2004-04-13

Four whole days without updating! I felt all weird and squirrely inside. It’s good to be back, bearing tidings of tedium. My long weekend was…long. And a little bit weekendy. And that’s pretty much all she wrote. I did learn, however, that books are heavy, as I began the arduous task of trundling my entire book collection off to used bookstores, one backpack-full at a time, a process akin to emptying a swimming pool with a teaspoon. Motherfuck I have a lot of books, and Christ on a cracker it hurts to get rid of them, both literally and otherwise. Without its buttresses of books, my life feels wobbly and aimless: because who am I, really, without my copy of The Encyclopaedia of Airbrush Techniques?

I’ll tell you who I am: I Am an Editor. I’m experiencing near-physical agony right now, as two people in the next cubicle revise aloud a new set of program guidelines, making ALL THE WRONG comments about the writing. “Don’t you find that this part is choppy?” I’ll choppy your fucking hands off! Give me that piece of ungrammatical dreck, and go back to your cave, troglodyte! Argh!

I swear, the overwhelming chunk of my daily workplace agony would be eliminated if I could only go deaf. I can’t stand hearing stupid people discuss stupid things; and around here, “Stupid People Discussing Stupid Things” might as well be emblazoned above the entrance to the building, in giant misspelled type. I work in the SPDST Institute. The Ministry for Stupid Talk. Land of the Chattering Asshats. I’d boost my joie de vivre significantly if I invested in a pair of earplugs, but without the circus of blathering inanity that takes place here every day, and my resulting mental anguish, what would I amuse you with? I sacrifice my sanity for you! I’ll be billing you for my therapy shortly.

Hey, does anyone remember that moment of pure genius when Tampax adopted the slogan, “Making periods more convenient…one box at a time”? More importantly, do you remember how brief it was? I think the ads ran for about a week, after which they were hastily yanked from the air, much to my disappointment. It’s a marvel to me that this ad campaign managed to be approved by all the upper marketing echelons of a major company without one single person thinking, “Box…box. Is lewd vaginal double-entendre really the angle we’re looking for here?” It’s heartening, somehow, that an entire squadron of marketing executives can simultaneously experience such a massive mental lapse. It makes you believe in God again, you know?