Everyone’s making with the hell-in-a-handbasket talk, speculating that the tech world and telecom will represent something of a smoking crater by the end of the fourth quarter. I’m here to tell you: it’s not so. Sure, Motorola’s stock might have hit a 16-year low this week. But it’s okay! Hakuna Matata people!

I know it seems counterintuitive. Let’s take a sampling of the online top headlines, shall we? On MSNBC: “The End of American Capitalism?” CNN: “Bush: We Can Solve This Crisis.” Wall Street Journal: “Market's 7-Day Rout Leaves U.S. Reeling.” Los Angeles Times: “Wall St. whipsaws traders at the open.”

Washington Post: “Conn. High Court Rules Same-Sex Couples Have Right to Marry.” Hmm. The Post might be burying the lede, no? Or maybe not.

New York Times: “U.S. Stocks Slide in Turbulent Trading.” That one’s a two-decker, which is reserved for the serious “holy crap!” kind of news. Sept. 12, 2001’s NYTimes headline was a triple decker, incidentally. So maybe the takeaway is: It could be worse.

Amid all this stock see-sawing (the Dow is right now down 421 points), what do I have to go on for my “it’s alright” proclamation? The pain in my neck, of course.

And I’m not talking about the fact that avocados in New England are sold inevitably hard as rocks so the prospect of on-a-whim guacamole is a nonstarter. No, dear readers, I mean this literally. And I’ve decided that I am — or rather, my rapidly declining physical state is — the next Oracle at Delphi. I provide clues to the mysterious future because I can tell when bad juju is afoot. And I plan to set up shop forthwith in one of the abandoned storefronts downtown, surrounded by my stockpiles of spam and Aquafina, providing readings in barter for the shiny beads that will soon replace the dollar as the coin of the realm.

Let me explain. When the market opened this morning and plunged 600+ points on the opening bell there was an audible “crack,” and now I’m left gingerly getting around like Joan Cusack in the brace in Sixteen Candles, as I told a friend earlier. Coincidence? Perhaps. But here I am, head in perma-tilt toward the left, posture like my grandmother always wanted me to have, hopped up on Ben Gay and ibuprofen, telling myself that childbirth was worse. But I’ve been reading up on tech stocks today and there’s been nary an extra twinge in the ol’ joints, and that bodes well.

When Hurricane Katrina was swirling around in the Gulf, filling it completely, taking aim at New Orleans, I had a migraine. When Russia invaded Georgia, my back ached in a close approximation of that scene from Grumpy Old Men. And when we invaded Iraq, I threw up. Well, okay, that might have been from drinking all the leftover St. Patrick’s Day Guinness, in a vain effort to ignore the shock and the awe. Could go either way.

As someone who watched “The Day After” in 1983 and had nightmares of nuclear annihilation for quite some time afterwards (helped along by the fact that my hometown of Ft. Worth was No. 3 on the Soviet hit list, Carswell Air Force Base being the main SAC base for North America — thanks for that, military-industrial complex!), I’m no stranger to sublimated fear manifesting itself in physical ways. Who of us is, am I right? Am I wrong? But it’s only recently, in the mid-2000s, that this sublimation has been so ... geriatric, for lack of a better term, with the aches and the pains. Oh, my aching back!

Fortunately, I can communicate my preternatural (and hopefully bead-lucrative) ability with the outside world via calling, text message and blog, meanwhile proving out further the fact that even amid market insanity, communications are kind of a sure thing. At least, that’s the line I’m going with. Because what to people want to do in crisis? Commiserate. Complain. Blog about their neck pain.

So have faith, fourth-quarter naysayers!

Ouch! Off to pop more inflammation-reducing OTC goodness.