Gosh, we'd been out of the daily soap-production grind for so long that we'd almost completely forgotten about that most heinous of plot-development stumbling blocks, the slow news day-- that is, until one jumped up and bit us in the neck yesterday. How, exactly, are we supposed to drum up drama and excitement when all we have to work from is fluff pieces and filler? Answer: all we needed to do was get back in touch with our Inner Paranoiac.

Yes, our Inner Paranoiac, that quiet little guy who usually keeps to himself a lot, spending most of his time sitting up in our skulls crafting an array of tin foil hats designed to block harmful gamma radiation that aliens are beaming at our planet in an attempt to make the entire human race servile and sterile before the invasion. When contacted, he turns into a raving psychopath who can spot evidence of six conspiracies in something as seemingly harmless as a can of chunk light tuna. (Seven, if it's packed in spring water instead of oil.)

What that means is, when roused with enough black coffee and sleep deprivation, our Inner Paranoiac can squeeze some sort of soapworthy drama out of even the most innocuous human interest story. For example, faithful viewer Sleeper pointed out a MacCentral article about an FM radio station which keeps an iPod loaded up with tunes and set for shuffle play as a backup just in case their satellite feed goes down in a thunderstorm. Just a simple and cost-effective backup plan to counter the effects of inclement weather? Nuh-uh-- the weird little guy in our head says that this is actually the onset of a major tactical strike in Steve Jobs's master scheme to take over the planet.

The plan is simple: first, Steve secretly establishes a New Jersey-based "independent freeform radio station" and gives it a decade or so to build an audience and allay suspicion. When the time is right, the "station manager" plants the iPod at the station's transmitter, claiming that it's an ideal backup solution in case the satellite feed goes dead. MacCentral (which is so deep in bed with Apple they're both squeezed into the same pair of footie pajamas) reports the story, thus prompting other radio stations to plant iPods at their transmitters, as well. Before long, every radio station on the planet has an iPod connected to its transmitter "for emergencies."

Here's where Sleeper's own Inner Paranoiac chimes in: "Then, once the 'Pods are in place, His Steveness could trigger the activation signal that would cause his embedded minions to blanket the airwaves with Apple advertisements." Well, maybe, but our own guy begs to differ. He says that Steve would then use his weather-control satellites to disrupt feeds all over the world, at which point the backup iPods would flood the airwaves with concentrated Reality Distortion Field energy guaranteed to transform every one with earshot of broadcast radio into a zombie slave. Then all the slaves descend on seats of power, eviscerate the world's leaders, stick Bill Gates's head on a spike and parade it through the streets, yadda yadda yadda.

This scene comes to you courtesy of our Inner Paranoiac; treat yours well, and he or she will bring you hours of quality entertainment!

Just because nothing particularly special's going on at Apple right now doesn't mean there isn't something Steveular in the works. Don't forget, kidlings: he's not just the Man with the Plan at Apple and one heckuva lawn darts player, he's also the CEO of Pixar, makers of fine animated films such as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and the soon-to-be-released Finding Nemo. And in his Pixar role, he's reportedly been cracking some skulls of late. Rich, powerful skulls. Wearing big, round mouse ears.

You know that Pixar is still mired in an exclusive distribution deal with Disney, right? Well, the two companies haven't been on the best of terms lately, with the not-so-secret scuttlebutt saying that Steve's looking to take his ball and go home after the Disney-Pixar partnership expires in 2005. Reportedly he's a little miffed that Disney makes more money on Pixar's movies than Pixar itself does, and once Finding Nemo hits theaters in three weeks, even though he owes two more movies to Disney, Jobs is apparently allowed to go shopping for distribution deals with other studios who might be willing to give his company a bigger piece of the pie. But faithful viewer Mr. Nick mentioned that Steve and longtime sparring partner Michael Eisner are indeed still trying to hammer out a new agreement, as noted yesterday by an LA Times article.

Reportedly Jobs and Eisner "recently dined together" in the Bay Area to discuss what sort of terms might be mutually acceptable to both parties should the current partnership be extended, and judging by the fact that neither CEO is dead of arsenic poisoning, apparently things aren't all bad between the two companies. Given that Steve has "enormous leverage" in this situation (Pixar features to date have reaped over a billion dollars in profit-- homina homina homina), it's not out of the question that he can put the squeeze on Eisner for exactly what he wants: 100% of the profits, licensing fees, and merchandising sales, in exchange for paying Disney a flat distribution fee. We'll see in the months to come whether or not he'll manage to RDF his way into a deal that nice.

Now, if you're looking for someone to ask about whether all this Jobs-Eisner interaction is actually somehow related to the long-standing rumor that Disney is buying Apple, we'd suggest you ask us-- because we have little to no regard for the concepts of truth or accuracy, and therefore we'll tell you exactly what you want to hear: of course it's got something to do with a Disney-Apple buyout. Expect an announcement any day now.

Okay, so we're going a bit off-topic here, but it's a traditional sort of off-topic. You know how we've been out of the loop for a while? Well, that explains why we hadn't heard a thing about Intel's new mobile computing technology until faithful viewer Glen Sanford (who, incidentally, runs the incredibly useful and entertaining Apple-History.com) pointed out an IDG News article about all the new Wintel laptops arriving on the scene these days. Apparently Intel's mobile architecture takes the form of a new processor, a new chipset, and a wireless networking subsystem all bundled together under one name.

"So what?" you ask. And rightly so, because in the past, at least, there really hasn't been anything even remotely interesting about the kind of dreck that winds up in Wintel laptops. But this time around there are a couple of reasons why we're at least mildly interested in Intel's mobile chip bundle. First of all, there's the fact that the new processor, dubbed the Pentium M, is reportedly putting out decent performance while consuming a super-low 1 watt of power-- which translates into up to seven hours of real-world battery use. Assuming it's true, Apple's portables aren't even coming close to that sort of battery life.

But that potentially worrisome factor aside, the real reason why we're interested in this new Intel mobile technology is because it's got yet another in a long line of stupid Intel product names. Yes, first there was Celeron, and then Itanium-- and now we're saddled with "Centrino." Centrino? As far as we can tell, Intel named its new mobile architecture after either a subatomic particle or that parsley-like stuff you put in salsa. But hey, it just wouldn't be an Intel product if it didn't have a name designed to baffle and confound-- and this way, we Mac users get to enjoy it, too.