"When you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer …"

It was great to find an eyelash this morning - it's not every day you get to start out with a wish.

And what a day to start off with a wish! Today you go to see a hypnotist for smoking cessation (and to possibly uncover repressed memories that make you flinch every time you see an assembly of Boy Scouts).

In honor of wishes, let's take a look at some other time-honored wish-granting events and their co-efficient of wish-granting strength, (a measure of magic concentration/frequency of wish-making event).

1. Eyelashes - Nobody knows why eyelashes fall out but it does happen pretty routinely, meaning that the co-efficient is actually fairly low. Therefore, eyelashes don't have the strength to support grandiose wishes. Wishes wished upon eyelashes find their greatest success when wished upon leaky microwaves. Say, for instance that you find an eyelash while re-heating a burrito and you believe that the extra loud humming noise coming from your microwave may be errant radiation escaping through a bad seal. You may even believe that the radiation escaping from the microwave may have popped you in the forehead and dislodged the eyelash by cooking the follicle it was stationed in. Your best bet in a situation like this is to wish it away and start eating a lot more cold-cuts. It's also very important to note that a stolen eyelash affords no wish-making opportunity so holding down another person and pulling out their eyelashes in an effort to gain reward not only destroys the magic of an eyelash, it also violates any number of laws, up to and including the Geneva Convention (depending upon the location and the victim's status).

2. Shooting Stars - While shooting stars happen more routinely than found eyelashes, their fleeting nature increases their magic concentration many times leading to a much larger co-efficient and makes them very useful for pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Shooting stars are appropriate for determining career paths and matters of the heart and should not be squandered on aging household appliances. Also, many people confuse satellites and tracer rounds from anti-aircraft guns as shooting stars. Many wishes went unanswered in Baghdad as the fool's gold of air defense marked the onset of hostilities and not the arrival of spectacular love and prosperity as it would have appeared.

3. Four-Leaf Clover - A rare genetic mutation, the four leaf clover is much rarer than the fallen eyelash and should be used on betting slips. The intensity of the magic is lost after one use, though so four-leaf clovers should be used in the same manner as a sanitary napkin.

4. Genie-in-a-lamp - The ultimate in wish-granting ability, the genie-in-a-lamp is both elusive and only available in troubled areas of the globe, meaning necessarily that a genie-trapped-in-a-lamp is just as dangerous as any other WMD.

5. Birthday Candles - Birthday wishes rarely come true. You'd be married to a Playmate already if this really worked.

6. The Pooping Cow - In every herd of cattle greater than 50 head, at least one is about to poop. If you can spy the tail of the cow of the cow about to poop (straight out with a slight lift at the base), you should quickly make a wish that will help to lift the dark cloud from a friend. The Pooping Cow can only grant a moment of peace to somebody [that] you love who needs it most. Find The Pooping Cow and know that you're going to make somebody else smile.

-William Cadillac Donovan

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