I am a whore.
Doing some more work for Zepter – they still owe me for the vacuum cleaner stuff, but somehow I’m back at it. “It’s all for the second camera for Pirates,” fuego reminds me. Sure. If we gat paid. And if we get paid for that previous work I’ll take this back:
Zepter is a bunch of cheap-ass sons of bitches.
For the benefit of anyone searching on Google for info about this company, let me say that again:
Zepter is a bunch of cheap-ass sons of bitches.
Although they did come up with tickets to the world Hockey championship game. I gave up my spot (you’re welcome, Mito, if you ever say thank you), but that was a nice gesture on their part. Maybe they’re just waiting for an invoice.
So tonight fuego and I were working on the copy for the Zepter Bioptron, which probably represents the state of the art for light therapy. I spent the evening writing copy that fell into two categories: “Not provably false” and “They’ve already said it once so it won’t make things any worse to say it again.” And honestly, it’s probably not complete bullshit. This is the technological answer to “You should get out more,” without the dangerous UV. So I’m OK with that.
Still, I wrote things tonight that… well, let’s just say I wrote some things. Let there be Light — 50W, polarized, in a narrow band of the visible spectrum, with a timer, on a flexible stand.
I met the manager of Zepter’s health products today. It was an early morning meeting in a fancy hotel that luckily was near my pad. It was a beautiful morning walk, and the rays of the sun lifted my already doing-alright spirits. This is the very feeling Zepter is marketing. Whether they deliver it or not I have no idea. I met up with fuego and the client was a little late but this is Eastern Europe and that’s the way it works.
Let’s call her Sofia. It’s as good a name as any. She’s a doctor, living in Zurich, spending time in Milan, and she is distractingly attractive. The period when the button of her shirt finally gave up the good fight and when she pulled things back together is but a vague and hazy mam – uh, sorry – memory. Mmmm… Kryptonite. But Dammit Jim, she’s a doctor! She was part of the team that developed this little marvel. She was smart, no doubt, and enthusiastic, and (according to fuego) far more together on what she needed going in than the average Zepter product manager. It was a good meeting.
Except for the part where we said we’d have a draft in two days. That was nuts. But by then all I could think about was the button holding on for dear life. I tried to use my Jedi Master Force Stuff: Just let go, little button. You’ve been working harder than any little button ever should; no one would blame you if you relaxed for just one second.”
I am no Jedi, but it’s better to try to use the Force when you don’t have it that to completely forget you are a Jedi Master when your life is in peril. But I’ve gone on about that before.
The button held, resolute, against great pressure. Some of the greatest pressure I’ve seen in some time. But she had much more going on than that, and I’ve already done her a disservice emphasizing her beautiful, freckled, gravity-defying bosom over her other qualities.
Dang. I can’t resist irony even when it turns me into an ass.
(Turns me into?) But seriously, she was way more that. It was the smile that reached all the way up to her brown eyes. It was the way she was confident without being overbearing. It was the way that, on some fundamental level, for her life is still fun. I am not going to smooth on her. I am what they call “not boyfriend material,” and I don’t see that changing. “Insensitive, lazy, self-centered, unemployed workaholic” is not how one gets “ideal date” status, and I’m enjoying being that way.
And now I’m writing copy. In fairness to all, it was a done deal we were writing this copy before the meeting. This morning was about what copy to write, not whether to write copy. fuego had already thrown us into the tar pit; it was just nice to see a pretty, intelligent, witty face there while we sank beneath the surface.
