Wednesday, November 26, 1997
A Sure Thing
by Jabinffx
([email protected])
I may be a laughingstock now, but I know in my heart of hearts that someday the world will see the light. In the meantime, I write to you from my unique home, a railroad caboose located on my own private railway siding, attached to my own private boxcars. People come by and laugh at my home, throw sticks and stones at my home, kick my home. They think it's funny. I'll have the last laugh.
It all started back in the late eighties, when some doctors discovered cholesterol. No one had ever heard of it before, but suddenly we were all deadly afraid of it. Everyone advised that we had to cut down on fats, we had to exercise, we had to take drugs to lower our cholesterol.
But then came a best-selling book proclaiming the wonders of oat bran, a miracle cure for high cholesterol. We started baking muffins with the stuff, mixing it into pancakes, sprinkling it on our cereal, all with the hopes of reducing the "bad" cholesterol in our blood streams.
It was then I saw the opportunity of a lifetime. I went into the futures market and bought up oat bran contracts, plenty of them, all that I could afford, and then some. I knew that a few-cent rise in the price of this sure-fire cure for what ailed us would make me a rich man. I sat back and waited.
Well, as we know now, the collective arteries and colons of America soon had their fill of oat bran, and the price of my favorite grain plummeted. The futures market for the stuff collapsed, and I, not being able to sell my contracts, had to take physical delivery of four rail-cars full of oat bran.
I go out every morning with my measuring cup, scoop up a bit of oat bran from one of my rail-cars, and go back to my caboose to bake some muffins. I'm not sure where I went wrong, or if there's a lesson to be learned. If there is, I hope you all learn it before you get your caboose kicked. In the meantime, want a muffin?
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