You may think that our recent sporadic broadcast schedule (and, as you well know, we're using the word "schedule" so loosely it's bound to fall off and roll behind the fridge if you look at it cross-eyed) is all sunshine and puppy dogs at this end. After all, if we're producing fewer shows, we must be doing less work, right? In reality, though, production of AtAT at a less-than-daily frequency presents its own challenges that tend to bleed away some of the expected time-savings. The main problem is that stuff happens out there in Apple-Land-- big, dramatic, and even semi-important stuff-- and we don't have time to do a scene about it. So it's never officially appeared on the show before, which means that in subsequent episodes, we can't refer to said big, dramatic, semi-important stuff without someone calling for the heads of our script editor and continuity supervisor on sticks. (Luckily, to the best of our knowledge, neither of those staff members actually exists, and thus no one's feelings get stepped on when the nitpickers get a-pickin' at them nits.)

Fortunately, though, our recent descent to hitherto unplumbed depths of sleep deprivation has spontaneously yielded a fairly simple solution-- namely, that these days we care even less about plot, continuity, intelligibility, etc. than we used to, and boy howdy, that's saying something. We now feel that such things are decadent luxuries meant only for those pampered producers who still remember what it's like to have gotten more than forty consecutive minutes' sleep at a time, and therefore those properties no longer play any official role here. So, at least in some ways, we've pretty much been reduced to being the collective Ed Wood of the online Apple-oriented soap scene. Luckily, we're perfectly comfortable with that, even though we still shun Angora.

There are some things, though, we just can't let pass without at least a little bit of proper exposition. In particular, we're referring to all that dust that got kicked up recently about potential insider trading abuses occurring in Apple's upper echelons of power. Even though it's technically old news by now, vague and unfounded allegations of executive impropriety are our bread and butter, baby, and if ever there was an Associated Press story just begging to become AtAT plot-fodder, it was that one last Friday broadly hinting that Apple bigwigs had intentionally offloaded massive blocks of AAPL just prior to surprise stock-scuttling earnings warnings not once, but twice in the past couple of years. Analysts contacted for the article refer to the trades as "well-timed" (wink, wink) and "a bit suspicious" (say no more). Apple, for its part, had money czar Fred Anderson trot out a brief written statement to the effect that "no executive would have exercised options had they believed we would not meet our original guidance for the quarter." Of course, since Fred was one of the recent sellers as we mentioned a few weeks back, some people are still going to be going "hmmmm."

Now, we're going to skip the whole "We Told You So" dance, because if we had actually been serious last month when we made those references to an imminent Apple stock plunge, our own portfolio wouldn't be gasping on life support right now. What we would like to say, though, is this: it's awfully nice to know that when we're not around to take what is probably a simple coincidence and twist it into a dark and sinister conspiracy whose strings are pulled by shadowy figures in the halls of power, at least the Associated Press will step up to the plate. Seriously, they did a commendable job; not only did they get a couple of analysts to admit vague suspicions with no actual proof of wrongdoing, but they also managed to work in a mention of the SEC (albeit only to say that "the SEC would not comment") and some utterly shameless and alarmist comparisons to corporate baddies Enron and WorldCom. Seriously, we couldn't have done better ourselves, and we feel much better knowing that there are others are out there to take up our slack.

(Oh, and Fred? Make sure you shred all the evidence, okay?)