Company selling some brand of flake cereal saying every flake’s a meal. 

Company ad will have Danny DeVito and Bruce Campbell on a toboggan, while it’s snowing, waiting for a phone call from a very important boss. And while they’re sitting there, one of them offers the other a flake to eat. It’s the size of your hand. It’s a large-size flake. 

They argue about how a flake of food isn’t a meal, even an extremely large flake, but then finally both start chewing on one flake apiece. In the meantime their very important boss calls but their very important boss can’t understand them because they’re still chewing, when their very important boss finally calls.

Ad writer explains people like more for less. And fish can eat one flake of their food as a meal. The ad writer smiles really wide. 

Someone in the meeting points out that’s not really true, fish eat a lot of the flakes you pour into their bowl before being satisfied. 

Ad writer says they basically eat just one. They eat two, tops, but basically just what would amount to one really large flake, if you piece the small flakes together. 

Another person in the meeting asks, are we selling really large flakes like the ones you describe in your commercial involving Danny DeVito and Bruce Campbell? Is that the size of the flakes in the cereal or what? 

You’re missing the point, ad writer says. Every flake’s a meal, ad writer says. 

Have Danny DeVito and Bruce Campbell committed to starring in this commercial, someone else in the meeting says. 

Ad writer gets annoyed and won’t talk any further on the subject for the rest of the meeting. 

The clients are impressed by his petulance and they are in for the campaign. They are pretty sure people will know one flake of their cereal isn’t a meal, but what does that matter? They think.

What does anything ever matter?

Matt Rowan lives in Los Angeles. He currently edits Untoward Magazine. He’s author of two story collections, Big Venerable (CCLaP, 2015), Why God Why (Love Symbol Press, 2013) and another, How the Moon Works, forthcoming from Cobalt Press. He’s also a contributing writer and voice actor for The Host podcast series. His short story, “The Ok Grocery Store Corral,” was long-listed by The Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions 2013. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in TRNSFR, Spork, Always Crashing, Grimoire, and Necessary Fiction, among other