Speaking of postponements, trade shows aren't the only events getting pushed forward these days. As you all know, the Saddle Creek Apple store was originally slated to open its doors this coming Saturday in Germantown, Tennessee, no doubt accompanied by the standard hoopla of fanatical Mac users lining up three weeks before the opening and frightening passersby with a level of enthusiasm not commonly observed outside of top secret government mind control experiments. But a couple of days ago, we noted that the grand opening had been indefinitely postponed, thus leaving us in the Mac community adrift without a gala event upon which to set our sights. (It's been an awful ordeal, as we're sure you're painfully aware.)

Anyway, when we heard about the delay, our rational (read: boring) interpretation of the situation was that Apple had most likely decided to hold off on any more store openings until the nation was in a more partylike mood. We figured that the turnout at the International Plaza grand opening a couple of weeks ago-- mere days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks-- was perhaps both somber and less than inspiring, and that Apple wanted to avoid a disappointing repeat performance. However, seeing as it's our job to deliver an utterly irrational interpretation of these sorts of events, we proposed the wacky idea that Apple was delaying the Saddle Creek opening because-- ready for this?-- it was still tussling with the fascistic Germantown Design Review Commission about the store's light-up Apple logo signs. Zany, right? That's comedy gold, baby!

And here we thought we were being so flip and clever. Instead, we got a mammoth-sized dose of truth being far stupider than any kind of fiction we could ever spit out. As faithful viewer Oren Krinsky pointed out, MacMinute reports that continuing squabbling over the alleged unsuitability of Apple's store signage is exactly why the opening has been delayed; while Apple has reportedly managed to persuade the commission to overlook that baffling "no food items on store signs" law (so it can actually get to use its corporate logo) and has even somehow gotten them to overlook some of the size restrictions, Apple and Germantown are now apparently duking it out over the ban on internally-illuminated signs. Fully lit-up logos are a definite no-no, so Apple proposed a compromise wherein only the edges of the logos are lit, but the commission shot it down.

So the decision to delay the Saddle Creek gig had nothing to do with a lousy Tampa opening. Nope, it's all about signage. Yea verily, we haven't heard of a battle so silly since Fred and Barney were getting all bent out of shape over that swimming pool they were trying to share. So Apple's back at the drawing board, presumably trying to figure out whether it'll be more cost-effective to produce some sort of elaborate system of mirrors and lasers to illuminate the logos from the outside, or just pay to have the entire Design Review Commission whacked and replaced with obedient android shills. Meanwhile, the store remains closed until further notice, which is, we're sure you'll agree, a crime against humanity. Here's hoping for a resolution before we all die of old age.