Today is many things. It’s both #TaxDay and the day in history that the Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. It’s the day when CareerCast’s new rankings are making the rounds, and “newspaper reporter” yet again edges out everyone else for first place on the Worst Jobs Ever list. No longer revered as the Bob Woodwards and Carl Bernsteins of the world, reporters are now on the down and out, below funeral directors, garbage collectors, and pest control workers. I should have listened to my parents, who advised me that the world will, after all, always need morticians.
At the rate we’re going, the world will also need massive cleanup crews and scientists to fix (if it’s fixable) such damage as the massive lake filled with toxic chemicals that BBC reported on a couple of weeks ago, or air pollution in Beijing, which Quartz notes, bizarrely peaks at midnight. Or, we’ll also need someone to explain to people like this unapologetic huntress of majestic wild animals that our supply of these creatures is not infinite. Or (new job alert), there will be an increasing need for glitter-bombing activists who disrupt bankers, with sparkles and witty t-shirts as their only weapons.
What the world now has, but never realized that it needed, is this spot on Robin Williams impersonator; this pro-outer space exploration Bruno Mars parody group; and this new study about the potentially harmful effects of female birth control. What I wish I had, but probably don’t need, is Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’), a Picasso painting slated to go on the auction block at Christie’s for a cool $140 million. I wonder how many #TaxDay refunds I’d have to save up for this one. Is it too late to become a mortician?