Ever feel like you are special, unique like a snowflake? Part of the challenge of being an egoist is building an ever more complex and empirically-grounded narrative of your own giftedness, so that you can continue the fallacy that you are, in fact, better than everyone else around you (I wasn't born left handed, I learned it to set myself apart from the other crayon-clutching idiots in my kindergarten class - try coloring inside the lines left-handed assholes!). A chip on your shoulder is a good start (because, like a left-handed asshole, nobody else has one of those).

Geographers, in my experience, excel at self-importance. And now, thanks to the Bureau of Labor Statistics we have some data to back up the aggrandizement of geography. The BLS has released its National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimate for 2011. Geographers rank up there with Animal Breeders and Wood Model Makers as being the rarest jobs in America. Now, these figures have to be taken with a grain of salt. There will be thousands of geographers in LA next month for the AAG Annual Meeting, but most of us are classified as postsecondary educators. Ah, the burden of being in the top .001%, not even the BLS can live up to my lofty standards, if only they'd hire some more geographers to help them fix their flawed data...

On a related note, the BLS found that there were over 110,000 Graduate Teaching Assistants in the US in 2011, making us about one hundred times more abundant than geographers. But get this: the mean annual wage of a GTA was $33,180. Come on KU, where's my cheese?! 

Here's looking down my nose at you, Kid.

Blake the Flake