death of a death of a salesman
Dear Second Bedroom,
I’m
responsible for the Recession. Well, not just me, but myself and my
ilk: Telephone Salespeople. I’ve died and gone to Hell, and I’m a
living, speaking tongue of flame selling ad space in trade pubs for
Nybbas out of a boiler room in Malebolge. The last ten years of my life
on earth were spent misappropriating marketing funds from dopes
in
some of the worst hit parts of the country. Vain business owners threw
tens of thousands of dollars my way for fake magazines in every
godforsaken industry under the sun. This bucket of crap is known as the
Profiles Industry, it’s kind of like Vanity Publishing but creepier, and
it’s the only future for printed publications in end times.
Everything
I said was made up. Taking everyone from idiot executives of Fortune
500 companies to family business owners, 250 calls a day. I separated
them from their coffers with insider information (and football talk)
that was smuggled via bogus research made for cover stories that would
never be written. Lies became truth with practice, and we would do
anything for a stale beer and box seats at the hockey game sitting on
the boss’s knee: “It doesn’t matter if the vice-president was killed in a
car wreck – call the C.F.O. at home on his cell phone. We have a
fish-fry target to hit.” So, I risked being pulled apart by horses for
five hundred years to send you and
your readership this sales script.
Arrrggghhh!
Vincent Dermody