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those damnable things come at the end, for now we have returned to the primary narrative, where I will tell you about Buddy Vishnu, investment adviser to the criminally insane. Buddy came into the possession of Counted Sorrows in 1947, while on a trip to Colorado to purchase a 120,000-acre cattle ranch for the real-estate portfolio of the Cleveland Strangler. Not three months thereafter - in fact, it was only one month - at the opening of a new Manhattan art gallery owned by the Milwaukee Mauler, as Buddy Vishnu was engaged in a discussion about the merits of investing in antique codpieces, his head exploded.
                       In June of 1948, Phylo P. Phillium, a world-renowned architect of vomitoriums, was given the fateful book by his niece, as a present on the occasion of the third anniversary of his successful buttocks-reduction surgery. On the ninth of August, Phylo entirely swallowed himself while having dinner at the beautiful Bel Air Hotel, an event covered extensively in a lovely article in that December's issue of Bon Appetit.
                       In March of 1950, Sam Iam, the massively wealthy inventor of green eggs, who sold such volume every St. Patrick's Day that he could afford not to work the rest of the year, claimed to have gotten Counted Sorrows from a leprechaun, which is an obvious and despicable lie. The truth of his demise, however, is well known: He was found inexplicably emulsified and smeared across the ceiling of the model-train room in his mansion.
                       You see, I am sure, that a tiresome pattern has developed. As dreadful as these deaths may be, and in spite of the fact that they provide the gruesome trail of frightful destruction that I promised you, they would have a numbing, not to say paralyzing, not to say coma-inducing effect on you if I were to recount the rest of them in the detail that I have heretofore provided. Consequently, I will convey you through the next half century of tragedy and mayhem in a more expeditious style.
                       The following people came into possession of Counted Sorrows without the slightest suspicion that the consequence of ownership was considerably more serious than, say, the minimum purchase obligation imposed on members by the Literary Guild, an organization that can be plenty tough when compelling you to purchase the agreed-upon number of books, but that has never forced a recalcitrant member to swallow himself.
                       1952. Vinnie "The Velociraptor" Taliferio, notorious Mafia pet nanny, was dandling Don Vita Corleone's cherished toy poodle on his knee, at the Don's birthday party, when his head exploded. Other guests, thinking that this was meant to be a hit on the Godfather himself, drew their weapons and killed eight innocent waiters. Well, seven were innocent, actually; the eighth was only moonlighting as a waiter and really wanted to be a film-studio executive.
                       1954. Dr. Farn Lannaman, highly skilled surgeon and pioneer of nose-hair transplants, dropped his surgical tools and spun himself into butter in the middle of refurbishing the nearly bat d nostrils of the great actor, James Cagney.
                       1955. The same year that he perished, Nestor Nada, of Tarzana, California, invented the shrub-and-tree blower, which preceded the gasoline-powered leaf blower by about two decades. The shrub-and-tree blower featured an early version of the jet engine, powered by nuclear fusion, and was meant to be a final solution to the annoyance of landscape droppings, tearing out all greenery by the roots and blowing it into the next county. Nestor was found emulsified and smeared on the ceiling of a public restroom in a casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it pains me to say that his death was celebrated by the usual environmentalist extremists who think trees are