New Year, New Thoughts

Whew! Where have I been for the past month and a half? Cooking turkeys, I guess. Or eating them.

In any event, it's a new year and a good time for a new outlook. Enough of that heavy, grumpy stuff. Let's get light and frothy. You only live once, you know. (I'm another story.)

Say...have you been following all that stuff about people disappearing from cruise ships lately? Weird, eh? What's that about?

According to a reporter from a Florida publication, there have been at least a dozen mysterious disappearances from reputable cruise ships over the past six years. By that, of course, we mean a dozen Americans or reasonable facsimiles (there are a few Canadians among the missing - they get on the list, I think, because they left from U.S. ports). Check it out at http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2824/congress-studies-cruise-ship-disappearances

Imagine how many missing people there would be if we counted the non-Americans/reasonable facsimiles.

So what's happening here? Are they falling? Jumping? Being pushed? Participating in an unusually creative insurance scam? Trying to divert the attention of Congress from messy scandals involving sleazy lobbyists? All of the above and more? Speaking of Congress, some subcommittees are delving into the spat of disappearances http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/nyregion/05cruise.html in the hopes of discovering what has gone amiss.

Whatever the answer, it's a fascinating situation. Small potatoes, maybe, in a general landscape of death and destruction, but still an engaging puzzle. And it's guaranteed to cast a bit of a pall over the booming cruise business.

Can't wait to see how it comes out.