Ooooh, can't you just feel the tension mounting? There's just one day to go until Apple Money Dude Fred Anderson steps up to the mic and delivers his eagerly-awaited dramatic reading from Apple's Q2 balance sheet. Will he regale us with an epic tale of Apple's triumphant return from the depths of the hellish Red Ink Sea? Or maybe he's preparing a heart-wrenching tragedy in which Steve struggles against insurmountable odds to post a profit, but falls short-- hamstrung by hubris, perhaps, or some other hamartia. We're on the edge of our collective seat, because until tomorrow afternoon, we just won't know whether we're going to laugh, cry, or cheer.

Fred is always a master of drama, of course, but this quarter in particular has us hyperventilating in anticipation. As of a month ago, Fred still expected to read selected passages from The Book of Small Profits, but some pundits still think he might opt for a last-minute substitution and recite a series of monologues from All Our Ink Is Red, instead. One thing we do know for certain is that the event will once again be an avant-garde exercise in audience participation, in which the acclaimed Mr. Anderson will improvise answers to questions from the telephonically assembled listeners.

The bad news is that this quarterly event remains an invitation-only occasion for bidirectional access, and typically only the A-List analysts score tickets. (We couldn't even find any up for auction on eBay. Now that's scarce!) The good news is that anyone can listen in, albeit purely in an observer capacity; you can still hear and appreciate the art, but without being able to ask Fred questions, you just can't help shape it. But of course it's better than nothing, so either get the phone numbers for listen-only access from Apple's media alert, or warm up your QuickTime-enabled browsers and prepare to load Apple's official webcast page. The performance begins promptly at 5 PM EDT.

By the way, if you're feeling a bit left out because you don't rate a participatory role in Mr. Anderson's quarterly reading, fear not-- AtAT embraces all. You may not be able to ask Fred about what Joyce meant by the ineluctable modality of the visible or whether he wears boxers or briefs, but at least you can enter our quarterly Beat the Analysts contest and see if you've got a better handle on Apple's finances than those snooty Wall Street types. Who knows? If you win, maybe Fred will so admire your analyst-beating predictive prowess that he'll get you on the guest list for next quarter's reading. What's ten seconds to enter a contest if it might mean the chance to rub shoulders with greatness?