potential employer who opened the seventeen tomes—or even the first and primariest tome, or even just glanced at the illustrative diagrams—could not but help to hire this one on the very spot.

But no. Like so much, it was not to be. My masterwork was pared, trimmed, gutted, shanked, shivved and mangled into those scant paragraphs above, and posted in its weakened, defenseless state upon the List of Craig Newmark.

Here it lives.

And also here.

Treat my words well, Mr. Craig Newmark. Treat them as if they were your own offspring, hatched from your very loins. Let them suckle at your strange man-teat, or let their failure to thrive be ever on your brow.

In the case that it fails to go without saying, I was far from sanguine at my prospects with this posting. But then, lo!, not some several few hours later, a reply came sounding from the ether like a gunshot on a crisp Texas afternoon!

You had the most interesting post on craigslist I've seen in a long time. I'd love to offer you suggestions... sadly our unemployment rate is so high that the only thing that comes to mind is to seize this moment and start your own venture. You are very articulate and humorous. There is a wide world out there in the dot com field that if played correctly, you could be the next myspace.com entrepreneur for all we know. Although, I'd suggest you at least charge a small fee....

Good luck and check in from time to time.
Courtney F.

Your words are a sweet balm on my chillblained hearts. I sit now, perched in my Velocitating Suit like a canary within a gilded cage, in the aft chamber of Dearest Hazel's rental mobile dwelling dominus—though this name strikes me strange, as the home is clearly and oddly immobile. But, regardless of the homes (im)mobility, I still read your words and they fill me with both dread and hope.

The rate of unemployment is indeed high. Distressingly high. Why does the Ford fire the workers, I wonder? Who shall buy the Ford conveyances? Why should I not venture forth and create a venture of my own? What an adventure a venture would be!

But sadly, I lack any capitol. My pockets are bare of all muneration, and in point of fact the pockets themselves are only metaphor. I have neither the piss, nor the pot to put the piss in. I contemplate—with dread—selling pieces of my Travel Suit for the scrap metal.

But you have given me a goal! I shall raise the moneys and start a venture of my own! Whatever this MySpace is shall be laid low before me, as my competitor in this Gladiatorial Arena of dot commerce. MySpace shall be my space—or mine shall be another adjacent space so overshadowing MySpace that the vast vegetable fields of MySpace shall die off, leaving the MySpacemen to wither and starve . . . and then conquest, she shall be a walk in the barren, fetid wasteland park, shall she not?

I Remain,
The Articulate and Humorous
Giant Squid