Want another Log o' Suspicion to toss on your own personal bonfire dedicated to the Great Apple Executive Pre-Earnings Warning Stock Sell-Off Conspiracy Scandal? (And really, what red-blooded Mac-obsessed drama freak doesn't want more fuel to keep the flame of their GAEPEWSSOCS roaring?) Just consider the spate of teensy new distractions issuing forth from Cupertino over the course of the past few days. Sure, few of them are even full-blown announcements, but it's just enough semi-newsworthy stuff to attract the attention of the Mac-centric media while distracting the hordes from looking too closely at that whole stock-sale brouhaha. It's reaching, yes, but if reason and rational thought have your belief in an Apple insider trading scandal starting to sputter, we figure this is a decent way to get the fires burning again.

First, consider Monday's new promotion: Check the savings. It's nothing earth-shattering, mind you; just modest discounts on software ranging from Office v.X to Toast 5 Titanium to GoLive 6.0 to Spider-Man (and even deals on some hardware like speaker systems and cable/DSL routers) for anyone who buys a new Mac or a copy of Mac OS X and the applicable third-party products by October 15th. Pretty tame stuff, but anyone reading about the new promotion at, say, MacCentral isn't reading about how half of Apple's board of directors sold a ton of company stock shortly before that earnings warning nuked the share price.

Not buying it? Well, how about the new "Real People" commercials that debuted this week? Apple added two more to the mix over the weekend-- faithful viewer Casey Kelley caught the David Carey ("I'm a magazine publisher") one on MTV on Sunday, and notes that both it and the new Juan Proaño ("I'm a budget manager") one appeared on Apple's site at some point on Monday night. Obviously Apple rushed these out in hopes of prompting John "My Mother Never Hugged Me Enough" Dvorak to hurl personal insults at the two new switchers, and thus shifting the Mac media's focus away from any alleged financial improprieties that may have been committed by Apple executives, and toward Dvorak's raging and deep-seated inferiority complex.

Still not convinced? Then consider the list of stores on Apple's retail page, which hadn't been updated in months-- until yesterday, that is. Faithful viewer Guacamole pointed out that the long-awaited mondo-huge SoHo store has finally shown up in the "Coming Soon" slot, with a posted grand opening date of July 18th, coinciding with the Macworld Expo. Isn't it interesting that it's just showing up now? While there have been exceptions, Apple doesn't typically list stores as "Coming Soon" until about one week before the opening. And there's also the somewhat suspicious circumstance that faithful viewer John W. spotted the SoHo listing on Friday, when it anomalously surfaced briefly as Apple web elves apparently tinkered behind the scenes in preparation for the "real" posting. Friday, you will recall, was when the Apple stock story started to heat up. Interesting, no?

Okay, so none of this is damning evidence of a massive attempted cover-up, so you're going to have to use your imagination if you want this to bolster your paranoid conspiracy fantasies about widespread illegal insider trading among Apple's top executives. Hey, no one ever said that belief comes easy...