I was talking with a friend of mine here at work today.  We were discussing some items in the news, like the guy who is suing Apple Inc. because they allegedly put tracking devices in his iPods so that the mob could find him.  And about another guy who lives in the US Virgin Islands (we think... we couldn't remember and couldn't find the article), and is suing the the CIA because they allegedly bugged his phone.

On face value, both of these guys sound like genuine, certified, grade A whackshits.  Totally insane.  Round the bend.  Nuttier than Mr. Goodbar covered in bat shit.

But let's look at these again.

The guy who is suing Apple Inc. claims that tracking devices are not in every iPod, just the ones that he bought - one from eBay, the other from an Apple Store.  So he's claiming that Apple, through some sort of amazing future-predicting, chaos-theory-driven supercomputer, planted those iPods specifically for him, knowing that he'd buy them (either that, or not only are Apple employees in bed with the mob, but so are random folks on eBay).

Ok, yeah.  Still seems crazy.  What about the other guy?

Well, it turns out that the guy suing the CIA (you can sue the CIA?  Is this class-action yet?) actually worked as an informant for the CIA in the past.  He quit several years ago, and claims that the CIA believes that they can legally tap his phones because of his past relationship with them.  Weird, huh?  Combine that with all the news about the NSA's illegal wiretapping program under the Bush administration, and this suddenly seems significantly less farfetched.

So we have two stories here.  Both of them seem like they could only have been born in the minds of the hopelessly insane.  Years ago, we could have safely dismissed both of them as nutjobs, had the nice men with the white coats come to visit with the plaintiffs, and washed our hands of the situation.

Upon further examination, though - taking into account what we now know about what's going on in our country and the world we live in - one of them remains insane while the other starts sounding more and more reasonable.  What a sad state of affairs that we've gotten ourselves into when we are unable to tell the difference between something that is batshit insane and something that is completely possible.

In the mean time, though, all you iPod users might want to look into buying a Zune.