Image courtesy of Funemployment blog.

A fancy media outlet has asked us to help wrangle people who are on unemployment and “making it work.” Bonus if you’re part of a group of similarly economizing friends or housemates. Oh the demands of lifestyle trend stories! If this is your situation, and you and your brokester commune-mates want to be profiled in a major media feature, send an email to faye [at] brokelyn.com and I’ll put you in touch.

Inside: How about, "I'm buying!"

As if shopping for greeting cards wasn’t depressing enough (re: your average bday card that reads something like this: Front: “You’re how old? Inside: “GAH HOW ARE YOU NOT DEAD YET??”), Hallmark upped the ante by releasing a line of cards targeted at the unemployed, laid off or otherwise economically down-and-out.  “Don’t think of it as losing your job,” one card reads. “Think of it as a time-out between stupid bosses.” These $3.49 gems of corporate poetry join the card rack under the category “Encouragement” and teeter the line between clever compassion and depressing document of these 9 percent unemployment times. Plus, there’s only eight of them, and we know way more than eight people who could use some encouragement. So we asked Team Brokelyn to come up with our own line of Brokemark Happyface Cards For Sadface Times. Add yours!

“Losing your job is no reason to be depressed! And anyway, good therapy is really expensive.”

“You would have preferred not to, anyway.”

” Losing your job: A cure for your severe case of The Mondays.”

“Feel free to burn this card to stay warm when you’re living in a van down by the river.”

“Sorry to hear about your misfortune, guess I won’t be coming to your job to slap the mop out of your hands after all.”

“Congratulations on becoming a political reference point!”

Inside: "Okay, maybe don't. Hold on while I think of somebody else."

“Well you always said you wanted more time for your painting.”

“Sure it’s hard out there, but it’s hard to look at it as ‘funemployment’ if you keep crying.”

“Look at this way: for the forseeable future, you won’t need to remember when Secretary’s Day is.”

“On the plus side, the coffee can be any strength you like it! On the minus side, you have to pay for it now.”

“Give Yourself a Staycation. (You can’t afford not to).”

The Brooklyn-based, just-launched Discarded site offers folks a chance to tell their recession stories by filling out a short form detailing their journey from full-time employment to paycation. The site asks visitors to upload or mail in their now-defunct business cards; a visual archive of the cards will be the finished product.

Creators Michelle Cheung and Mike Bodge were each affected by the recession differently. Michelle was laid off from her brand consulting agency and Mike was forced to fire people as the owner of an interactive company. They wanted to bring more awareness to those directly affected and show that there was more to the recession than just the GDP or the unemployment rate percentage.

“We want to humanize the statistics that we read in the news everyday and memorialize this point in history for the millions of people who have been affected,” said Michelle. “One day I just saw a stack of business cards in my wallet, thought of the unemployment numbers that were just released and thought Wow if 9.5% of the working population is unemployed, how many business cards out there are put to waste?”

I’m not wearing any pants right now–and chances are, if you’re reading this website, you aren’t either. While this is somewhat of a longstanding personal habit, being jobless and rattling around the apartment all day wearing my boyfriend’s oversized button-down shirt is making me feel like a drunken landlady.

So what’s the solution? The bottomless scribe urges all afflicted to make an effort today to dress like you’re going to an office, even if you’re just sitting in the living room:

Nice shorts and skirts OK too, but NO boxers or pajamas–you must wear clothes that you could actually go to a job in. (Send in pics if you want!). . . This will give everyone an extra shot of self-esteem and aura of respectability as we continue our job hunting. It’ll make us all feel better.

All the attention will probably make your neglected pants feel better too. Find out more about this brilliant new holiday here. And you know what pants look really great with? Farrah hair!