Rumormongers, head for the hills-- Apple's on the warpath! At least, that's our gut feeling given the way that a couple of the more visible Mac rumor outlets have suddenly and mysteriously vanished from the face of the 'net. Yesterday we touched on the unexplained disappearance of Mac OS Rumors and posited that perhaps the universe was simply keeping things balanced given the return of AppleInsider after a seven-month-long unannounced hiatus. There's just one little problem with that theory: faithful viewer Adrian just tipped us off to the fact that AppleInsider is now also missing in action. In light of this somewhat ominous development, we strongly recommend that if you engage in LCD iMac speculation around the water cooler, you not drink the water itself without checking it for cyanide first.

Actually, we need to amend that; while it was definitely down for the past several hours, we notice that AppleInsider just sprang back to life. Evidently one member of the AI team managed to survive this morning's ninja attack, drag his broken and bleeding body over to the server, and pop the plug back into the wall before finally expiring in a twitching heap. In any case, a multi-hour outage for AI just weeks before a day-earlier, hour-longer Stevenote (plus the fact that Mac OS Rumors is still pumping out dead air) still might imply to the more paranoid among you that someone or something is doing its best to keep the rumors sites out of commission.

So who's next? Think Secret? MacRumors? Or possibly even the newest kid on the rumor block, Crazy Apple Rumors Site? Why do we get the feeling that the Naked Mole Rat will soon be fished out of the East River and Anne Onymous will accidentally fall out of a window onto an exploding bomb and get hit by a car? Surely no dirt-disher is safe from the scary pokings of whatever diabolical entity seeks to quell all pre-Expo speculation. The moral of the story, kiddies, is twofold: until the Expo, keep your heads down the next time you start whispering about the G5; and just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't all out to get you. Now excuse us, as we're off to get some radical elective plastic surgery...