Remember with me back when your arthritic grandmother used to say, "I'm aching up a spell of weather." Of course, modern experts say there's no relation between weather and aching bones, but what do they know? Back then, when "Mammy," my seriously-gnarled Terrell grandmother, said it, you could count on a meteorological change for the worse within the week or less.

Similarly today, when my dog Clancy comes inside from an exploratory dig in the back yard, and retires shivering beneath the living room lamp table, his rump sheltered fast against the overstuffed couch, you can make book that a thunderstorm will be overhead within the hour, two at most. No matter that the sky is clear, the sun is beaming, and you can hear only bird song outside, he can hear it coming, and is petrified of thunder. If the approaching storm is of medium or higher magnitude, he will find you and overpower your every effort to keep him from clambering awkwardly into your lap - even though he's six years old and much too large and long-legged for such puppyish antics. He has no pride.

I myself do not have arthritis as yet, and my hearing is about as good as my grandpa's was at a similar age - heard what he needed to, and let the hard stuff roll right on by. Thus, I cannot lay claim to any gift of prophecy about the weather, this afternoon or next week. Experience alone allows me to guess it will be scorching in August, cold in February, and just about perfectly wonderful in October, give or take. But if my bones were sensitive to changing atmospheres, and my ears could feel the rumblings of a coming thunderclap, I would be reaching for the Ben-Gay, hunting aspirin, and diving under the bed for shelter.

Why? By now, my B.S. meter has hit the top of the Richter scale, to mix a few metaphors, as I hear the market reports and contemplate what has gone on for the past year or so. The post-Y2K collapse of computer and software markets. The dot-com fizzle, including Amazon, et al. The one-two punch of 9/11 and Enron/Andersen. And now there is WorldCom, Inc., the "telecom" house of cards built by old Bernie Ebbers, that Clinton, Mississippi acquisitions genius, the company having now announced it has discovered "improper accounting" for almost $4 billion in expenses that, guess who? none other than Arthur Andersen, "audited" in 2001. Senior management said, of course, that it is "shocked" by these discoveries. To quote Claude Rains in "Casablanca," we shall now round up the usual suspects.

So, what's next? My bones tell me there are probably too many telephone companies chasing too few talkers, with too many unfamiliar names and too many complicated "plans," for your "minutes," and too many confusing bills. There is more pain coming. My ears can feel vibrations in the computing sector: Too many boxes already owned, too many gee-whiz gadgets and too much technology going begging for want of upgrade buyers. Communications? Too much television from too many sources for all the players to succeed.

And, would you believe Xerox, apparently now in a "restatement" frenzy to say, accounting-wise, "Oops! Revenues are out of whack by, oh, maybe $2 billion. Maybe $6 billion - who knows?"

It may not be many more days until the only public companies whose published financial statements are questioned by dumbfounded stock buyers are those whose corporate names begin with a letter of the alphabet.

That's about it. All this just might, you know, affect to some degree, the direction of the stock markets down the road apiece. You guess how. My license does not include forecasting prices.

But I am convinced that in the real world of natural things,rabbits do not swallow alligators, the sun does not orbit the earth, straw is not spun into gold, and save for the occasional miracle, water does not turn into wine. Not even for Bernie Ebbers, who in an old Mississippi metaphor may with some justification be said to have taken more chain than he could swim with.