Charles Dickens Was Paid Per Word

Sink your teeth into this doozey of an opening paragraph... again, the key is to remember that he was paid per word, and by a certain point in his career he knew he'd have a classic no-matter how redundant it was...

Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and scrooge's name was good upon 'change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowlege, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wistom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.

OCD, yea you know me!

Some people have OCD (or, Obsessive Compulsive Dissorder) in ways that are productive, like neatness, or germ-free...

This is a little embarrassing, but I have OCD in ways that manifest rarely, but powerfully. And never to make things better.

I know what you're thinking, Doctor, how could you have OCD? You didn't clean your last car for ten years, not including the bleach spill in the back seat which required you to drive with your head out the window like a dog for 3 months to avoid the fumes!

Okay, this is going to sound like the dumbest thing you've ever read. But...

Apple Pies. I love them. I'm a big fan of all sorts of pies, but you can't really beat a fresh, warm, home-made apple pie... Onlything is, I CAN'T eat the first slice. There has to be at least a slice taken out of the pie before I can cut myself a slice. I know this sounds uninhibitive, but I've quite a fatty, so sometimes I stop at a bakery on the way home for an apple pie, and if nobody's around, I can't eat it! I've been known to race over to a neighbor's house, and say, "Sorry to bother you, I know it's 2am, but can I PLEASE interest you in a slice of this brand new apple pie?". If someone cuts it, and tells me it's NOT the first slice, when it really is, I'll be fine, obviously. BUT if they tell me it wasn't the first piece, and then later tell me they were lying and that it actually WAS the first piece, I'll seriously run to the bathroom with violent stomache convulsions. Why is this?

It's because I'm a moron with no anchored set of values.

And it's ONLY with Apple Pie! I can eat the first slice of any other kind of pie

In fact, that’s where it gets really weird. When it comes to pies other than apple, I CAN ONLY EAT THE FIRST SLICE!

This makes it really awkward when we’re at a relative’s house for dinner, and Grandma says, “who’d like a piece of blueberry pie” and I jump out of my chair going, “I DO!” and I run over to the oven, grabbing a knife and pie-spatula on the way. It’s really embarrassing when I’m at a dinner party with those same neighbors that I harrased at balls in the morning to share the Apple Pie, and now they see me whorde all over the loganberry like some sort of pregnant frat-boy.

I don’t know where this thing with the pies comes from, I think it stems 7th grade math class when we were learning about different types of graphs, and right in the middle of learning about Pie-Charts, our class guinea pig gave messy birth to a greasy wop baby pig… *shudder*