But before you go tell your boss to piss off and devote your life to getting one of these careers, know that there is a downside to each.

You hear about these mythical jobs now and then, and maybe even run into somebody who has one of them. These people seem to be living in a magical land where a man can make a nice paycheck doing the things he would be doing if he had no job at all.

6 Video Game Play Tester

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The Dream:

This is the job every boy wants when he's 13, and it is, in fact, real. Video game developers and companies will actually pay people to play video games all day, as that's the only way to track down bugs before release. And yes, "before release" means not only do you get paid to play, you get to play the games months or years before anyone else.

Did we say we dreamed of it when we were 13? Hell, this is the job we want now.

The Reality:

It's sort of like getting a job testing various sex lubrication formulas, only to realize that the goal is finding out which ones make your dick break out in an angry rash. The entire point of play testing is to find the parts of the game that are horrible, frustrating and broken, and play them over and over and over and over.

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The life of a games tester is ruled by strict guidelines from the developers which condemns you to playing the same small section of the same game for your entire eight hour shift. Each time you hit a glitche, you write up a small treatise describing exactly how you found it. They'll try to fix it, you'll go back the same spot and play it over and over again to make sure. This goes on for weeks.

Also keep in mind that sometimes you won't even get to play games, but, rather, will be asked to test the hardware itself which includes such life-affirming assignments as turning the console on and off hundreds of times while carefully timing and documenting how long it takes to power-up each time.

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Also, the "perk" of being able to play games long before their commercial releases is quickly corrupted when the realization hits that the further ahead of the release date you are, the more unfinished and irritating the product is to play.

Unfinished levels, features that are only halfway implemented, rampant bugs and glitches mean that by the time the game actually makes it to shelves, the very thought of it will make you break into a cold sweat and scream "FUCK YOU!" every time you pass an EBGames (if you don't do that already).