Nobody knows the nubbin I seen.
Let's try something: for every block of Shaker furniture copy I write, I will allow myself to type up one paragraph in this entry. This is the only way I will successfully appease my readerships at LiveJournal and ludicrouslypricedfurniture.com.
My cats are competing to see who can sleep in the most precarious position for the longest. Ito sits atop the leaderboard, having just cat-napped for four hours on a gas range heated to 450 degrees. Tibbits is eying the microwave. Somewhere, Cosmo sleeps the most uncomfortable sleep of all.
For the past several months, I have been using my sister's computer for work and incidentally, to store obscene amounts of stolen music. This has necessitated deleting her music. When she returns, she will be irked to find her 311 discography replaced with Captain Beefheart, Tiny Tim, and Ween. Sorry, sis.
Grandma Dolores Next Door peers anxiously through her blinds as Cold War tensions between Keith and The Neighborhood Skaters continue to escalate. Since I've been back, I've jogged the same route every day and have grown accustomed to their squeaky voiced cat calls and sporadic pellet gun ambushes. More recently, hostilities have come to a head. As I slogged up Home Stretch Hill last Wednesday, their mohawked ringleader (presumably a Rufio) said, "Hey, you're a fast runner." I said thanks and told him that he was a good skateboarder. Then, he called me a fag. I shrugged and kept running. I had thought it was a sincere compliment, but I guess I am slow enough to where his sarcasm should have been readily apparent to me in the first place.
I want to reach out to these kids. I am one of them. I, too, have spent many a world-weary night scheming against The Man and His System. Does my hard-earned Trotskyite beard mean nothing to them? I know their type. Anti-social, anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-establishment, anti-The Man, anti-everything. I was once their type. But now I am older and anti-anti-everything.
I want to rid their minds of this futile raging. I want to sweep their acne away with a brush of my hand. I want to fertilize their upper lips and cull their dirtstaches up from the pockmarked soil, the fruits of their puberty blossoming into grody teenager goatees. I want to spare them five years of blind, misdirected hostility. I want to press fast-forward and share a few disheartened beers with them down at Jammer's Pub. But my words are empty to them. They don't trust anyone over seventeen. I am old and wear an Eddie Bauer sweatshirt when I run.
My copywriting efficiency has dropped off ever since I started copywriting. The first week, I wrote 167 pieces of copy in five days. The second week, I wrote 120 pieces of copy in seven days. This week, I have written 40 pieces of copy and I have already missed the original deadline by two days. I'd like to attribute this lag to some noble, aesthetic drive of mine to perfect my most beloved craft, but it is more than likely due to paranoia. Repetition spooks me and copywriting is nothing more than the art of repeatedly reiterating redundant refrains.
A good copywriter must be aware of his or her repetition cycles. Do not repeat a color adjective within a piece of copy. Do not repeat a clause or thought within any single catalog. Do not repeat entire copyblocks with the names changed; this is a deadly sin. But invariably, because a copywriter writes so much copy in such a deliriously short amount of time, he or she is destined to fall victim to repetition. Inevitably, you find yourself copying your own copy. When it happens, it is the most nauseating sort of déjà vu. With it comes the realization that, of all the thousands of words, of all the nigh infinite combinations thereof, you have described two completely different objects in exactly the same way. You can rationalize this by saying, "Well, this furniture is all cookie-cutter crap anyway," but the glitch in your brain has left you feeling hollow and, above all else, boring.
I'm not sure how to get around my copywriter's block. A specially prescribed drug cocktail might do the trick. Amphetamines could give me the zip needed to pump out 160 copy blocks in an hour. A few choice hallucinogens might vivify the appearance of even the most severe Craftsman's Guild armoire. Inhaling certain household solvents may prove beneficial in numbing my brain to the crippling boredom of the Vaughan Furniture Company's "Simply Shaker" bedroom ensemble. What could be more erotic than a queen-sized bed crafted in the style of celibate 18th century Britons?
My cats are competing to see who can sleep in the most precarious position for the longest. Ito sits atop the leaderboard, having just cat-napped for four hours on a gas range heated to 450 degrees. Tibbits is eying the microwave. Somewhere, Cosmo sleeps the most uncomfortable sleep of all.
For the past several months, I have been using my sister's computer for work and incidentally, to store obscene amounts of stolen music. This has necessitated deleting her music. When she returns, she will be irked to find her 311 discography replaced with Captain Beefheart, Tiny Tim, and Ween. Sorry, sis.
Grandma Dolores Next Door peers anxiously through her blinds as Cold War tensions between Keith and The Neighborhood Skaters continue to escalate. Since I've been back, I've jogged the same route every day and have grown accustomed to their squeaky voiced cat calls and sporadic pellet gun ambushes. More recently, hostilities have come to a head. As I slogged up Home Stretch Hill last Wednesday, their mohawked ringleader (presumably a Rufio) said, "Hey, you're a fast runner." I said thanks and told him that he was a good skateboarder. Then, he called me a fag. I shrugged and kept running. I had thought it was a sincere compliment, but I guess I am slow enough to where his sarcasm should have been readily apparent to me in the first place.
I want to reach out to these kids. I am one of them. I, too, have spent many a world-weary night scheming against The Man and His System. Does my hard-earned Trotskyite beard mean nothing to them? I know their type. Anti-social, anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-establishment, anti-The Man, anti-everything. I was once their type. But now I am older and anti-anti-everything.
I want to rid their minds of this futile raging. I want to sweep their acne away with a brush of my hand. I want to fertilize their upper lips and cull their dirtstaches up from the pockmarked soil, the fruits of their puberty blossoming into grody teenager goatees. I want to spare them five years of blind, misdirected hostility. I want to press fast-forward and share a few disheartened beers with them down at Jammer's Pub. But my words are empty to them. They don't trust anyone over seventeen. I am old and wear an Eddie Bauer sweatshirt when I run.
My copywriting efficiency has dropped off ever since I started copywriting. The first week, I wrote 167 pieces of copy in five days. The second week, I wrote 120 pieces of copy in seven days. This week, I have written 40 pieces of copy and I have already missed the original deadline by two days. I'd like to attribute this lag to some noble, aesthetic drive of mine to perfect my most beloved craft, but it is more than likely due to paranoia. Repetition spooks me and copywriting is nothing more than the art of repeatedly reiterating redundant refrains.
A good copywriter must be aware of his or her repetition cycles. Do not repeat a color adjective within a piece of copy. Do not repeat a clause or thought within any single catalog. Do not repeat entire copyblocks with the names changed; this is a deadly sin. But invariably, because a copywriter writes so much copy in such a deliriously short amount of time, he or she is destined to fall victim to repetition. Inevitably, you find yourself copying your own copy. When it happens, it is the most nauseating sort of déjà vu. With it comes the realization that, of all the thousands of words, of all the nigh infinite combinations thereof, you have described two completely different objects in exactly the same way. You can rationalize this by saying, "Well, this furniture is all cookie-cutter crap anyway," but the glitch in your brain has left you feeling hollow and, above all else, boring.
I'm not sure how to get around my copywriter's block. A specially prescribed drug cocktail might do the trick. Amphetamines could give me the zip needed to pump out 160 copy blocks in an hour. A few choice hallucinogens might vivify the appearance of even the most severe Craftsman's Guild armoire. Inhaling certain household solvents may prove beneficial in numbing my brain to the crippling boredom of the Vaughan Furniture Company's "Simply Shaker" bedroom ensemble. What could be more erotic than a queen-sized bed crafted in the style of celibate 18th century Britons?