it's just a hunch...

I say that Osama bin Laden got pissed off at his stockbroker. Or maybe he got mad that a cousin he doesn’t like managed to buy controlling interest in Citigroup. Either way, people always adorn their actions with lofty motives, with idealism and self-righteousness. So, suppose he got a bad tip and when he whined, the broker diss’ed him. When you dis’ a rich Arab, he gets miffed.

Diss’ed and miffed, Osama sought vengeance and cloaked his vengeance with ostensibly righteous indignation ala Mohammed – in other words, he found an authority to justify himself. He recruited some thugs, fed them Mohammed’s visions of glory for killers of the infidel, and sent them to administer his vengeance.

Things in life are usually far simpler than the media and the experts will ever allow you to believe. Given what we all know about stockbrokers, the rich, about business and about terrorism, and especially about human nature, I think this hunch is a reasonable proxy for the facts, such as they might be.

The attacks on the World Trade Center have, I’ll wager, nothing to do with anything more than this: arrogance, money, and wounded pride. Verizon, Ford, Nextel, et al, ought to thank their personal gods that bin Laden didn’t have to deal with their customer service staffs.

all bubbles must burst

stock market bubbles. real-estate bubbles. perception-bubbles. emotional bubbles. they'll all burst eventually, and rightly so. reality always winds up coming back to the fore. bubbles are periods of temporary insanity, of passion unchecked. the sooner they burst, the better.

the thing is, the longer a bubble is allowed to persist, the greater the pain its inevitable bursting will cause. the more intense, the more enduring, the more widespread. it's better to keep a pin handy and pop your personal bubbles as soon as you see them floating by. the bigger ones, the social ones, you can only take shots at. and stand out of the way when they go.

i usually write a lot better than this, but I've just popped a few of my own bubbles, and I'm a little bit punch drunk. but I'll recover.

it should be noted that all passion is not unhealthy. passion in its proper place gives people the power to overcome, to endure. Romantic passion, for example, can be a time of great foundation building. but it will be tested when the bubble bursts. Passion is what drove the Savior to the Cross. I suppose passion is what drives us to our crosses.

everything is possible!

but nothing is real.*

For some reason, I can't get WCBS, the AM radio station that carries the Yankees games, on my radio in Manhattan. I'm sure that people in Vancouver and Raleigh can get it, but not me. I gave it one more futile try last night, finally leaving the radio tuned to whatever station did come in strongly before shutting it off in frustration. I set my alarm and went to bed.

At 5 am I awoke to that last radio station, which, on Saturday morning, was running "info-mercials," scripted "interviews" with "experts" who are pitchmen for something. This morning it was vitamin and nutrition supplements.

What struck me about the pitches that I heard was how appealing they are to people with some perceived need. Obviously the schpiels are carefuly thought out, because, after all, those ads don't come cheap. They are designed to hook as many listeners as they can. And they are designed well, because when the interviewer/sideman asked "who should buy this incredible product?" the litany of people for whom this snake oil was perfect left out hardly anyone. Who (over 40) doesn't want more energy? Who doesn't want to burn fat? Who doesn't want to ease a pain or a headache or forgetfulness? Who doesn't want to reduce stress?

The amazing thing is how good, how useful, how credible it sounded to someone who did want more energy. Or who did want to ease a pain. Or who did experience having to deal with some other physical shortcoming that was mentioned. It occured to me that a person who wasn't skeptical would probably shell out some money for this stuff -- well, actually, they were so sure it would help us that they were giving it away; all we had to pay for was the shipping, nudge/wink. A person who wasn't prone to being suspect, but was perhaps aware mostly of his need, would easily fall for this pitch.

How good it sounded. How right. How irresistable. How perfect! Just what I've been looking for. Except....there's nothing in those products a person can't get from three square meals a day. Nothing.

I continued thinking about how beautiful lies can sound. How inviting deception can be. Anyone who isn't a skeptic is an easy target for the smooth speech of the deceiver.

And I remembered that there are no shortcuts.

*"We are the children of concrete and steel...everything is possible but nothing is real..."-- Type, Living Colour.