The Man on the Ceiling

"Who are you?" I asked the man on my ceiling.
"I come with a very important message . . . " the man on my ceiling began.
"Yeah, yeah" I interrupted him impatiently. "You're the third one this month with an important message. Just hold on a minute."
I went and got the broom from the closet and swatted him down off my ceiling. He floated down gently, not at all defensive or threatening.
"C'mon" I said to him as I went out the front door. I took him to the pawn shop over on Elm Street.
"How much for another ceiling man?" I asked the guy behind the counter.
"Hmmm" he looked my ceiling man up and down. "We've been getting a lot of them lately, but I can still give you twenty dollars for him."
"Deal" I said shortly. "You, go stand over there" I said to my ceiling man, who meekly went over to a group of men quietly standing in the corner.
It's a good feeling to have a crisp twenty dollar bill in your wallet from an honest business transaction.
At home I started to make a sandwich with pimento loaf, but somehow the thought of Kraft mayonnaise on bread sickened me. I rummaged through the fridge, looking for something to tantalize me. But all I saw were banal brands -- Vlasic pickles; Heinz Ketchup; a bag of Dole shredded lettuce; Sargento string cheese sticks; and a six pack of Shasta club soda. I couldn't stand the sight of any of it, which convinced me I was now an aesthete. This in turn depressed me so much I just went to bed hungry, and slept soundly through the night.
The next morning I worked in my home office for a few hours, mostly emailing invoices and setting up a boondoggle in West Virginia for Elizabeth Warren. She pays well.
When my stomach kept fluttering without stop I knew I had to give in and fill it with something, so I went over to Schmutz's for hard boiled eggs and buttered whole wheat toast. This helped, but I still felt an existential crisis was brewing -- so I took a long walk in the park on the trail along the river. The exercise did me good, and I made up my mind to change things around, to shake up my world and color outside the box. So I went back to the Elm Street pawn shop to buy back my ceiling man. The place was jam packed with ceiling men now, and I couldn't find mine anywhere. The guy behind the counter was no help; when I asked him if he could point mine out he just shrugged his shoulders and said they all looked alike to him. 
"Well then, gimme that one" I said, pointing to a dwarfish man in tan slacks and a brown cardigan. "He looks okay. I'll give you five for him."
"That's my brother -- he's not for sale. Not yet" said the man behind the counter. So I just took the nearest one handy, for six dollars. 
I took my new ceiling man home and he promptly floated up to the living room ceiling and sat cross legged next to the smoke alarm.
"What important message do you have for me?" I asked him.
"I have no message for you." he replied quietly.
"Nothing?" I asked.
"Nothing" he said.
So I left him there and went into my office to play solitaire on my pc. 
When I came back out he hadn't moved an inch.
"Do you want something to eat?" I asked him.
"No thank you" he said.
"And still no message for me, is that right?" I asked him.
"Correct" he said.
Now I was getting peeved. 
"Well" I told him, "I have a message for YOU."
He didn't react at all. 
"My message is this" I began. "The only thing certain in life is death in Texas."
"You mean 'death and taxes'" he replied, as he began shrinking.
"I mean never look a dentist in the teeth!" I said heatedly.
"That would be 'never look a gift horse in the mouth,'" he said in a squeaky voice. He was the size of a Barbie doll.
"Don't cut off your hair to spite your barber" I warned him. He was now no bigger than a hairpin. And still shrinking.
"Good-bye, cruel world" he said, and then vanished.
Our little talk had invigorated me so much that I went back to the pawn shop for another ceiling man. But they were all gone.
"Yeah" said the guy behind the counter. "They all just shrank away to nothing. But they did leave behind some nice belt buckles, so it wasn't a total loss."
I wasn't interested in belt buckles at all, but I did buy a miniature samurai sword in a black lacquered case that looks good on my desk.