My new standard joke at Petco is I go and stock up on like a hundred cans of cat food and cart them to the register and the clerk brings out their enforced friendly chatter and asks — every single time — “Oh! How many cats do you have?” and I say, “None.”

I went to the Petco website just now to make sure I had the “Petco” name right (I mean surely that name’s due for a touchy-feely overhaul, right? Isn’t that what everyone’s doing these days? So maybe “Woofie McMeow’s Kritter Kompound” with a “We certainly do not use ground-up hamsters to make our dog chow™” tagline kicker?) and I’m greeted with this and it’s like the last fifteen years never happened and I’m right back in my k-hole hallucinating images such as these, thinking my brain is operating on total next-level shit. Moral to the story: What you think is next-level shit today will be used to advertise pet food in (28 ÷ x) years, where x=[your age].

Speaking of, my ass-cream work has been going very well. Everyone keeps making exaggerated frowny-faces when I tell them what I’m working on, like: “Awww! That must be so terrible for you!!” But really it’s preferable to doing copywriting for a product that’s supposed to be cool or sophisticated or whatnots. With ass cream, there’s no room to be clever or hip. It’s providing a solution to a very real and specific problem, namely the itching and discomfort associated with anorectal inflammation. You don’t have to trick people into buying it. You don’t need “attitude.” It is good advertising. It is honest advertising. It says: “Your ass is itchy. We would very much like to help you with that.” And let me tell you, people respond to that kind of messaging.