A smile begins to play across your face as you hum the somehow familiar tune to yourself.

This is why you should stick to "familiar tunes" which you know, with absolute certainty, were composed by an utter genius. You can't go wrong with genius.

For example: @quillfire/singing-contest-rocking-out-the

Here's the silver lining: As I read through your missive, I had an eery sense of deju vu and it took me a moment to place it: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) recounting an ass-whooping he'd taken as the result of investing in overhyped stocks. His tuition cost him a lot more than yours did you ... and how many times does one get to be compared to Mark Twain?

On that point, raconteurship, this post was a masterfully crafted story, a song sung with perfect pitch. From the beginning, I was hooked and the rest just flowed like honey. Sarcasm and self-referential humor deployed perfectly in the service of telling the tale. If losing a few bucks was the price for finding your muse, it was well worth it. This genre of story-telling (satirical allegory) is your forté.

BTW, I proudly own a fake Rolex, purchased on the streets of Istanbul. But there's a twist: the guy hawking it readily admitted it was a fake Rolex but claimed it was the best fake Rolex I'd ever encounter. I was so impressed with this guy's con that I bought it as a souvenir ... and offered to buy him lunch. He accepted and, as we ate, regaled me with tales of ne'er-do-welling that would have impressed Satan. But here's the thing: What this guy recounted constituted a masterclass in psychology. His intuitive understanding of humanity (the good, the bad and the ugly) awed me. And his big insight: The most effective way to get people to go along with a scam is to involve them in its perpetration. Hence, his objective was not to get the mark to believe they were buying a real Rolex, but rather to get the mark to believe they could convincingly con others into believing they'd bought a real Rolex.

During lunch I mentioned that I intended to buy a couple of Turkish silk carpets for my Mom & Dad. His face scewed up in a look of horror and he informed me that, with all due respect, I'd get utterly swindled if I tried to buy them myself. And so, after lunch he sheparded me around for a couple of hours, engaging in countless screaming matches before recommending two to buy. I did. Of course, I wasn't sure that this too wasn't some kind of scam (maybe the vendors were his cousins and he was getting a kickback) and so, upon arrival in Canada, I took the carpets to a Turkish carpet shop for an appraisal. The guy was awed ... they were beautiful and extremely high quality carpets. "Where did you buy them and how much did you pay?" I told him and, on the spot, he offered to buy them for triple what I'd payed. Thirty-five years later, one hangs on my wall, the other on a wall in my parents' house.

I never wore my fake Rolox but for years I displyed it on the mantle above my fireplace and, invariably, people would ask about it and I'd recount the story. When I managed hedge funds, I recounted the story to one of my wealthy clients who owned a real Rolox and, upon hearing it, he made a comment that struck me as being profoundly insightful: "I paid $10,000 for my Rolox, while you paid $20 for yours. And, in the end, you have a priceless story to tell ... and all I can do is tell you the time."

Quill