Uh-oh, folks, it's Monday already-- and you know what that means: barely seven days remain in which we can drive ourselves dotty with wild-eyed speculation over what next week's Stevenote will bring. A week? Wow, that's not much time, especially if we're really going to go for certifiable insanity; true obsession-driven dementia takes a pretty serious time commitment, and frankly we're not at all sure we can squeeze that much compulsive worrying and mental back-and-forth into just one week. Where does the time go?

Well, here's some good news for those of you who need an extra little boost along the road to madness: MacRumors has posted its traditional Rumor Roundup, which compiles all of the major WWDC-related speculative hunches in one handy pocket-size package suitable for framing. It's all there: the PowerPC 970, new Power Macs, PowerBooks, iChat, the alleged Apple chatcam, and a call for "special attention" to AppleInsider's recent foray into fiction which hinted at all of the above, plus new displays. There's also a mention that Apple plans to broadcast the Stevenote to its larger retail stores (i.e. those with theaters) for public consumption, which certainly implies that Steve's going to be hauling some big, sparkly stuff out on stage with him next Monday.

Now, our intention in pointing out MacRumors' Rumor Roundup is to give you a helpful reference where you can find all those will-they-won't-they conundrums quickly and easily. This way, instead of wasting what's left of this precious week by trying to track them all down yourself, you can maximize your time by focusing your efforts on pondering the imponderables until the little cartoon cuckoo comes bouncing out of your forehead. If, however, you find that the very spectacle of seeing all those "maybes" in a single neat list tends to make you lean towards thinking that they're all true, well, that's not going to help, at least from an "I want to hear about the WWDC announcements from a padded room while straitjacketed and pumped full of lithium" perspective; for an extra dose of brain-scrambling uncertainty, drop by Mac OS Rumors and read about how they're not expecting any new hardware to ship next week. As in, none. At all.

Ahhhhh... we can feel that pesky hold on reality slipping faster than a concussed Gerald Ford stepping off the plane on Banana Peel Island. Meanwhile, just to push the needle the other way a bit, faithful viewer Badtz Maru tells us that Macworld UK quotes director of QuickTime product marketing Frank Casanova as stating unequivocally that people who are expecting good things at the conference "will not be disappointed." It's up to you to decide whether or not the director of QuickTime product marketing is actually in a position to make that promise. Say, is the room spinning, or is it just our psychoses?

Say, did all the dads out there have a happy Father's Day yesterday? Apparently the odds of a "yes" answer are pretty darn good this year, considering that, according to CNN/Money, for the first time ever people are spending "more on Father's Day presents than they did last month on Mother's Day"-- and that among the list of "in-demand gizmos" that offspring were snapping up for Pops was the ever-lovin' iPod. (Sadly, to the best of our knowledge, there is no trade-in program whereby honorees of years past may exchange all those the light-up hula girl ties and road flare kits for 7500 songs in one's pocket.)

But forget about the whole Father's Day thing for a second, because the CNN/Money story hits upon something far more dramatic; it claims that "the Apple iPod has also been selling fast at Best Buy stores," and actually quotes a company spokesperson as saying that "the new version is slimmer, sleeker and definitely very popular for Dad." Can it really be true? Has Best Buy finally found something made by Apple that it can actually-- and we can't believe we're saying this, here-- sell?

Longtime viewers are all too aware of Apple's on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, sort-of-on-again, definitely-way-the-hell-off-again relationship with Best Buy, the only electronics retail chain we've ever found to be even danker and more psychologically scarring than CompUSA. (We're talking old-school CompUSA, before Apple brought in its own people to make the places a little less icky; some locations apparently now border on pleasant.) Apple first told Best Buy to scram way back in '98, when it became apparent that the reason no one was buying Performas at Best Buy (well, aside from the fact that they were Performas) was that the chain's definition of a "display Mac" was "a Mac that's lost its keyboard, its mouse, its System Folder, and its will to live." The fact that display Macs at Best Buy were also often on fire and/or filled with used crankcase oil and the inner organs of beasts and fowls didn't help, either.

Well, Best Buy came crawling back later that year when the iMacs were a big smash hit, but before long it was clear that Best Buy couldn't sell a life preserver to a drowning man if it had an Apple logo on it. Best Buy and Apple called it quits yet again when the chain balked at the prospect of stocking five different flavors. After that there were a few rumors and a whole lot of nothing-- until Best Buy signed back on to sell the wildly popular iPod last September. Apparently that's going well enough that Think Secret is claiming that Apple and Best Buy are "in contract talks" to sign the retail chain back on yet again to sell Macs instead of just iPods, this time with honest-to-goshness Apple representatives on the premises to ensure that the display eMacs aren't filled with wet garbage and hurled off the roof.

The deal isn't final yet, but we have to say, success in moving iPods off the shelves notwithstanding, you'll understand if we're a little skeptical about Apple turning back to Best Buy for Mac sales again. If you've ever known a couple who breaks up and makes up as often as Best Buy and Apple, you probably either thought that 1) these two people really are destined to be together, against all odds; or 2) these two need to be tied to a tree and beaten with a tire iron until they come to their senses. When it comes to Apple and Best Buy, we're leaning towards 2) right now. Anybody got some rope?

Say, what do you do if you need to book a major Apple personality to wow the crowd at something sort of like a keynote for what used to be Macworld Expo, but because Apple doesn't even want to show up in the first place you just can't get either Steve Jobs or Apple's cofounder Steve Wozniak? Why, you book the biological entity cloned from those two visionaries' spliced DNA, of course! According to an IDG press release, the speaker at the "opening feature presentation" at Macworld CreativePro (ah, so that's what they're calling it this week!) will be none other than Apple's veep of hardware product marketing, Greg Joswiak.

What? No Schiller? Nope. It seems that even The Phil passed on this gig. Or it's possible that IDG decided that in order to quell the murderous feelings of abandonment that will surely charge the air at next month's Stevenote-lacking semi-Expo, they needed someone closer to the real thing-- hence the booking of Joswiak, who is genetically half-Jobs and half-Wozniak. Oh, sure, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell from the man's high-resolution mug shot, but there's a mercurial streak a mile wide (well, half a mile wide, anyway) bubbling just beneath that placid surface.

Of course, the real question is, does the Joz have a Jobsian Reality Distortion Field at his command? Sources say yes, albeit one that only runs at half-power-- and it only functions what Joswiak wears a black turtleneck, as opposed to the polo shirt he's wearing in the photo, and has at least 16 ounces of Evian in his system. All indications imply that Greg will indeed be appropriately garbed and beveraged come the morning of July 16th, so attendees should expect at least a mild RDF charge when Joz takes the stage.

As for what the Joz will talk about come the big day, well, seeing as Apple seems intent on downplaying the whole need for a summer Expo in the first place, we're not expecting any big revelations. Most likely he'll simply rehash all the stuff that Steve himself covers at the Stevenote next week-- and that's if we're lucky. If Apple really wants to drive a stake through the heart of the summer Expo once and for all, we can imagine all sorts of ways in which Joz can make the prospect of a repeat performance well-nigh unthinkable. For example, are any of you familiar with "snotwarbling," the ancient Scottish performance art of playing traditional folk songs on a set of bagpipes through which one is simultaneously gargling the mucus of large field animals?

Anyone? No?

Well, cheer up; if our sources are correct, you will be in a month. Woo-hoo!