You'll have to forgive us if we seem a little "off" today; things got seriously weird this weekend. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary Friday afternoon, but then all of a sudden this white powdery stuff started falling out of the sky and it didn't stop until Sunday night. By the time the bizarre event had passed, there was two feet of the mysterious white substance piled on top of every horizontal surface outside. When we finally ventured out in our biohazard suits to obtain a sample, we discovered that the material was cold-- and it appears to possess occult qualities, because by the time we'd brought the sample into the AtAT compound for analysis in a controlled environment, we found to our astonishment that it had vanished completely and been replaced with a small quantity of ordinary water. Clearly this is the result of some sort of top secret bio-alchemical weapons testing gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Or it just snowed a lot. We're told that's possible, too.

Anyway, whatever happened, it messed with us both mentally and physically. On top of the brain-addling reality of cold white stuff falling from the heavens, it turned out that piling it all with crude shovel-like implements in such a manner as to allow pedestrian and vehicular access to the compound took about... well, probably about thirty-seven hours, after which the toxins that were magically woven into the substance's molecular structure had penetrated our protective bodysuits and infected the musculature of our arms, legs, backs, and shoulders. We've been unable to locate a local shaman who can exorcise whatever technomystical poison has us prone and largely immobile (did you know you can use a PowerBook trackpad with your tongue? Until now, neither did we), but even without an antidote, the effects do seem to be wearing off. Slowly.

The upshot of all this, of course, is that we're seriously off our game, so if you're expecting this extended whinefest to turn into a brilliant segue into on-topic material right about now, prepare to be bitterly disappointed, because all we can manage at the moment is a clumsy jump-cut that'll leave you wondering whether you just accidentally sat on the remote control and changed the channel. Ready?

Hey, how about that Steve Jobs interview about digital music in Rolling Stone? Faithful viewer David Triska pointed it out to us, and boy howdy, ain't it a gasser? Hoo, boy! For one thing, we get a new Stevism about stealing music that we can finally use in place of the overdone "bad karma" one: "It is corrosive to one's character to steal." Somebody put that on a t-shirt. Oh, and then for the funny jar, there's this swipe at the foundering subscription-based music services: "I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model, and it might not be successful." That's gold, baby! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Heh heh.

Aheh.

Ow. It hurts to laugh.

We'll be better tomorrow, we promise.

Okay, you know things have gotten out of hand when even the jokes stop being jokes and start being business models. The downloadable music business is officially a gold rush right now (well, except for the complete and utter lack of gold), as every company on the planet falls all over itself in a mad dash to establish an online music service in time to grab its share of that sweet dollar-a-song action that's all the rage these days. Unfortunately, everyone's so hungry for their slice of the pie that no one seems to care that what they're killing themselves to build is a way to lose money. We seriously doubt that anyone's getting a better wholesale deal than Apple, and Apple admits that at 99 cents a song the iTunes Music Store barely breaks even; the whole point is to sell iPods, not music. So what are the odds that any of the zillion other companies clambering onto the bandwagon are going to strike it rich?

Sounds to us like "Downloadable Music" is the "Dot-Com" of the new millennium; Apple has a hit with the iTMS and before long pay-per-song services arrive by the truckload in the form of MusicMatch, BuyMusic, Napster, Walmart, the Dell Music Store, Hewlett-Packard's imminent offering, etc. etc. etc. If the Dot-Com era was all about losing money to capture eyeballs (and then having no idea what to do with said eyeballs once captured, and not having any money left to do anything with them anyway), then the Downloadable Music rush is all about losing money to capture eardrums.

Case in point, and the first incontestable sign that the race has just gotten completely silly: The Guardian reports that the latest corporation to announce a downloadable music store is none other than Coca-Cola. (Yes, that Coca-Cola.) Come January, MyCokeMusic.com will offer "everything from Britney Spears to Coldplay" (translation: "everything from Top 40 to Top 40") to "residents of Great Britain aged 12 years and over" for 99 pence a tune. Why this is a Britain-only thing we can't guess, but to try to puzzle that out is to miss the fundamental wackiness here, which is that the downloadable music fray has now been joined by a major soft drink manufacturer for some reason.

Coca-Cola claims the rationale is as follows: "Consumers have told us that downloading music is confusing and complicated and what they want is an easy, simple to use downloadable service from a trusted brand." Okay, that much we can believe. What we aren't so ready to swallow is the idea that Coca-Cola was the brand consumers had in mind. "Gosh, downloading music sure is confusing and complicated; we wish someone would make the process simpler-- perhaps some company specializing in human interface design, user-friendly technology, and (most importantly of all, since we are talking about downloadable music, here) putting sugar into brown fizzy water."

No, we haven't forgotten about Apple's promotional tie-in with Pepsi slated for February, but using popular music as a promotional tool is practically mandatory-- and Pepsi isn't launching its own download service. True, what Coke is doing isn't all that different (despite its claim that it's just doing this because customers demand its technical expertise), and any money it loses on song sales would just be written off as brand awareness marketing expenses. Still, though, if you don't find something a tad askew about a company boldly proclaiming "we sell refreshing carbonated beverages (and, now, downloadable music you can listen to while you drink them)," well, clearly you people are far weirder than we'll ever be. When the Vlasic Pickle Music Store opens in March you probably won't even bat an eye.

Hey, we've got great news for those of you who crave Apple's commitment to human-centric design and its industry-leading attention to detail, but really have a deep-down urge to throw money at Microsoft anyway: word has it that the company isn't abandoning the Mac platform, so you can have your Mac and still pay that Gates Tax you're so fond of supporting! Because everyone knows that you're not really a computer user unless you're forking scads of money over to ol' Bill, right? Right.

As you well know, rumors of Microsoft's eventual exit from the Mac world have circulated since time immemorial, but they gained a lot of steam once the company admitted that it was nixing Internet Explorer for our platform. Things got even more tense (at least, among people who actually care) when Microsoft bought up Virtual PC, since Redmond suddenly held all the cards when it came to reasonable ways of running Office on a Mac, both natively and at reasonable speeds in emulation. Oooh, scary! (No, seriously. We personally wouldn't much care if Macs could never run Office again, but we understand that the platform relies on the existence of Mac Office to maintain any viability for use in a business setting. Sad but true.)

But rejoice! AppleInsider reports that Microsoft has bumped up its planned presence at Macworld Expo (with "the second largest exhibition booth behind Apple's"-- oooh mama) and plans to launch more Mac product updates than you could stuff in a phone booth. (Phone booth. They were these things before everyone had cell phones, and you'd use coins to-- oh, never mind.) Reportedly Microsoft will have a spot during the Stevenote which it'll use to "officially renew its commitment to the Macintosh platform" by introducing Microsoft Office 2004 for the Macintosh, which will be "revolutionary."

Yes, "revolutionary." Something to do with "closely integrating its individual applications" or something. Sounds like AppleWorks to us, or maybe OpenDoc, but hey, who are we to judge "revolutionary"? We still think soda cans you can open without pulling a ring tab off of them are mankind's most significant technological leap forward since the discovery of fire. Or the invention of the wheel. Or, dare we say it, the invention of the wheel on fire.

Oh, and guess what? Rumor has it that there'll be a new version of Virtual PC, too. Virtual PC 7.0 "will finally deliver optimized performance for Apple's PowerPC G5 processor," so all of you who needed Windows compatibility and therefore couldn't upgrade to a G5 now need wait only a few months longer. And there are supposed to be new versions of MSN Messenger and Remote Desktop Connection Client, as well. See? Mac apps out the wazoo! Redmond does like us. Well, maybe not us, personally, but they like Mac users. Or at least they like our money, and in this world, that's almost exactly the same thing.