"So what do you do?"

I'm so sick of being asked “What do you do?” that before the Big Damn Wedding* I was going to come up with a lie, or multiple lies, to tell people, preferably obvious so I could later claim I was kidding. Of course I didn't, so here's my list so far, what do you guys think I should go with?**

1.What do I do? Well, let me put it this way, did you see that movie Desperado, where Antonio Banderas plays that mariachi with the wrecked hand who goes from town to town with a guitar case full of guns, shooting drug lords? Yeah, I just love that movie. Hey what's that over there?

2.I make home equity loans to homeless people using cardboard boxes as collateral, and then I package those loans into structured financial products, which I sell to hedge funds. It's not going too well at the moment, I'm afraid... hey, you don't have a copy of last Tuesday's WSJ, do you, because Amstelboy said I was mentioned in an editorial, and I used my copy to wrap up a dead fish I had sent to Ben Bernanke, and of course I didn't have time to read it first. The fish? Oh, that was a Sicilian message... it means “The US subprime lending market sleeps with the fishes.”

3.I'm a urologist. Why do you ask, do you need your prostate checked? No seriously, I have gloves out in my car, just come with me a minute. Wait, where are you going?

4.You know those awards at the Oscars nobody watches because nobody knows what the hell they are? Like have you seen the cinematography award handed out? No? Okay, then I'm an award winning director of photography, and you must have gotten up to go to the bathroom and missed my acceptance speech and bantering with Jon Stewart. Oh, it was such an obscure film even I don't remember what it was called, ha ha ha, that's my little joke... here, have some more champagne.

5.I was working on my PhD, but my theories on how every work in the English canon is about unusual sexual practices was too revolutionary for those assholes at... hey, where are you from? A small town in Connecticut? Like I said, those assholes at the University of Chicago drove me out of academia, so I'm in the midst of changing professions. I said Victor Frankenstein didn't create a monster, he was just out in Austria riding kangaroos and bare-backing Clerval, and they showed me the door. I'd take you down there and show you the campus, but unfortunately your upbringing in a quaint New England fishing village won't have prepared you for the South Side.
(This one I can run with, I really did submit that theory to multiple professors.)

6.I'm Vikadontis Rex, that purple dinosaur at Vikings games. Seriously, come to a game, I'll wave so you know it's me. If you know who that is, you're a Vikings fan, so have some more champagne and nexium (the purple pill).

7.I'm the air traffic controller at Burning Man. It's once a year, but it takes a lot of preparation, I'm building an airport in the desert FFS. Oh you were there? Well I was covered in mud the whole time, so you probably just didn't see me. Here, have some more peyote.

8.I was an inner city teacher until last week when I got stabbed again, and I decided to move on, so I'm just looking for new opportunities. You know, what with the stabbing, the attempted murder trial, and the multiple gangs who've got hits out on me since I was the only teacher brave enough to stand up to them and clean up the school, I'd really rather talk about something other than my employment in the last few years.

9.What do I do? Well what do you do? Why do I answer all questions with questions? Well let me ask you this, doesn't that sort of suggest to you what my job might be? Oh, so you would say I'm a therapist? So what do you think might have made you choose that conclusion? Are you not sure, or are you just not ready to talk about why that is? And do you want some more champagne?

10.I have a blog. What do you mean, that's not a job, do you know how much work it is to watch 32 women's soccer games and organize my insight and analysis in a timely way to create a valuable service to my readers and a platform for advertisers, all while contributing to the gross national product of this great country... but I guess you wouldn't understand that. (The first person who points out I do none of those things gets a 1-month ban from reading my blog.)

* - This and any other Big Damn Nouns are a reference to a show seen by few people, but beloved of almost all of them. It may be the TV equivalent of the Velvet Underground's last album, famously described this way: “only 5000 people bought “Loaded” in 1970 but each and every one of them went out and started a band.” Of course I can never remember who said that.

** - I'm just kidding, I know nobody's reading this.