Jon Carroll invites you to "Guess the October Surprise"!

Jon Carroll, SF Chron columnist and one of my favorite writers, yesterday proposed a contest to
"Guess the October Surprise!".

Mind you, this is in a mainstream newspaper.

So some of the more paranoid people among us (the paranoid people are rapidly earning an alternative name: realists) have suggested that the Bush administration may be preparing some sort of "October surprise," a staged event that would give a lift to the Republican candidate just before the election.

This speculation became rather more concrete when the New Republic, citing an unnamed Pakistani intelligence officer, said the Bush administration was pushing Pakistan to produce Osama bin Laden or another "HVT" -- high- value target -- during the week of the Democratic convention or during the last two weeks in October.

Now, of course, coincidences do happen, and we are certain that our fine friends the Pakistanis would produce Osama just the minute they got their hands on him. Actually, we are not certain of that. We just hope it's true.

So another person had a swell idea. I asked her if I might borrow her idea if I gave it right back. She said sure. So what I propose is a little contest. You, yes, you, can participate. The name of the contest is: Guess the October Surprise.

If this contest seems too cynical to you, then do not play. But, of course, you must play in order to win. There may even be a prize involved.

So, the rules: The October Surprise must be a real surprise and not something just slightly odd, like John Ashcroft demanding that all people whose names begin with "K" be placed in concentration camps. (If, however, all people whose names began with "K" are actually placed in concentration camps, that would qualify.) The surprise also must be at least arguably a creation of the Bush administration or its representatives.

We do hope that there will not be an October surprise. We hope never to have to make a judgment about the winner of the contest. Indeed, we hope that the existence of the contest might in some way inoculate the nation against some cynical manipulation by the Republicans. But hey, if the worst happens, some lucky person will get a hypothetical T-shirt. So it's pretty much win-win.

You can e-mail your guesses to him; his address is posted at the bottom of his column (I won't post it here in case it gets spammed). If there really is an October surprise, I for one would love to see a Kossack get the prize for it.

"Bush kept Osama in storage for six months to bring out in October, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!"