The Man Who Fell to Earth

I am one of the people who bought Vivendi Universal stock at ?140. Go ahead and laugh, I'm used to it. Today I feel odd — as if I were the only fully dressed person in a nudist camp. Thank you, Jean-Marie, for this moment of solitude.

I am a kind of universal idiot; the boob who believed it. Believed in what? That I was going to become rich, powerful, partake in the absolute quest of human happiness — one attainable with the laws of the triumphant market. Or better yet, that I'd become a little bit like...