Phoning it in.

So, MC OBL has made a reappearance in the news with the release of his new tape:

The vague offer of a truce — coupled with a threat of another attack on the U.S. — was made in an audiotape released by the Arab television network Al-Jazeera. It brought new attention to the al-Qaida leader after a yearlong lull in his public statements.

It’s been awhile now since MC’s last recording and since he’s had any hits. Take the latest for what it’s worth – I discount anything he says.

Funny thing is, I was thinking about this latest tape today and it occured to me there might be some kind of answering machine set up in Egypt or Oman. You know, very low tech just something you plug into a phone jack. One of those answering machines where as long as you keep talking the tape keeps going until the tape runs out. I had this mental picture of OBL at a phone booth somewhere looking for quarters or using a phone card and calling this number somewhere in Egypt or Oman.

At the beginning of the call or a day before, there would be a message like, “Hey guys, it’s Osama here. Been laying low these days but I wanted to call in and make another tape so if you can have the machine set up tomorrow that would be terrific. I’ll call in with a new message and if you guys can send the tape over to Al-Jazerra that would be cool.”

And then, the next day he just calls in and reads this thing off into the answering machine and a day or two later it’s big news. The only other guy I can remember doing something like that recently was Pat O’Brien after he left those messages on a women’s voicemail with all the sex talk (NSFW - unless you have headphones).

It’s just a funny image of this guy, disguised as a woman somewhere, standing around and talking into a phone for an hour (that’s OBL not Pat O’Brien – although I can see why some might get confused if they heard O’Brien’s comments).