The Despair Inc. Blog

…surprise, idiots in the marketing department screwed that up completely. Again.Not that you asked, of course. Not that you even care, even if the story is a rather epic adventure that stars a valiant, even dashing when-the-light-is-just-right and you’re-standing-just-far-enough-away marketing peon locked in a heroic if doomed struggle against the overwhelming forces of department stupidity and bureaucratic oppression.No, if I know you (and believe me, I do), you are far more interested in hearing about other goings-on at Despair.Shall I elaborate? Why not?

The ladies on The Wailing List would be more than happy to hear my tale of woe, provided the plot intersects at some very early point with the path of the dashing-in-any-light-because-he-now-drives-a-Carrera 4 Dr. Lawrence Kersten. (Oh, you think I don’t know how many of you are secretly longing to be caught up in a torrid, self-destructive relationship with the Doctor of Despair? I’m not just the peon who has to write this stupid newsletter every week- I’M THE ONE WHO HAS TO SCREEN ALL THE EMAILS SENT BY THE AMOROUS HONIES TO THE PUBLIC ADDRESS OF DR. KERSTEN.)

(And no, your erotic love poems don’t make it to his in-box, ever. Most of them get trashed immediately. The worst of them get tacked up to a piece of corkboard near the water cooler, where they are memorized by everyone from the forklift operator, to the accounts payable clerk, and beyond. Ask the next Despair phone agent you talk to to recite, “Red Stilettos and Pink Champagne - A Villanelle” if you doubt me*).

Meanwhile, the men on The Wailing List aren’t even bothering to read this. They’re just sitting there wondering:

1. If the girl in the Cluelessness T-shirt works at Despair. (I know this because some of them will write replies asking for an email address, as they do every time there’s a picture of a girl in a Wailing List.)
2. If she really is Clueless. (Which guys consider a major plus, ladies, because dumb women actually can be attracted to shallow men, after which idiot pseudo-love and/or Sha-Boing-Boing can commence.)
3. If she’s at least somewhat nice and knows how to cook. (The reason being that well behaved women rarely make history, but you can’t eat history.)

Now, as it happens, I’m actually at the Nexus of both of these intersecting stories- of Dr. Kersten’s new Porsche and of the “Cluelessness” Girl, because as a marketing peon I not only write dumb marketing newsletters, and screen emails from horndogs (some with literary pretensions and creepy foot fetishes), I also end up having to lug heavy c-stands around (amongst other menial tasks) during photoshoots. So, despite the fact that you’d rather hear stories about OTHER people whom you somehow believe in your twisted fantasies might complete you, I’m sitting here in the middle of Saga worthy of a six-season HBO series (while occasionally fetching water or dusting a fine German automobile between takes).

So. Here… We… Are… Dissatisfied with each other, and yet stuck with each other. With me obliged to hawk a couple of new shirts and you sitting there irritated that I called you out. And the story of last week’s marketing screw-ups likely to remain untold, no matter how valorous the protagonist is. Or how charming he appears (in the aforementioned optimal lighting conditions and across the previously noted necessary distances).

*And by the way, Helen M., I don’t care if you look like Emmanuelle Béart in “Manon of the Spring”, if you pen a little ditty to a guy, telling him you want him to drink carbonated wine with you from your own footwear, you’re going to make him wanna puke. That’s not erotic- it’s neurotic, and more than a little unsanitary. So stop asking our doctor if he’d be interested in that and instead ask your doctor if lithium is right for you. (And then consider retitling your poem, “Foot Soup (Wait, Don’t Run Away) - A Villanelle”.)

And hey, speaking of t-shirts, I’m going to let you STILL save $5 on ALL SHIRTS our our DespairWear collection for a couple more weeks, because we didn’t send out last week’s Wailing List!