They have dared lay me off. Now they shall taste the cold steel of my vengeance.

Relax, I’m kidding. Sort of.

I’ve been laid off three times in the past eight years and twice in the past two. It had nothing to do with age, sex, looks, or performance. It had nothing to do with my mask. It was all about money and failing companies cutting costs and deciding they could do without the writer. Who needs a stinking writer, anyway?

Last time I got laid off I had three offers in two weeks, but not this time.

We’ve entered Depression 2.0, also known as the Great Recession.

This one’s in color, and instead of Hoover there’s Bush. Instead of Roosevelt there’s Obama. And instead of Hitler there’s, well hopefully nobody. But last time, it was Hitler, and the war he started, that pulled us out of the depression. Who knows what’s going to do it this time?

The economy’s crashing, experience is perceived as costly, and I recently read an article in Money magazine that said I’m never going to work again and might as well be dead, only not in those exact words.

Here’s a quote.

Laid off at 50: What next? It’s a nightmare. And if you think it couldn’t happen to you, you’re kidding yourself…

Here’s another.

“If you’re 40 and lose your job, it’s not a problem,” says Richard Guha of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). “But today, 50 is very tough and 55 is almost impossible.”

Almost impossible!?

Well, I’m not 55, but it’s going to happen. To me, to you, to everyone who doesn’t die young, and it’s disheartening to think no one’s going to give you a job because of that fact.

Mostly, I am a mild-mannered writer. But I am also Avenger, scrounging for my little share of the American Dream and plotting my vengeance on those who would destroy it. Read my blog. Be angry. Fight for what is yours.

If you missed the first post, read it here.

About the Photos

The pictures you see on the right are all public domain pictures we gathered from Flickr, then manipulated in Photoshop. The intent is to make the site look cool, not to suggest that we’re approaching times as hard as those in the photos. Because we’re not. I hope.