The AtAT staff has been in an introspective sort of mood, lately, and therefore we've been pondering some of life's imponderables. Like, which came first, the chicken or the egg? What's the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound? What did this blue fuzzy stuff that we found in the back of the fridge used to be, back when it went into the Tupperware? Are there really people out there who watch televised arm wrestling? And so on.

Well, it looks like our grey matter's going to be booking some overtime, because faithful viewer Carleton Britt just gave us a new koan to consider: is Sears too lame to contain Dell merchandise, or is Dell merchandise too lame to appear within Sears stores? According to a recent article in the Austin American-Statesman, the two companies have just killed a pilot program that put "try it and order" Dell kiosks into Sears locations. Reportedly Dell is enjoying some success with 57 similar kiosks in malls, but for some reason, the Sears kiosk program got canned after just four months. Both companies refuse to elaborate, simply calling the decision "mutual"; Dell added that "the lessons learned from [the Sears] experiment have been applied to the mall-based program." Whatever that means.

We should probably warn you that thinking too hard about the comparative lameness of Sears and Dell could in fact trigger a total mental breakdown. It's like staring into the depths of infinity itself; it's easy to get lost, so please be careful. And yes, we know we could have approached this whole subject from the classic AtAT "Mike Dell is so psychotically obsessed with Steve Jobs that he copycats Steve's every move" angle (Apple did pull out of Sears at least twice, after all), but we figured this way we'd get to bag on Dell and Sears in one shot. That's us; forever working to improve the efficiency of our smart-ass commentary to better serve you, the viewing audience. Service with a smirk!