The Wages of Peanut M&Ms is Death!

I have been craving Peanut M&Ms all day long. And I am a little tired of it, believe you me.

It doesn't help that Peanut M&Ms are easily obtainable. Seriously, I don't even have to buy them. They are located:

* In the hand-painted "M&M" bowl that someone gave to Mrs. Luaphacim and me on the occasion of our marriage (yes, our names both start with "M." Get it?). Said bowl sits conveniently atop the microwave on the way to the refrigerator (in which we keep the food I can actually eat).

* On the desk of one of my co-workers, with whom I have been sitting for about two hours per day in order to train him on calculating taxable gains. Sometimes he eats them, and the lovely aroma wafts by my nose in an unbearably delicious-smelling fashion.

* On top of a filing cabinet I pass each time I go to the bathroom. (Which is frequently, as I have been drinking a lot of water to control my appetite.) They are so inviting, and yet so full of carbs and fats...

In short, it gets to be unbearable sometimes. The only thing that keeps me from buckling under this enormous temptation is envisioning my own bloated, cholesterol-saturated corpse lying in the middle of a large, empty room with scattered handfuls of peanut M&Ms colorfully festooning the floor around me.

Two tough-looking, hard-boiled detectives are examining the scene.

Detective 1 takes a long drag on his cigarette. "So, what do you think got him?"

Detective 2 is silhouetted by backlighting from around the corner as he sticks his hands in the pockets of his trench coat. "I think it's pretty obvious."

"Yeah." Detective 1 shakes his head. "Why do they always think they can beat the M&Ms?" He blows an impressive smoke ring toward my cadaver. "When will they ever learn?" The smoke ring settles dramatically upon my bulging stomach.

Detective 2 takes out his Glock 19 9 mm and inspects its 15-round magazine. "It didn't have to be like this, you know." He hears a sudden movement in the corner of the warehouse and fires off a shot into the shadows. "He could've eaten carrots instead, and we never would've had to come and clean up this mess."

"It's always the carrots that drive them to the M&Ms. I've seen it a dozen times," says Detective 1 as he drops his cigarette butt, grinds it with his heel, and dives to cover just in time to avoid a burst of fire from the Uzi-toting terrorist across the room. Rounds of 9x19 mm Parabellum hollow points shred the packing crate behind him.

Detective 2 lobs a grenade over at the intruder, and after the explosion, lights a cigarette of his own. "It's a shame, a 27-year-old kid like that. Well, I guess we're about wrapped up here."

As they leave the building, Detective 1 sets a Demolition Charge M183 next to a load-bearing support beam, and shortly thereafter, I am entombed in the rubble of the warehouse, never to be seen again.

So that is how I have been avoiding Peanut M&Ms.

My one ray of sunshine in this diet is that I actually can eat some meat (yes, I know I said I was becoming a vegetarian, but I was mistaken). It might keep me out of the abandoned warehouse for another few weeks, anyway.