. . . or so they say.

Tonight’s the first night since, what — July? — that D. and I’ve been apart, and already I’m feeling antsy. It’s bad timing all ’round, since hormonally I’m probably at my every-5-weeks gotta-have-it apex. I tried to divert my thoughts with figuring out how to remove the little bit of metal that’s snapped off inside my speaker device port (ooh, dirty!) so’s I can hook up (um) the new speakers. (Snuggled in their box, they look like a sweet, clean pair of oversized testes; carrying them into the office-type room, I juggled them against my chest like a pair of cartoon tits. I know that the good folks at Apple must love designing such suggestive peripherals.) I’m fairly certain that tonight I’ll be crawling into bed with a stash of porn and the Hitachi, though I’ll feel just terrible for blowing off both Bitch & Stitch and the rock show at the Lizard. (Much as I adore Kevin and want to support his musical ventures — and even though it would be a pleasure to see Tomoko — it’s always a chore sitting through Josh’s midtempo-itis songs. And they don’t go on till 11:15, and I have to haul my indie-pretending carcass to work early tomorrow. And, and, and.

The Wrens’s “This Boy Is Exhausted” keeps chorusing through my head. . . .

I haven’t gone into much gory detail vis à vis the disastrous site launch lately. Suffice to say that it was much, much worse than my pessimistic self had feared. Clients are pissed. Everything’s broken. The company looks like an ass for launching a beta version of its supposedly “enhanced, integrated” site. Ugliness abounds.

Today I sent an email to about 30 research nabobs to get a simple two 2- to 3-line description of their research coverage areas for the site. (Lots of clients, salespeople, and research assholes have been complaining that such descriptors disappeared when the new site launched; it’s been in the project plan to add the blurbage post-launch. I expect a 20% response rate. Today I received two hateful emails complaining about what I’m trying to do, two fingers-pointing-elsewhere-I’m-with-Stupid replies, two out-of-office autoresposes, and two helpful replies. One of which, from a really great research director who works from home in my dreamcity of Portland, Oregon, actually made me laugh:

Retail is a brutal, cutthroat industry dominated by the beast from Bentonville. You might as well quit your day job and move to India to write source code.
OOOOPS sorry wrong email
i thought perhaps anyone working on or near our website could use a laugh!

I wanted to give her a huge hug for that.

Aside from discovering the hair products I’ve been craving for years (Neutrogena’s Triple Moisture line, she shilled), it’s been another flatline week. Except. Except. Oh, and also, I got a reply to my penguin-related email from Mimi Smartypants yesterday, which pretty much makes me want to Snoopy dance and make everyone I know buy her book posthaste.

I should probably go back to talking about masturbation, though.