Sure, this is officially Friday's episode, but since we're on such a goofy schedule that it's broadcasting on Saturday morning, we'd be remiss not to pass along some fond birthday wishes to the platform that makes it all possible-- the platform that encourages us all in our endeavors, and whispers "you can" while others shout "you can't." The platform that has allowed so many to attempt the impossible, and occasionally to succeed. The platform that's always supportive, never judgmental, and opens doors when all the windows are closed. The platform that's now officially-- can you believe it?-- two decades old.

No, not José Cuervo. Sheesh. The Macintosh, you dork, the Macintosh is twenty today.

Now, we were going to do a little "looking back" sort of retrospectivish thingy that alternated between an examination of why Mac users are so fiercely loyal and that maudlin nostalgia that's all the rage these days, but we figured there are already plenty of those sorts of stories popping up all over the place without us adding one more; faithful viewer badtzmat points out that there's one at CNN, if that's the type of thing you're looking for. Personally, we just didn't think another "twenty years of the Mac" piece could really do justice to the occasion. When we turned twenty, just about the last thing we wanted was a bunch of people jawing on endlessly about the events of the first two decades of our lives.

So instead of settling for the obvious thing, we decided to do something for the Mac that it might actually like-- you know, give it a present that it would appreciate, as opposed to the squidgy photo-collage with embarrassing baby snapshots like that one of when its mom dressed it all in pink with a bow because it was "pretty enough to be a girl." When you're twenty, your past is of little to no interest; it's all about the future, baby. Well, that and taking delight in the misery of one's enemies, because let's face it, being twenty in this country means you're old enough to get drafted but not old enough to buy beer. It's an angry age, and injustice breeds contempt.

Keeping that in mind, we think we've settled on the perfect birthday gift for the Mac: faithful viewer Erik Tribou slid us an iafrica.com article about a Dell Inspiron laptop that apparently exploded all over a fifteen-year-old South African girl as she surfed the 'net for information on Macbeth. Now, granted, nobody likes to hear about an innocent teen getting second degree burns after an exploding laptop battery sets her shirt and couch on fire. We certainly wish her a full, speedy, and comfortable recovery from her ordeal. Still, if we can look past the injury to innocent bystanders, there's a certain bloodthirsty appeal to a Dell product that flat-out explodes, as opposed to those servers that just keel over in a puff of smoke.

So, Happy Birthday, Mac: this exploding Dell's for you. And when you're done with the celebrations, see if Steve will send that poor girl a get-well PowerBook; we're going to go out on a limb and assume that she's thinking about switching to something a little less combustible once she gets out of the burn ward.

Stop! Wait! Proceed no further if you want to avoid any and all spoilers for the Super Bowl, February 1st's highly-anticipated collection of ultra-pricey television commercials (interrupted occasionally by some sort of irrelevant athletic competition). It may still be over a week away, but details are already dribbling out about some of the ads-- including the minute-long spot that Pepsi has lined up to kick off its 10 million-song iTunes Music Store promotional giveaway. We've already received mail from several viewers upset at having the surprise ruined elsewhere on the 'net (come in off the ledge, guys; we swear there's more to live for), so we're being extra careful to warn you folks just in case you're trying to go into Super Bowl Sunday as a blank slate.

Abandon all surprise, ye who enter here. Seriously, if you can't bear the thought of knowing what's coming, go check out Rockwood for a little while or something.

...Are they gone? Okay, the rest of you, here's the skinny: according to USA Today, the Pepsi-iTMS Marvel Team-Up commercial is reportedly going to star none other than about twenty of those teenagers who have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally downloading pirated music. 14-year-old Annie Leith, who settled her suit to the tune of about three grand, holds up a Pepsi and announces, "we are still going to download music for free off the Internet." Then come the details about the 100 million winning bottle caps, etc. that you've all known about since mid-October. Set all this to the musical stylings of Green Day covering "I Fought the Law," and you've got a pretty good idea of what to expect. (We're guessing Pepsi couldn't get the rights to use the Clash version, so they opted for a sort of Clash Lite.)

Cute, right? And probably pretty effective at reaching its target audience, given that the RIAA lawsuits are national news. As long as you don't think about it too hard, this sounds like a winner of an ad: funny, topical, and giving away free stuff. Of course, if you do think about it too hard, then you'll notice that the message is actually pretty depressing: there's a bunch of kids hawking sugar water to pay for their RIAA fines and announcing that they're now going to play by the rules while a formerly-indie, now-major-label band sings "I fought the law and the law won." Not exactly the establishment-busting spirit of the 1984 ad, is it?

But hey, that's why we try not to think too hard about things. So let's move on to the real question, here: will Annie Leith be the next Ellen Feiss? Well, she's already got the "Bad Girl" thing going for her, and she's even more underage than Ellen was (and we all know how much the creepy 'net-stalker folks love that), but we figure it all depends entirely on how much Benadryl Annie took before the shooting. Stay tuned!

Hey, speaking of that Pepsi-iTunes giveaway, we assume you've been training hard to bolster your body's sugar tolerance, right? After all, you can't just leap headlong into a massive three-month guzzlefest and expect to collect the maximum number of free songs without preparing for the race; statistically speaking, you're going to have to down about six hundred 20-ounce bottles of select Pepsi products before April 30th in order to score all 200 free tunes. Without the proper conditioning, that much sugar will turn your blood into sludge and all your free songs will pass on to your next of kin. (Those of you who hope to avoid the sugar challenge altogether by sticking to Diet Pepsi will instead have to contend with the fact that ingestion of that much aspartame will likely turn your brainstem into an inert black viscous substance. Then again, the aftertaste will probably kill you first.)

Well, we have good news and bad news: the bad news is that you now have less time in which to condition your pancreas to handle the sugar overload. The good news, though, is that you have more time in which to amass your winning bottle cap collection. While the promotion officially starts on February 1st, faithful viewer jakester sent us clicking over to macboyx.com, where the site's proprietor has posted photographic evidence of a winning "ONE FREE SONG" bottle cap from a bottle of Diet Pepsi. We see no evidence of fakery, so we have to conclude that, in at least some areas, the iTMS bottles went out to stores a week and a half early. Time to get quaffing, folks-- the game is afoot!

One caveat, however: according to a thread in the MacRumors Forums (where MacBoyX originally posted his news about winning a song), while you might find Pepsis with claim codes in them, there's no way to redeem them yet, so you'll still have to wait for Super Bowl Sunday before you can actually download your free songs. Other noteworthy points from the same thread: iTunes bottles have been confirmed in Lincoln, Nebraska and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; and one reader reports having collected five winning caps because people don't yet know about the promotion (or don't care) and are just throwing them away. So if you're willing to root through a few trash receptacles, you might actually be able to score your 200 songs without totally screwing with your insulin levels. Technically it's cheating-- the codes are void if "illegitimately obtained (i.e., through means other than mail-in request pursuant to Rule 2 or retail purchase)"-- but somehow we doubt that Apple or Pepsi is going to go to great lengths to bust you on that point.

So giddyup, kiddies; it's time to hit the corner store and check the Pepsi bottles for the Apple logo, because you don't want to miss taking advantage of this nine-day head start. But if you find iTMS bottles in your area and you start drinking in earnest, keep this helpful health tip in mind: if your urine comes out carbonated, it's time to slow down a smidge. Enjoy!