Don't mind us; we at AtAT are just thumbing through the night course catalog from the local community college. We figure it's high time we took an extension class or two to shore up the sagging quality of the show's writing. Unfortunately, they don't seem to offer the course in "Dramatic Sarcasm For Fun And Profit" which we so desperately need. See, occasionally on this show we pad the plot by introducing some outré fictional event or situation designed to entertain, enlighten, or prove a point. Generally when we do this, we try to trowel on so much sarcasm it virtually oozes from your set. But that's where the night class comes in, because instead, we invariably dig ourselves into a hole when the sarcasm evidently turns out to be a shade too subtle to register with all our viewers. The result? Widespread panic, general consternation, and an avalanche of email in our inbox that puts the ILOVEYOU virus to shame.

For example, a couple of years ago there was an interesting coincidence when several Mac-oriented web sites were all down at roughly the same time. Some were on hiatus, others were experiencing connection troubles, and a few were upgrading to new servers or migrating to different presence providers. We figured, "hey, wouldn't it be funny to blame these site outages on a covert Apple initiative to eliminate the Mac Web's more 'troublesome' sites by dispatching an elite black-ops ninja force trained to disable web sites and terminate their proprietors?" We made the rookie mistake of thinking that an Apple-funded corps of ninjas commanded by Steve Jobs was sufficiently over the top to register as satire to any who might tune in. The result? One very upset webmaster of AppleInsider (then known as MacNN Reality) yelling at us because several viewers were bombarding him with mail, asking if Apple was indeed trying to shut his site down-- the very idea of which is patently absurd, since everyone knows it's Adobe who sends out the ninja lawyers. So, we broadcast a public retraction and figured we learned our lesson: when going for sarcasm, subtlety only leads to heartbreak. From then on, we resolved, we'd always throw in a truckload of obvious clues that we weren't serious.

Clues, for example, like, oh, I don't know... how about: MSN buying out our tiny Mac soap opera; Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer taking over AtAT's writing with the help of the creative staff from the short-lived "Melrose Place" spin-off "Models Inc."; AtAT's newly Windows-optimized content accusing iCab users of being commies; the imminent changing of AtAT's name to "As the Sweater Spins"; the revisionist replacement of all former AtAT references to Microsoft with references to Oracle instead; etc. etc. etc. Here we thought yesterday's episode was a brilliant (though obvious) piece of satire meant to deliver an editorial viewpoint on the big event of the day, when in fact all it did was kick up a ruckus and flood our mailbox with the thoughts of concerned citizens who felt the show's quality and integrity might suffer following its sale to the Redmond Beast. Hence, our need for a night class-- or at the very least, a copy of Satiric Writing for Dummies, because we're clearly failing miserably on the sarcasm front, here.

So the bottom line, folks, is this: It was a joke. We assure you that AtAT remains a fully independent production. AtAT has not been bought by Microsoft, and considering what we thought were our plainly evident feelings about that particular corporation (hint: rhymes with "schmevil"), we're not likely to sell out to them at any time in the foreseeable future. At least, not unless they kick us some serious cash. (Note: That, too, was a joke. Please don't email us calling us sellouts. Thank you.) And really, do you honestly think Microsoft would be interested in buying this little show? If so, how much do you think we could get for it? (Note: Again, we're kidding. Please, please, for the love of Mike, don't flame us.) Really, it all comes down to this: in order for the scenario described in yesterday's episode to have been true, you'd have to believe that a once-staunchly-Mac-loyal enterprise that built its popularity and success upon the faithful support of the Mac community would then turn around and spit on those that made it successful by selling itself to Microsoft. Now, come on-- like that would ever happen in real life!