As all of you paranoid Mac conspiracy theorists are no doubt well aware, Steve Jobs has been quietly skimming funds from Apple's sizeable cash stockpile for the past several years and using the moolah to pay for the construction of a massive underground alien weaponry and cloning facility far from the snooping eyes of this planet's nosy world powers-- in other words, on Mars. So far that's worked out just fine, what with most people far too concerned with earthbound matters to consider the possibility of a Jobsian Death Ray and warlord clone research lab soon going live on the Red Planet, especially since most right-thinking individuals never take a single word we say at all seriously. (Funny, that.)

But what's this? Faithful viewer Brian tipped us off to an article in Science Daily about how the camera system aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft is being used to obtain pictures of the Martian surface that are the "most detailed... ever obtained." Normally, that would be nothing for Steve to worry about, since most people in this country are flash-hypnotized to ignore any strange doings that might be related to His Steveness's plans for global domination; it happens during the eye exam when getting a driver's license. But as it turns out, the inquisitive little munchkins remotely poking around in the dirt on Mars's surface are none other than middle school students, and as such, they've yet to succumb to mind control devices in play at the Department of Motor Vehicles. If those students were to discover Steve's outpost (and no, it doesn't look like a face; we're told it's shaped more like a waffle with a Bic pen thrust through it), it could set back his plans by up to a decade.

So what to do? Fear not, Apple fans; Steve's got the situation well in hand. Just take a gander at these College of Liberal Arts and Sciences photos of those middle school kids processing their Mars photographs. Notice anything interesting? Those kids are all using brand new Quicksilver Power Mac G4s with flat-panel displays-- you know, the kind that most schoolkids dream about as they doodle in KidPix on their school's LC IIIs with the twelve-inch greyscale monitors. Heck, you can spot three Quicksilver-and-LCD Mac systems lined up in one photo. And we take it we're not supposed to surmise that those shiny new machines were a "gift" from a certain mercurial sugar daddy in exchange for the kids' silence, should they happen to stumble upon any suspiciously waffle-and-Bic-shaped crater formations, right? Right. Oh me oh my, that man is smooth...