Sailing through the deceptively calm waters of late August, 2002, we came across the following rumor --

An elderly man of Middle Eastern origin, possibly not firmly grasping the intricacies of decimal-based American currency, found himself sans three dollars in a Wal-Mart checkout line. The woman behind him, saintly as only a suburban Anglo could be, made up the cash register difference. The foreigner, fawning and groveling as was appropriate in a Third Worlder, followed her into the parking lot, asking for her contact information so that he could re-pay the three dollars by mail soonest, this sum being the gross annual income of the entire village he'd grown up in and so on.

The woman, graciously refusing his offer from the lofty pinnacle of American wealth and class, actually made it into her car, then the small ferengi knocked on her window, looked nervously around the parking lot and said in a guttural whisper, "If you will not take my money, memsahib, at least take this advice -- do not drink Coke or Pepsi products after Labor Day weekend."

I am now given to understand that this anecdote has made it onto CNN. Let us examine the prerequisites for its logical validity:

1) The Middle Eastern man, probably an Arab, would have to be supplied with knowledge of terrorist plots, yet, for some reason, not supplied with the ready cash the Saudis have given to all the other terrorists

2) While being part of a conspiracy to poison the Great Satan we know as the good ol' USA, this man respected its currency and customs enough to risk his life and life's work over $3.00

3) Though believing Americans to be morally weak and utterly lacking in willpower, he trusted the basic secret of his dastardly scheme with a random Wal-Mart shopper

4) While being part of Islam's fanatical terrorist wing, he entrusted his group's plans to a Christian woman

You goddam idiots, this never happened. It doesn't make sense. It is loaded with flaws. I have pointed out four major problems with the story above, yet the nation's mouth-breathing multitudes will shrink from following logic, because it hurts their heads and makes them miss the next line of crap the TV set's about to hand them. Millions will now avoid Coke and Pepsi products, and when Cousin Bubba Ray Bob gets laid off from his job at the Dothan Pepsi plant, they'll be surprised as hell.

They'll be surprised as hell, but they'll be several steps closer to acclimation to buying drinking water, because that money they've been pouring into soft drinks has to go somewhere, and a lot of them will take this opportunity to switch over to bottled water, marketing of which has always been based on the fear that tap water's toxic, anyway, and a lot of them good ol' boys held onto the notion that fluoridation and communism were connected anyway, so now's as good a time as ever to start buying Evian ...

... which, by the way, is "naive," spelled backwards.