T minus four days and counting until WWDC, and the Mac community is officially frothing at the mouth-- and those flecks of foam flying every which way aren't toothpaste, Bubba; that's pure, unadulterated hysteria right there. The kind you could bottle and sell to Grandma if it weren't, you know, quite so gross. Maybe we're just too caught up in it ourselves to look at the situation objectively, but we're pretty sure it's safe to say without fear of exaggeration that Monday's Stevenote is at least a million times more eagerly awaited than any other event in the entire annals of human history.

Which explains why, since the show won't be webcast, one particularly enthusiastic reader over at MacRumors (we say "enthusiastic," a licensed mental health care professional says "obsessive and borderline psychotic," let's call the whole thing off) apparently phoned all 58 Apple retail stores in order to compile a definitive list of which locations would be showing a live satellite feed of Uncle Steve's Wild Ride. (We're hoping to catch the gig at the Apple Store Northshore, ourselves, if circumstances permit.)

What this means, of course, is that despite the fact that the Stevenote is slated to occur during the regular work day, Apple stores across the country are likely to be overrun with wild-eyed, foam-flecked Mac fanatics who will see no problem whatsoever with calling in sick, quitting their jobs, or even cutting off a pinky toe in order to free themselves of employment responsibilities on the big day. If you're planning on descending locust-like on your local theater-equipped Apple store to witness the birth of what may well turn out to be the Mac's next golden age, we recommend showing up early, since, as anyone who's ever wound up waiting in line at a grand opening can attest, those stores have maximum occupancy ratings, and come Monday we suspect that they're going to have to be enforced with the judicious application of tear gas and the help of some rather large firearms. Say hello to my little friend!

Something tells us that even with Academia lending a hand (MacMinute has a list of universities planning to show the Stevenote), that's not going to do much to stem the flood of rabid Mac devotees poised to overrun Apple's retail outlets. It's a pity, then, that more of those twenty-ish additional planned Apple stores aren't yet open to help ease the imminent overcrowding issue and prevent a few dozen trampling deaths. In particular, the Apple Store North Michigan Avenue, which was mentioned by El Stevo in the original Apple retail unveiling way back at the turn of the century, is finally slated to open its doors over two years later, at 6 PM on Friday, June 27th. And while we're glad to hear that this flagship Chicago store is actually going to be serving customers in just over a week, it's a shame that it won't be operational this Monday to host a few thousand rampaging Mac zealots overdosing on G5 speculation. (But hey, at least it's got a 16-Mac Internet Café. Oh, sure, Chicago gets iced mochas, while the rest of us can't even get free Evian at the Genius Bar anymore...)

Speaking of Apple retail stores, more and more sources are climbing on board with reports that Apple's own outlets and third party resellers alike have received Big, Mysterious Boxes labeled "Do Not Open Until Monday Or We'll Wear Your Entrails As A Grisly Feather Boa-Like Thingy (Only Without The Feathers)." And we admit that we here at AtAT were mildly concerned about the fact that, with all these Big, Mysterious Boxes all over the place, as far as we could tell, absolutely zero photos of said boxes had materialized-- but that was before an AtAT source in the reseller business informed us that the boxes also bear a label which reads, "Distribute Photos Of These Big, Mysterious Boxes And We'll Still Do The Entrail Thing, Plus We'll Also Lick Our Fingers And Stick Them In Your Ears, Which Is A Very Unpleasant Experience." Immediately under those labels are other labels which read, "Someone Just Told Us It's Called A 'Wet Willie.' The Ear Thing, We Mean, Not The Entrails Thing. We Don't Think The Entrails Thing Has A Name."

Anyway, Apple's vigorous labelling practices aside, Think Secret appears to be the latest to confirm the presence of Big, Mysterious Boxes in the back rooms of Apple retail stores all across the land, allegedly surrounded by security so thick and hearty, it's the soup you can eat with a fork. And the security (or possibly just the graphic descriptions of mayhem on the labels themselves) is apparently pretty darn effective, because to date, not a single reliable report of just what's in those cartons has surfaced. Given the curious nature of the human animal, we find it hard to believe that not a single person has succumbed to the urge and risked the Wrath of Steve for a peek inside.

Then again, given the tenacity with which Steve protects his keynote secrets, we have since come to the conclusion that several resellers have peeked-- but before they could get to a keyboard to tell anyone, they were immediately vaporized by the highly radioactive dead Repo Man aliens that Apple cleverly used as packing material. (The half-life on those puppies will render them harmless on Monday afternoon.) If we start to get an abnormally high number of reports about resellers gone missing, we'll know we're right.

Incidentally, it's not entirely true that the 'net is totally devoid of reports from intrepid box-peekers; MacRumors lists a Page 2 rumor (i.e. one of "uncertain reliability," aka, "dubious veracity," aka "probably a big steaming load of brown stuff") which points to an alleged account by a German reseller who claims to have opened the verbotene Kästen to discover the "PowerMacintosh 970." Uh, yyyyyeah. Meanwhile, we ourselves have gotten our share of third-hand reports from friends of cousins of resellers claiming that they, too, have compromised Apple's security; the most believable of these reports claims that they do, indeed, contain the Power Macintosh G5, while the least convincing says they're full of human kidneys on ice. And yet, we still think the kidneys thing is more credible than the "PowerMacintosh 970" report. We suppose we'll know the truth in four days.

This just in: our reseller source reports having received another shipment of Big, Mysterious Boxes; these bear all the labels described above, plus a new one which reportedly reads, "We're Thinking Of Calling It The 'Cupertino Tripe Scarf.'" Intriguing!

Finally, for sanity's sake, how's about we take a quick break from the incessant Stevenote speculation and kick back with a little iTunes Music Store action instead? By most accounts, Apple's foray into the wild and woolly world of online downloadable music sales has been a rousing success; there are still a few warts on the service, true, but every indication is that Apple has popped open an industrial size can of Compound W and is getting busy with the wart-busting action even as we speak.

For example, one typical complaint is that the selection at the iTMS skews heavily mainstream-- which isn't terribly surprising, since every single song in the current catalog comes from one of the five major labels. But it wasn't long before Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be courting the independent labels next, and so Stevie went a-courtin' by inviting representatives of some 150 indie labels to One Infinite Loop. One such rep posted his notes from the meeting ("NDA? What NDA?") which revealed just how excited he was with the terms of Apple's offer-- and now Rolling Stone reports that he wasn't alone in his giddiness. The co-founder of Sub Pop is "psyched," while the president of Delvian says, "I was waiting the whole time to find out, 'Where is the catch?' So far, there hasn't been any."

Ah. So no one told him about the shave-your-head-and-paint-it-reflective-orange clause, then. Well, he'll find out eventually.

Shiny orange heads aside, though, Apple is listening; when the rep from Vagrant Records (our personal fave, by the way) expressed concern that the iTMS can only sell to credit card holders, Apple reportedly replied that it was looking into "stored-value cash cards teens could use for music purchases." That's not just good news to labels with a younger demographic; it's also good news to parents who made the mistake of letting their kids go shopping with One-Click enabled and now have 8,200 individual 99-cent purchases on last month's Visa bill. See? Continual wart removal: an Apple way of life.