A Bumper Crop of Crazies

When I’ve said this in the past, it has been under ‘normal’ circumstances too–not ones like we have today with a runaway no-win war with no good way out. Anyone wanting to inherit this mess, has got to be delusional, masochistic, or even psychotic. But again, look at the numbers of candidates out there and draw your own conclusions.

Seven years ago I thought Colin Powell was the only sane potential presidential candidate out there–and his sanity was confirmed by his deciding he didn’t want the job. And then he did some things–like signing on with W–that made me realize he wasn’t the clear-headed golden boy I’d thought he was–unless he thought he could save us all by positioning himself in the inner circle. If that was the case, it didn’t work, most unfortunately.

Then I started thinking of other people I’d have to nominate for the Crazies category, for reasons other than presidential aspirations.

Recently I attended a 100 mile/1 day bike ride–attended, but didn’t ride, I hasten to add. At first I thought the participants qualified for Crazies categorization for willingly putting their bodies through such punishment. But the ride was for charity, and each rider had raised a minimum of $4000 for the right to ride. That fact could have upped the craziness quotient, but I think the charitable aspects override in this case, so these people are just good-hearted, as well as athletically ambitious, but not crazy.

While at a break station for this ride, however, I did hear of some other bikers–also motivated by charity–who definitely make it into the Crazies category without reservation. Charity does have its limits.

There is a 500 mile bike ride in Death Valley in August, to be ridden within 48 hours, which essentially means non-stop. To add to the misery, the daytime half of the ride will be in a blast furnace, the nighttime half in a freezer. Now really. Anyone crazy enough to undertake this insanity will likely be in personal need of all charitable donations originally raised for the charity’s cause, and so what would be the point?

And then there are all those people who stood in line for up to 48 hours to have the privilege of being among the first to slap down $500–and more–for the iphone. Why would anyone want to be toting the computerized version of their life around with them, with the risk of either losing it or having it stolen so easily that it’s absence would likely not be noticed until it was way too late to recover it? It would be like walking around with a $500 bill hanging out of your pocket, just waiting to either fall out or be snatched.

But even if you managed to hang on to your iphone, there is the cost–that doesn’t stop with the purchase price. To get it to work, it has to be connected to the AT&T network, and AT&T has never been known for good price deals. The iphone subscriptions ($60-$100/month) make it an ongoing costly investment to the tune of up to $1200 a year. Yikes.

So, to the category of Crazies, I add the iphone owners. Apparently so bedazzled by the multi-functioning properties of Apple’s latest, and I do admit they are impressive–especially coming from something so small, they have lost any shred of sanity concerning the practical issues involved.

There is, however, one group of the iphone crowd that is exempt from the Crazies categorization. They are the ones who bought the iphone for the sole purpose of dismantling it to uncover the secret of what companies had supplied its innards–and then went out and bought stock in those companies before the word on their identities got out.

These iphone dis-assemblers are the ones I wish were running for president–but their shrewd intelligence and state of fully functioning sanity in the face of massive pressure and hype, sad to say, disqualifies them…wouldn’t you know?