“Can you believe it, Bob? Quinoa & pomegranate salad again for lunch in this stupid cafeteria. I tell ya, these new budget-cuts are working my last nerve. I used to look forward to a hot, wholesome meal to break up my dreary-ass day in Accounting.”

“I hear you, Sheila. I used to enjoy coming to work when they’d serve those corn-breaded human toe things? Remember? The nubbly ones in Béarnaise sauce, that bobbed and floated when the pan got real hot, where the cartilage would just kinda melt through the breading a little bit and blend with the butter to achieve this whole intriguing ‘fusion effect’ on the palette?”

“I know, right? That menu was choice! I know a girl in Food & Beverage and she says they used to import those toes from suburban Ontario housewives captured exclusively in Spring and given a steady diet of lentils through the summer months.”

“Total loss. Nothing provides that satisfying crunch like appendages taken from Canadian women immobilized and force-fed legumes through a six-inch funnel. But I heard there were complaints from some of the limousine liberals over in corporate. You know — issues with the whole ‘caging’ thing.”

“They can cry me a freakin’ river! As if cages are cruel. Those women don’t want to move around much anyway. How do people think they got so damned big in the first place? Anyhow, it’s not the bleeding hearts. It’s the budget-cuts and overseas outsourcing that have occasioned all this tasteless austerity. Frankly, Bob, I’ve been thinking of pursuing another line of work. I’m seriously contemplating a career as a novelist.”

“Wow, Sheila, I’m stunned. I had no idea that you were a writer.”

“Well, I’m not. I can barely spell my own name and the last thing I ever wrote was a poem to my cat in macaroni-art in the first grade, but what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Sorry, Sheila. I mean, I know absolutely nothing about that industry, but I always assumed that a certain amount of working experience and innate talent was involved with that sort of process, not to mention a respectable level of editorial integrity and perhaps even a soupcon of humility — the kind that might be prudent before daring to proffer a long-form work of literature for public consumption.”

?

“Oh, I see. So … what’s your novel about and when is it coming out?”

“I don’t know, yet, but there’s a new service that lets you enter keyword themes like ‘masochism,’ ‘buoyant,’ ‘dystopian,’ and ‘swans,’ and then it writes everything according to those crucial choices. You see, it’s a maximization of the deep creative abilities I cannot necessarily harness. But the novel itself will be on Amazon by December, for sure.”

“Hmmpf. You need to write a damn cookbook for this commissary, if you ask me. I just got a piece of quinoa stuck up above the gumline and somebody needs to put a stop to this shit.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Bob. I have a whole series planned. Cookbooks, fitness, romance, YA — the works! I’ll be picking my teeth with toenails culled from my very own stable of Halifax housewives by this time next year. Bet on it. Talent is the future of everything.”