One of the Free State of PIG’s claims to fame - aside from our legendary inKorrectness - is our ability to cut through all the crap and identify underlying, unresolved, problems. It’s a gift, but one for which we pay a high price. We don’t mind being maligned as ‘mean spirited finger pointing assholes’, because it goes with the territory. We do, however, object to this canard as half-baked ‘truth’ which steadfastly ignores ‘the rest of the story’. The inconvenient - for our critics - truth here is that, as good as we are when it comes to identifying unresolved problems, we’re even better, when it comes to ‘why didn’t I think of that’ class solutions.

I know what you’re thinking: talk is cheap. Is the FSOP, as you’re demanding, ready to put its money where its mouth is? You better believe it, ‘you’re going to regret that you ever doubted us’ Sparky.

For this noble task, we’re putting on our white hats and riding to the rescue of those who desperately need our help in the vital area of career counseling. We’ll begin this heroic rescue mission, by identifying an individual’s unresolved, career-related, problems. We’ll conclude each rescue mission with a tender application of tough ‘this is your true calling’ love.

Channeling our legendary sensitivity for the feelings of others, our FSOP career counselors will protect the anonymity of our ‘clients’ by using their first name, only. Our career counselors have also agreed to protect the employers involved by withholding their identity, too. Why? This is an exercise in problem solving, not finger pointing. In other words, it’s a pat on the back and a gentle nudge in the right direction, not a swift kick in the ass.

Now that we’re all on the same page, the FSOP will share some of its most challenging career counseling cases.

Job Status: Now unemployed, he once held down a series of powerful positions in a well-known American organization. His premature departure to ‘pursue his own interests’ happened, after he came within a hanging chad of landing the organization’s top spot. Later, he tried his hand at writing, then movie-making. Both endeavors earned him worldwide recognition, but neither has resulted in continuing, meaningful, employment for him.

Pertinent Proclivities: He’s a prodigious eater whose gastronomic exploits have prompted a legendary Internet publication to name him "The Tennessee Tonnage". A multifaceted individual, he also has a richly deserved reputation as a factually-challenged prophet of doom.

Job Status: He’s a moderately successful member of a large American organization that’s as old as the country itself. Due to numerous ethical lapses, he has gone as far up the organization’s ladder as his meager skills will take him. A man with a very short, uh fuse...a dude who will stoop to anything, he is, to be frank, temperamentally unsuited for his present job. He’s in a rut, a hole, if you will and desperately needs our help.

Pertinent Proclivities: He has demonstrated his willingness to ‘take it like a man’ and will, when the, uh, need arises, move his ass.

Our Recommendation: We think Barney needs to pioneer a new career in the prison system, where someone of his ilk will thrive. We envision Barney tastefully decked out in a corset, hose, and high heels, playing the prison equivalent of a rodeo clown. Barney will do his utmost to distract Bubba, while the guards try to extricate Bubba’s latest bitch from the cell they share.

Job Status: He has been thrust into a high powered executive position for which he has no demonstrable aptitude and no enthusiasm.

Pertinent Proclivities: Likes to see himself, anywhere, everywhere: on television, in pictures, even in the reflection of a car door.

Our Recommendation: Barry should IMMEDIATELY quit the job he has, the one he hates and can’t perform, and follow his true calling. Our career counselors selected a new job which will pay him to do his favorite thing in the world, as the final product tester at a mirror manufacturer.

Client Name: Bret

Job Status: For the moment, he’s employed as the starting quarterback with a professional - American style - football franchise. It’s the third pro team where he’s been the star signal caller, but, based on his ‘I’m getting too old for this’ whines, he’s no longer thrilled spitless about his career choice.

Pertinent Proclivities: Despite his proven ability to throw passes with pinpoint accuracy, his best move can be summed up in one word: retiring. He retired two years ago, in a tearful farewell, returned a few months later, then he retired again, a year ago, in another tearful farewell. He’s back, but we sense another retirement in his immediate future.

Our Recommendation: What this fellow needs is a job where he can retire, every day. That makes ‘mattress tester for Simmons’ his dream job, where that badly needed Beautyrest is his for the asking.

Job Status: After starting his career as a boob tube weatherman, he now toils as the host of a late-night variety show. Despite Dave’s success, our experts detect a growing sense of boredom, even indifference, in Dave, a trend that makes him seek job satisfaction in the wrong places. All things considered, we wonder if his heart is still in his work.

Pertinent Proclivities: Nobody’s idea of a ‘dreamboat’, and a notoriously ‘cold fish’, Dave has chosen to resolve that pesky issue by bedding down his female staffers.

Our Recommendation: The ideal job fit for a cold fish like Dave should, duh, involve water, and an environment which embodies ‘Lead me not into temptation’. After a long, sometimes acrimonious, discussion, our career counselors have decided that Dave’s dream job is: a towel wrangler in a gay bathhouse.

Client Name: Glenn

Job Status: A 21st century Howard Beale, he is just hitting his stride with shows on a cable news network and VRWC talk radio. He’s very successful and doesn’t appear to want/need our help and/or advice. Despite his success, our experts wonder if this calling is his IDEAL career path.

Pertinent Proclivities: He presents his apocalyptic views with compelling verbal imagery, which he drives home with a powerful - occasionally tearful - emotional punch.

Our Recommendation: Given the inherent, FCC imposed, shackles affixed to his boom box and boob tube outlets, Glenn is, routinely, forced to omit his best material. That wouldn’t be a problem if he moved onward, upward, to a genre where he could set his apocalyptic vision free: televangelism.

Client Name: Jessica

Job Status: Once a pop tart of some renown, she has, at the ripe old age of 29, exceeded her pop tart shelf life. In recent years, she attempted to jump start her floundering career by flaunting her good looks and ample cleavage on the silver screen. Later, she lurched back to her rustic roots, by switching to country music. She still hasn't found her niche.

Pertinent Proclivities: She has, during her stint as a reality show star, demonstrated a memorable grasp of nutrition, in general, and tuna, in particular.

Our Recommendation: Our career counselors are convinced that she's ideally suited for a career as a quality control inspector for Chicken of the Sea tuna. If anyone can sniff out a chicken infestation in the tuna, it's our gal Jessica.

Job Status: After a moderately successful career as a sportscaster, he has fallen on hard times. When last seen, he was toiling in virtual obscurity as the host of a talk show on a cellar-dwelling cable news network.

Pertinent Proclivities: He routinely excoriates anyone who strays too close, with a steady stream of inflammatory invective.

Our Recommendation: His verbal vitriol belongs on the world stage where his venomous vituperation will be appreciated. Our career counselors think he’d answer his true calling as Mahmoud al-Gilligan’s designated spokesasshole.

Job Status: As far as we can tell, she’s unemployed, unless you count posing for paparazzi as ‘a profession’. She has also appeared in a boob tube reality show and made a brief, but memorable, splash as the star of an amateur porn video.

Pertinent Proclivities: Showing off her colossal caboose.

Our Recommendation: If someone - Disney or the folks at National Geographic come to mind - needs a stand-in for the south end of a northbound Hippo, Kim has more then enough junk in her trunk to get the job done.

Job Status: She has been elevated to a position which requires a skillful negotiator who can bring opposing sides together. Unhappily, her idea of a persuasion is a tire iron between the eyes, or a baseball bat to the knees.

Pertinent Proclivities: She likes to terrify mere mortals into compliance with her infamous Botox Scowl.

Our Recommendation: She needs to quit politics and pursue a modeling career. She’d be ideal for that ‘did this happen to you’ image used by shysters who specialize in ‘plastic surgery horror story’ cases.

Client Name: Sean

Job Status: He's a glib Irish lad who Emerilized his gift of gab into a profitable talk radio career and, eventually, a steady gig on a cable news channel. Despite this success, our career counselors sense some trouble in Sean's paradise, since his shows engender a mild, 'been there, heard that' contempt.

Pertinent Proclivities: If you need someone to toe and/or promote the party line he's in a class by himself.

Our Recommendation: Given his gift of gab and his 'go team go' personality, our career counselors agree that Sean should stop wasting his time in broadcasting and become a Kool-Aid salesman.

Job Status: She’s a jet setting slut who is frequently hired to make a spectacle of herself at a given club, or private party. She has also dabbled in amateur porn, but at no point in her so-called career has she demonstrated any enthusiasm for getting a ‘day’ job.

Pertinent Proclivities: She has an insatiable appetite for attention and a pathological aversion to wearing knickers.

Our Recommendation: Given her attention whore antics and her refusal to wear panties, her ideal career path is obvious: Brazilian bikini wax spokesmodel.

Client Name: Ben

Our consulting firm hit this career consulting speed bump, during America’s Colonial era - when Ben strolling into the Philly office. A multi-talented individual, Ben was incapable of concentrating on just one career path. Eventually, a career counselor got exasperated with Ben, who kept spouting trite, fortune cookie wisdom like "A penny saved is a penny earned." Our counselor’s outburst - "Go fly a kite" - had nearly fatal results when Ben did exactly that, during a thunder storm.

Afterwards, Ben punished us for our frustration-induced outburst with a never-ending nightmare: the U.S. Postal System.

Client Name: Mikey

When Mikey moon-walked into our office, a burst of frustration-induced career counselor rhetoric yielded near tragic results. It happened, when Mikey, a very popular singer, came to us for some career advice. Distracted by the kids who accompanied our staffers on ‘take your child to work day’, Mikey kept rambling on about the stresses he faced at this critical phase of his career. Finally, tired of Mikey’s whining, our counselor retorted, "You need to lighten up and stop sticking your big nose where it doesn’t belong."

Much later, when we tracked Mikey down to check his status, our counselors were shocked to discover that this handsome black singer had bleached his skin white and lopped off his nose.

Thespians whose career options seem to be drying up need to visit our Career Counseling page. This is where they will find PIG’s list of 11 ‘Warning Signs That Your Thespian Career Is in the Crapper’: How screwed am I?

What if you’re a celebrity - noted capitalist, entertainer, and/or Elected Tormentor - or just a legend in your own mind, and you want to cash in on your notoriety/infamy? The FSOP’s vaunted one-stop-shopping career center has that covered, too. You’ll find the product ideas on our Celebrity Marketing page, very inspirational: You name it, I'll try it.