Have you seen the latest trend on local facebook groups?

The one that comes to mind is the duct cleaning ads. For some reason, every schmo with a pickup truck, baseball cap and a vacuum cleaner has become an entrepreneur not only in vent-cleaning, but DIY marketing as well, posting pictures of their grody work in every local fb group they can find.

It makes for strangely compelling photographs. Some maskless worker holds up a bag with decades worth of ventilation dust like he just struck gold, smiling big for the camera. Each one is ridiculously happy, hoisting aloft several pounds of fluffy, accumulated filth like he tracked it for miles and took it down to feed his hungry family. If you’re familiar with household dust, you know it is comprised chiefly of dead human skin cells. It has become a phenomenon: image after image of laborers proudly displaying clumps of animal dander and grandma-scrapings. How photogenic!

“Call now!”

I feel like other vendors are missing out on the camera-ready nature of some of our most disgusting household necessities. I wish it would catch on with the people who pump septic tanks – just post after post with big, clear sacks of the day’s haul. Grinning, joyful, unskilled workers, triumphantly holding aloft the biggest loaf of the day, measuring it for length and weight, like trout. “That’s gotta be some kind of a record, here at Charlie’s Pump N Dump!! Who’s next?”

Joyful exterminators, beaming behind piles of dead cockroaches, or dessicated rats, succumbed to their poison: “Blessed with a bountiful harvest!”

One enterprising duct-sucker had the swinging brass to post a vent-cleaning advertisement in a group devoted to homeless people. There’s a gold mine out there, just on the other side of your morals. By the same token, I hope the local bar owners call dibs on all this foolishly overlooked territory, and start posting Happy Hour ads in the local Alcoholics Anonymous groups.

Hey, “fish where the fish are,” right?