I think it’s almost better to have an undecorated cubicle than the sparsely decorated one I now have. This week I added a little Boards of Canada sticker, two wind-up robots that my mother-in-law-to-be gave me for Christmas, and a little sticker playset that A. gave me for my birthday that features an ice cream truck and a dog and a manhole.

They are all dwarfed (dwarved?) by the vast expanse of empty walls that surround them, making perfectly clear that they are, of course, just sad attempts at injecting personality into my professional demeanor, which is hard and grim and cold and maybe gay, if I had to guess.

To avoid this problem, people here have been forced to really super-decorate their cubicles, turning them into these vast mosaics of cut-outs and miniature dollies and photographs and toys and whatever, incredibly dense and kind of overwhelming, really almost an act of personality violence, stabbing themselves into this professional environment and not letting up until everyone lies bleeding on the floor.

I shall now eat the shit out of this spearmint Altoid. Yesterday I had pepperoni on a sandwich for the first time. And then today for the second time. Here’s me before this week: “Pepperoni? Put that shit on a pizza, bra, for reals. That ain’t no meat for no sandwich. I don’t know where you were home-schooled but on my planet, lunchmeat has to be at least five or six inches in diameter and probably more rectangular than round.” Here’s me now: “Two fistfuls of pepperoni on my sandwich, please. If you hold the lettuce could I swap it for more pepperoni? Fuck the bread, just give me a bag full of pepperoni and a double-scotch-rocks and put it on my tab.” Because evidently I was visiting some sort of fantasy Subway that has a full bar.

Something else I learned this week at Subway. Subway has been the number-one franchise for the past eleven years, according to Entrepreneur magazine. They had the article there by the cash register like it would totally impress me. I don’t know what the criteria is, but I know that number three was 7-Eleven, which makes sense, seems OK, but number two was something called Curves For Women. Curves For Women. So you’re saying I’ve never heard of the number two franchise in all of the USA? Never seen one? And I’m not even entirely sure what it is they sell? My first thought was plus-size fashion. Let me do a search.

Ah, OK. Fitness and weight-loss centers. Seems like curves would be something fitness would get rid of, though. How did they get to goddamn number two with such an awkward name and no brand-recognition, at least when it comes to yours truly, who is pretty much the target audience. It makes zero sense. This country’s hair has gone gray with insanity.