In between the apples and the cloroform

The other day, Ms. Pasta started telling a sad story to The Baron and me about someone who went for a routine eye examination, but instead of the usual result (upgrade to new trendier glasses), they discovered a tumor behind her eye, say it along with me, the size of a grapefruit.  These stories always have a grapefruit in them, have you noticed?  But it got worse, because it has the other elements of a sad story:  no health insurance, no money, living in a friends basement, alcohol abuse, teenager, no dad, and so on. 

It was hard to see where the conversation could go from there, so after saying the “oh, that’s terrible” stuff, I tried to switch it to my worms.   “On the bright side, guess what?  I started out with four worms last week, and now I have five!”

“Yes, that’s what they do,” said the Baron, in a tired way.  “And on the dark side, …” And he told a story about how a license plate in his neighborhood reminded him of a person he went to high school with, so he tried to google him, came up with nothing, and then, a week later, saw his obituary in the paper.  

It didn’t seem like my news about the worms was strong enough to overcome all this grimness.  I think it might be a bad move to call everyone in to a big meeting and saying, “I don’t know when, or how many of you, or anything else, but there will be a lot more layoffs, and everyone should be looking for work.”  It just brings bad juju, and causes everyone to stand around and tell stories about people who died young and unexpectedly, or are about to.

Thankfully, I’ve got the worm farm.  It does look quite promising, a 25 percent increase in the herd after only a week.  If you project out, that could be 1,000 worms by Week 26.  It appears to be a very lucrative biz, and if you want to get in on the ground floor, as they say, or in this case, the O horizon, feel free to contact me.  

It’s not nearly as good a gimmick as this, though.  That's sheer brilliance:  an atheist who promises to take care of the pets of people who get sucked up during the rapture.  Last I heard, he had collected $110 each from 100 subscribers.  That’s the kind of job I’m looking for, if you know of anything.