Gosh, we'd been out of the daily soap-production grind for so long that we'd almost completely forgotten about that most heinous of plot-development stumbling blocks, the slow news day-- that is, until one jumped up and bit us in the neck yesterday. How, exactly, are we supposed to drum up drama and excitement when all we have to work from is fluff pieces and filler? Answer: all we needed to do was get back in touch with our Inner Paranoiac.

Yes, our Inner Paranoiac, that quiet little guy who usually keeps to himself a lot, spending most of his time sitting up in our skulls crafting an array of tin foil hats designed to block harmful gamma radiation that aliens are beaming at our planet in an attempt to make the entire human race servile and sterile before the invasion. When contacted, he turns into a raving psychopath who can spot evidence of six conspiracies in something as seemingly harmless as a can of chunk light tuna. (Seven, if it's packed in spring water instead of oil.)

What that means is, when roused with enough black coffee and sleep deprivation, our Inner Paranoiac can squeeze some sort of soapworthy drama out of even the most innocuous human interest story. For example, faithful viewer Sleeper pointed out a MacCentral article about an FM radio station which keeps an iPod loaded up with tunes and set for shuffle play as a backup just in case their satellite feed goes down in a thunderstorm. Just a simple and cost-effective backup plan to counter the effects of inclement weather? Nuh-uh-- the weird little guy in our head says that this is actually the onset of a major tactical strike in Steve Jobs's master scheme to take over the planet.

The plan is simple: first, Steve secretly establishes a New Jersey-based "independent freeform radio station" and gives it a decade or so to build an audience and allay suspicion. When the time is right, the "station manager" plants the iPod at the station's transmitter, claiming that it's an ideal backup solution in case the satellite feed goes dead. MacCentral (which is so deep in bed with Apple they're both squeezed into the same pair of footie pajamas) reports the story, thus prompting other radio stations to plant iPods at their transmitters, as well. Before long, every radio station on the planet has an iPod connected to its transmitter "for emergencies."

Here's where Sleeper's own Inner Paranoiac chimes in: "Then, once the 'Pods are in place, His Steveness could trigger the activation signal that would cause his embedded minions to blanket the airwaves with Apple advertisements." Well, maybe, but our own guy begs to differ. He says that Steve would then use his weather-control satellites to disrupt feeds all over the world, at which point the backup iPods would flood the airwaves with concentrated Reality Distortion Field energy guaranteed to transform every one with earshot of broadcast radio into a zombie slave. Then all the slaves descend on seats of power, eviscerate the world's leaders, stick Bill Gates's head on a spike and parade it through the streets, yadda yadda yadda.

This scene comes to you courtesy of our Inner Paranoiac; treat yours well, and he or she will bring you hours of quality entertainment!