There's a fellow named Morse who writes a column for the Examiner. I read the Examiner because its cheap and they run Dilbert. I once had lunch with the man who ran the Chronicle syndicate some twenty years ago. The Chronicle was running Dr. Hippocrates, whom we were syndicating at the time at the Rip Off Press, and we talked about the syndication business. Actually he talked about the syndication business, which he knew and I didn't.

Nice guy. The Chronicle had run Dan O'Neil's daily strip in the late sixties, early seventies, a weird little adventure, and they were good about keeping the pulse of things, knew about the underground comix scene and the artists, were watching to see who or what might be coming down the road.

I don't know who runs their syndicate now, but whoever he or she might be or have been (I vote for the have been), "he or she might be" should have picked up Dilbert on the spot. A poor corporate decision. They know that. No reason to send them a head's up. If I'd been running the show we'd have snapped it up lickety split unless, of course, when it crossed my desk I'd been out to lunch, out of state or passed out and nix'ed the artist, giving my opinion in a memorandum: "Can't draw, nobody cares about geeks in cubicles, hold out for a cute cat or a detective in a rain coat." No brainer. No risk. New strips never make it anyhow, don't bother to open the envelope, time for lunch.

Back to Morse. He wrote an interesting column today in the Examiner (I stumbled across it on the way to Dilbert.). Not a fashionable subject at the moment. I watch the talk shows. Somebody says, "well, we need to beef up our security, watch out for terrorists, head 'em off at the pass," and I find myself nodding. Sage advice. Prepare for the bastards. Spend a few bucks now. Look what happened in the Japanese subways. Japan, for god's sake, the land of law and order.

Except, as Morse points out, the kind of people who are attracted to these jobs, who stay up nights sweating the future, making lists of security risks, watching the neighbors, reading journals and taking notes, calculating word frequencies, combinations of letters that might mean trouble aren't necessarily the people you want at the switch. Any switch. Anyhow.

So I wonder. Does it all start again? No more Communists to find so we need to find someone to take their place? Syrians come to mind, the name has a nice evil ring. Palestinians make good pests. The Japanese economy is in the toilet, so we have to let them off the hook, but hackers are showing well. Not quite to the level of dope dealers, but gaining, showing strength in the poles.

Just a thought. No heat building under the collar here, no need to start any wars, but the thought occurs. Just a little wiggling at the back of the brain. Something is happening out there, something we've seen before. Or did it never really go away and I've just been tired these last years, getting old, forgetting to watch. Let's hope the economy holds.