squid balm for the soul

Today has been awful. Customers have been streaming in all day and calling to complain about a variety of issues—some of which are our fault, some of which are due to their own stupidity. In addition, the phones have been ringing off the hook and everyone waits for me to answer them. If I let the phone ring through to the automated system, as I did at 2:45pm while I was frantically devouring my lunch, no one else will pick it up. Instead, they wait for it to ring through, at which point it rings at the front desk—the spot directly next to me, which no one occupies because they’re too cheap to hire a receptionist. So all in all I’ve been feeling deeply resentful and frustrated, a mood which is only exacerbated by the fact that my escape from this hellhole is a mere week away.

What could possibly salvage this day? Massive amounts of chocolate? An AK-47? The Second Coming (of any religion—just as long as it ends the workday)? No. It is the first ever pictures of a living giant squid.

A couple of Japanese scientists (who were reportedly researching the animal for scientific, not culinary, purposes) successfully lured the giant squid in with bait and shot the photographs at a depth of 3,300 feet. This seems a vastly superior method to the one that was recently documented in a Discovery Channel special in which the scientists would take turns sitting in a tiny one-man submarine several thousand feet below the surface, waiting with only what basically amounted to a mini-Maglite for a 30-foot squid to appear out of the cloudy darkness. No thanks. Give me a digital camera on a rope any day. Gotta give it to those Japs—they know what’s up.

This was a fun scientific mystery that I felt sure would be resolved in my lifetime, and I was content to just sit and wait for it, like a lonely nerd in a submarine. And finally, it has arrived and I’m happy.

So, the giant squid has made my day.

That, and the apple Danish that the strange man next door just dropped off for me in return for the unusual favor I did him this morning. More on that later.