You know, this is old news, but we haven't had a chance to mention it before, and we're sorry, but we can't remain silent about it any longer. It's simply not in our natures to sit idly by and watch evil take root, unless of course there's something good on TV. Plus it's a pretty slow day, drama-wise, and unless Steve Jobs goes on a head-thwacking rampage against the citizens of downtown Cupertino with a sock full of steaming hot Malt-O-Meal in the next couple of hours, well, we think this is worth discussing. Good stuff, Maynard.

So here's the dilly-o: if you're even an occasional viewer of this little show, here, you're probably pretty well aware of the official AtAT stance on Steven, that insipid yutz with the eyebrows and the cheese-eating smirk who's always polluting our televisual experience to hawk cheap Wintel crap by repeating the immortal phrase "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell" ad infinitum. If you're not familiar with our policy towards Steven-Dude, we're not going to detail the whole spiel for you right now because, well, something good's on TV. But suffice it to say that heavy blunt instruments and red-hot pokers figure prominently in any scenario that involves us and him together in a locked sound-proof room.

However, as it turns out, some people actually like Steven-Dude. Lots of people, actually. The whole Dude campaign has been a smashing success for Dell and is responsible for persuading countless hordes of what we can only assume are inbred mouth-breathing troglodytes to incur still more credit card debt in exchange for the privilege of owning a product whose spokesperson makes both Beavis and Butt-Head look like combination brain surgeons, rocket scientists, and poet laureates-- thus proving once and for all that we've reached the ultimate nadir of human cultural development. Or so we naïvely thought.

No, folks, we were wrong, wrong, wrong; the real indication that Western civilization is scraping rock-bottom is that Steven-Dude is so frickin' popular, Dell is now selling "Dude Gear." That's right; as faithful viewer Barry Hamill pointed out several weeks back, now even troglodytes who can't afford an actual Dell computer can shell out their cash on consumer crap emblazoned with the Credo of Our Generation, "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell." T-shirts, CD cases, backpacks, ball caps-- Dell's got all sorts of ways for you to get in touch with your Inner Dude. If this isn't one of the biblical signs of the apocalypse, it darn well should be.

Now, far be it from us to advocate even the mildest form of violence against any living creature, but we will say this: if Uncle Steve does do the sock-full-of-hot-cereal rampage any time soon, here's hoping he has the taste to target any "Dude Gear"-totin' geniuses first. Maybe the wet slap of grain upside the head would knock a little sense into them and they'd opt for something a little more stylish-- like MacSurfShop's own take on the "Dude" shirt, or, dare we say it, the pinnacle of style itself: the AtAT t-shirt?...