Today I’m wearing a polo shirt for the first time since probably sixth grade. And, hell-o, I am loving it, people, for reals! I put an extra coat of conditioner on my chest hair so it’ll look shiny and decadent if it peeks out through my plunging v-neck. […] Buttoning up a polo shirt all the way was never a look that took off, was it? Well that’s all going to change today, here, now. LOOK! LOOK UPON MY BUTTONED-UP SHIRT, YE BITCHES, AND DESPAIR! No one knows what to think. Their world has been officially turned upside-down, and then, as a corollary, rocked.

You’ll be happy to know my croquet debacle line is now out there on the internet, selling beer, as is the picture of me throwing like a girl. This is the first hard evidence of me creating advertising. I feel curiously dead inside about it. And that “curiously” is there only because I can’t bear to write a sentence without an adverb.

I’m starting to suspect that my lack of work here is not due to my almost creepily (see?) high level of productivity, but because I am called upon to write copy only when there is absolutely no one else available. And since everyone can write ad copy, since it can hardly be called a “skill,” really, since the position could easily be filled by a random phrase generator — and I’m pretty sure I’m not being sarcastic here — I am never called upon.

Which is fine, but I’m starting to be troubled by how busy everyone else seems to be. Always running around, hustling to and from meetings, coming in this weekend to get a big pitch ready, etc. I don’t feel guilty, of course, but I feel like I should feel guilty, which is worse, and pretty common for yrs truly. So now I’m crafting a theory that everyone here has mastered the trick of looking busy, and harried, and flustered, hands trembling with manufactured stress. There is some Method work going on here.

I need an accomplice, someone on the outside, to call me now and then. Just call, no need to say anything, I just need the phone to ring and have it not be my mother, who is the only one who calls here. I pick it up, say something like: “Yeah? Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? Right now? I’m sick of this shit, Ray. I’ve got a really full plate today — OK, yeah, I’m on my way.” And then I slam the phone down and mutter and gather up some papers and storm out for a three-hour lunch, maybe someplace where I can feed the duckies and work on a lanyard.