As a freelance journalist who aspires to make a living at it, I sometimes compare my financial state to Sisyphus, the mythical character condemned to continually roll a boulder to the top of a hill, only to have it roll right back down again.

Which is why my reflex action, when I see bottom feeders offering such princely sums as $1.00 per article for "content writing" (yeah, you know the ones), is to grind my teeth until I smell smoke and pray for the skies to open up and rain boiling oil on them.

But I should thank them. We all should - really. Because, if you do even the most cursory research you realize that there are people out there writing for these beyond-laughably pathetic sums, as inconceivable as that seems.

Which is fine and dandy by me because I can't imagine that these saps are the brightest bulbs in the lamp store and they probably aren't good writers either. So why not distract them with this insultingly busy work and keep them from bothering editors and publishers who do pay acceptable rates, and from mucking up the channels of communication with their ill-conceived drivel scrawled in crayon on scraps of grocery bags?

Let me put it in more blunt terms. You know that anyone who would write for such a pittance is the kind of person who's going to piss in the pool (figuratively and literally). Isn't it better to keep them over there in the acrid smelling kiddie pool with the rest of the incontinents and dullards?

I sure think so and I'm sorry if that sounds hard, but you know what? Life's hard and the meek don't inherit anything but a heaping mouthful of shit.