The following is my current column for the High Springs Herald, posted here with minor changes, crossposted at highspringsherald.com and at my blog kuulrayspage.blogspot.com

BETWEEN THE LINES

Another spring graduation season has come and gone. Another opportunity for our institutions of higher learning to take me up on my standing offer to deliver the commencement address free of charge has been squandered.

I can only think the oversight is due to my current lack of a landline phone. No doubt there were plenty of colleges trying to reach me but none had my cell number.

Whatever the reason, I am forced once again to deliver my commencement address in print. To that end, class of ’09, this is for you:

My dear graduates.

As you leave these hallowed halls, degrees and in hand, and venture out into the real world of employment, career advancement, and dog-eat-dog corporate ladder-climbing, I would like to leave you with this one thought…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Let me clarify that statement. What I meant to say was…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Don’t get me wrong. I do not laugh at you, dear graduates. I laugh at the ridiculous situation you find yourselves in.

I’m sure you are all eminently qualified as well as thoroughly willing to be thrust this very minute into the vast meat grinder that is American corporate capitalism.

Problem is, the meat grinder is a little clogged up at the moment. Not only is it not churning out any sausages, it’s not even accepting the lips, brains, eyeballs, intestines, and other disgusting animal parts that make the sausage.

Am I being too graphic? Do I need to tone it down? Is this why I get no offers to deliver commencement addresses?

Seriously, graduates, you are entering a very difficult economy as well as a difficult world. For example, last month our national economy lost another 350,000 jobs.

And that’s the good news! Just a couple of months ago jobs were disappearing at twice the rate. Unemployment is currently at 9.4 percent, the highest since 1983.

What it all means is that many of you may have to postpone your plans to be sucked body and soul into the corporate juggernaut.

You may have to lower your expectations for immediate gainful employment in your field of expertise. This is especially true for those of you who majored in financial planning.

Who needs a financial planner these days? Nobody’s got any money!

Other occupations that are currently experiencing some tough sledding would include investment banker (currently falling between used car salesman and raw sewage on the respectability scale) and auto executive. Well, anything in the auto industry.

Also retail sales, and manufacturing. And real estate – nothing’s selling, the whole market sucks.

Also, any form of business that would ever require taking out a loan. Or making loans. Or approving, screening, buying, or reselling loans.

You see, banks don’t make loans anymore because they blew obscene amounts of money speculating on derivatives based on sub-prime mortgages, which is why they were given additional obscene amounts of money in the form of government bailout funds, which they immediately squandered on bonuses for the executives who lost the obscene amounts of money.

So the meat grinder is clogged, and you, my dear graduate, are basically screwed, at least for a while.

My advice to you, given these circumstances, is stay on good terms with your parents. Not only are you going to have pawn off on them your humungous student loans, but you might have to move back in for a while.

And if putting up with your dad’s snoring, your mom’s harping, your teenage sister’s whining, and your preteen brother’s tattling seem like just too much to bear, than you might want to consider the one thing that can solve all your problems, and can be summed up in two words…

Graduate school.

Go back to school for a couple of years. By the time you come out, hopefully our new president and his team of hotshot financial gurus will have turned it all around. Of course, it might take more than a couple years; in which case there’s always post-graduate study.

Go for your doctorate. With any luck you can put off entering this job market for another five or six years. As long as whoever’s coughing up your tuition money doesn’t go broke or cut you off, you should be okay.

So good luck, my dear graduates. Go forth into the world and…well…stall for a while.