Hot damn, kids! Tephromancy! Divination by inspecting ashes! Check out these tephromantic scenarios for yourself and I think you'll agree: it's the greatest divination method ever.

#1: AT THE PUB
Alison: What is that thing?
Bob: What thing?
Alison: The thing in the ashtray.
Bob: That thing there?
Alison: No, that globby thing with cigarette ash stuck to it.
Bob: Oh, that's a piece of gum.
Alison: I think it's a chunk of pizza.
THE TEPHROMANCER: I do believe that's feta cheese.
Alison: I don't know about that.
THE TEPHROMANCER: I have divined it.
Bob: What would they be doing with feta cheese at a bar?
THE TEPHROMANCER: Well. Yeah. Feta shooters?
Alison: Gross.
Bob: With black olives and ouzo?
THE TEPHROMANCER: You know it, my main man.
Bob: Whoot!

#2: AT THE WAREHOUSE
Fire Chief Andrew: It looks like we got here too late.
Fire Subordinate Chang: You said it, chief.
Fire Chief Andrew: I don't even know what this building is.
THE TEPHROMANCER: This was a warehouse. A man - I'm getting an image here - a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a glass eye and a moustache with a nicotine streak was here. He was angry. I'm getting a lot of anger here. He's got a shipment of South American sweaters here, nice heavy wool ones, they look like - like Norwegian fishermen's sweaters. I'm definitely getting the message that these South American imports were L.L. Bean knockoffs. Why is he so angry, this Mister, Mister, Cruz? Senor Cruz. Senor Cruz is angry because they've arrived in an assortment of outrageous neon colours. Somebody has sprayed Day-Glo orange and hot pink all over these heavy navy and cream sweaters, destined for the upscale East Coast market.
Fire Chief Andrew: So Cruz tried to get his expenses back with the old gascan-and-a-matchbook trick?
Fire Subordinate Chang: Had himself the original fire sale, did he?
Fire Chief Andrew: Held an apres-ski party with the warehouse as the fire place?
Fire Subordinate Chang: Reenacted crucial scenes from The Towering Inferno with a warehouse of neon knockoffs in the starring role?
Fire Chief Andrew: Arson?
THE TEPHROMANCER: Ha ha. You guys crack me up. No, he sold them to Russian gangsters. It's a permanent day-glo eighties scene over there.
Fire Subordinate Chang: Man, I can sure see why we constantly hire you at exorbitant prices.

#3: ON THE FARM
Farmer Skor: Our calves are all deformed again.
Farmer Vertias: Sure seems so. They sure are funny looking.
Farmer Skor: And dead.
Farmer Vertias: Dead too, that's right, dead.
Farmer Skor: What do you think, Tephromancer? Any answers?
THE TEPHROMANCER: Well. I guess, I'm thinking it'd be, I'm wondering maybe if you guys had some ashes.
Farmer Skor: We haven't been burning stubble or anything, and Vertias lost his pipe last harvest.
Farmer Vertias: Hog ate it, yes it's true, bad hog.
THE TEPHROMANCER: Because -
Farmer Vertias: Bad hog.
THE TEPHROMANCER: I need -
Farmer Vertias: Cut it open but the pipe was vanished clean out of it.
THE TEPHROMANCER: No ashes, hey? Tell you what. You go get me a rooster and a pile of grain. I'll go write letters in the dust, place a grain on each letter, and we'll see which letters he pecks at.
Farmer Skor: That'll tell us then?
THE TEPHROMANCER: Well, probably not. So after that we'll cut open his gizzard to find the alectora gemma, a crystalline stone about the size of a bean that forms in the throats of roosters. We'll soak the bean in the rooster's blood overnight and splash the blood on the ground at dawn, right about when your rooster would have been crowing. The patterns in the blood will spell out the answer to your question.
Farmer Skor: My friend, your ways dazzle us.
Farmer Vertias: They do.
THE TEPHROMANCER: It's a living.
Farmer Vertias: I'm gonna feed some more DDT to the cows now.
THE TEPHROMANCER: Yeah, you do that.

parode - exode