If there's anything more likely to knock us out cold than 11,000 words of which a high percentage are "latency," "throughput," and "frontside bus," it's a 10-Q filing. You know these things, right? Corporations file them every quarter with the SEC for the express purpose of advancing the worldwide battle against insomnia. To show you what we mean, here's an excerpt from Apple's most recent 10-Q, filed last Tuesday: "The Company has provided formal input to both the FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) regarding the IASB's exposure draft on stock-based compensation and the FASB's efforts to achieve maximum convergence on accounting for stock-based compensation between U.S. and international accounting standards."

Hello? Hello? Wake up, limey fish!! See, we told ya it was snoozeworthy stuff. And honestly, we can only make ourselves giggle with that "10-Q very much/you're welcome" gag about six or eight times before it starts to get stale. But the fact of the matter is that the 10-Q usually does bury a few nuggets of useful and/or interesting information within the slag heap of Accountingspeak. Usually your best bet is to let someone like MacMinute dive in and pry out the good bits. That way you can read about Apple's 93 pink slips without subjecting yourself to prose so dry it could out-absorb Bounty, the Quicker Picker-Upper.

But this quarter we've stumbled upon a rare and delightful surprise: instead of just mining the 10-Q for news, CNET has gone ahead and mined it for dirt! For instance, isn't it nice to know that, in the two and a half years since Apple's board of directors gave Uncle Steve his very own free jet, the Stevester will have been reimbursed for some $1.36 million in "company-related airplane expenses"? Say, whatever happened to board member Jerry York's claim that the jet would be "operated at Mr. Jobs's expense"? Apparently Steve still flies commercial first class when he's on the clock and only uses the Gulfstream for weekend outings to Kuala Lumpur. But still, $1.36 million? That's, like, $1500 a day, each and every day, for two and a half years. With that much alleged Apple-related air travel, let's hope he's earning the frequent flier miles. Then again, when could he possibly use them?

But even that isn't the real dirt. Get this: it seems that Apple's newest board member, Al Gore, amassed a total of 286.3 million votes from shareholders in the last board election, whereas Steve-o himself scored only 244.4 million. Waitaminnit, here... so Gore won more votes than Jobs? Unthinkable! It was the chads! The chads, we tell you!