Look at you-- your level of sloth is disgraceful. Surely you're aware that there's only one week left until the start of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, right? And yet, instead of preparing yourself mentally for the full-strength dose of Reality Distortion Field energy you'll absorbing during Steve Jobs's keyno-- er, "fireside chat," you've been sitting on the couch eating Chee-tos and watching the Real World/Road Rules Challenge marathon. And don't hand us any garbage about Chee-tos and MTV being key components of any serious RDF preparation regimen; everyone knows that it's all about Ruffles and Red Dwarf. So what's with the slacking off?

What do you mean, you're not going? But unless you happen to be a member of the press (in which case you were probably invited to the recent iBook unveiling and tomorrow's tour of the first Apple retail store, and we therefore hate you with a passion), this is your first opportunity for live Steve contact since last month's shareholders' meeting. Surely you're not going to throw away a genuine chance to experience The Man Himself. Okay, so maybe you're not a developer; big deal. Who says WWDC is only for developers (other than its title)? You can fake it if your need to: look unkempt, lose a lot of sleep, formulate a dangerous addiction to caffeine, and if questioned, spew some vague stuff about dereferencing memory pointers and then fake a seizure as a distraction. Trust us, you'll fit right in. After all, we doubt there's an exam at the door on the way in.

Yet instead of trotting off to the kitchen to start brewing coffee made with Mountain Dew, here you are making still more excuses. Now it's complaints about the cost. Well, yeah, okay, we imagine that $1595 is a bit steep, especially if you're not an actual developer who might come away from the conference with a head chock-full of Mac OS X programming know-how that's worth every penny. Sure, Steve may be the hardest working CEO in show business, but sixteen hundred clams is a lot of dough for one performance. But how about, say, $300? Because as faithful viewer Paul points out, there's a WWDC ticket on eBay that was only fetching $280 at broadcast time. Surely a live Steve performance is worth three Bennies. So no more excuses-- get thee to a geekery!