Okay, so do you remember back in grade school when you went through your little phase of rampant dinosaur obsession, and at some point you read somewhere that the Brontosaurus had a nervous system so slow and primitive, if you jabbed the tip of its tail with a pin, the impulse to experience pain wouldn't reach its brain for, like, ten minutes or something? For all we know it's a long-disproved theory no longer accepted by serious paleontologists, or maybe it was always a total crock that just sounded good for My First Dinosaur Book; heck, they aren't even called Brontosauruses anymore, so any Fun Dino Facts we retained from reading the back of the Prehistoric Animal Cracker box are likely to be pretty suspect. All we know is, that's what popped into our heads when faithful viewer Jan Adriaenssens forwarded us the latest development in the Disney Leadership Crisis saga this morning; Michael Eisner got jabbed in the tail over six months ago, and he just now said "ow."

Yes, after receiving a blistering and completely unprecedented 45% vote of no confidence at Disney's shareholders' meeting last March, Eisner has only just now announced that he's finally going to leave his post as Disney's CEO. But if you think his six-month reaction time is slow, wait'll you see how long it takes him to actually do something about it; according to the New York Times, Eisner won't actually vamoose until September of 2006. Why? Because Eisner is calling his departure a "retirement," and that's when his current contract expires; ludicrously enough, he's actually claiming that his decision to leave has nothing whatsoever to do with all the opposition he's received over the past couple of years. But who knows? Maybe his nervous system is even slower than we thought and the fact that no one wants him running Disney hasn't actually sunk in yet.

Or maybe he's sharper than he appears (which wouldn't be hard), because his timing is very interesting; remember, despite the fact that talks had reportedly been going nowhere for months, Steve Jobs's surprise announcement that negotiations had collapsed and Pixar and Disney would be parting ways came at a suspiciously good time for the anti-Eisner brigade, who used the evaporation of billions of dollars of future Pixar revenue as heavy artillery in its newly-mounted and massive campaign to get shareholders to vote against Eisner. Future hints that Pixar might possibly consider returning to Disney as long as Eisner were gone raised some suspicion that Steve staged the whole thing just to get Eisner fired, possibly so that he could take the CEO spot himself; after all, why else would he announce the end of the partnership nearly two full years before the current Pixar-Disney agreement expires?

But now Eisner has said he's retiring, which makes it a lot tougher for anyone to justify kicking him out, and he won't be cleaning out his desk until nine months after the Pixar deal ends. Was this a final salting of the earth? Because if Steve never had any serious intention of splitting Pixar from Disney and always planned to re-ink a deal once Eisner got canned, now his bluff's being called; if he wants to stick with Disney, he's going to have to deal with Eisner to do it. If that was Eisner's intention, he's a brilliant tactician.

Or he's got a brain the size of a large apple, there's no retaliatory conspiracy, and this is all just a massive coincidence. Whatever. In any case, Eisner's days at Disney (at least as CEO) are numbered, and while he's pitching his second-in-command and favorite puppet Bob Iger as his successor, investors reportedly aren't crazy about the idea. Is it any surprise that on every list of potential candidates kicked around by analysts and industry pundits, Steve Jobs's name glows like blinking neon? The question is, was he angling for the job all along, and if so, will he split his CEOsity three ways, have Disney buy Pixar, have Disney buy Pixar and Apple, or just leave Apple in the lurch? Things just might get interesting, folks.