Whoops! Sorry about the delayed return to broadcasting following our non-AtAT-related road trip to Manhattan, folks, but a few times a year this weird thing happens to us where the whole world goes dark, we suddenly realize that our eyes are closed, and when we open them, we find that entire hours have passed. Extensive research revealed to us a few years back that this phenomenon is disturbingly common among the population, and has been designated by the medical establishment as "sleep." Normally we manage to keep it down to just 45 minutes or so a couple of times a day, but, like we say, every once in a while we get smacked down for a solid six to eight hours, and then all hell breaks loose. Suddenly our bodies seem to insist on the stuff, and for a week or so we wind up "sleeping" up to a third of each day away. It's the biggest productivity killer we can think of since Snood.

Anyway, we're trying to get back to our normal selves via the liberal ingestion of strong Silk mochas and Green & Black's, but if anything's going to snap us out of this eight-hours-a-day foolishness, it's the Silicon.com article that was forwarded to us by faithful viewer Macintosah. No doubt you've seen this thing by now, because it's been quoted by every media outlet that's even vaguely Mac-related, including any that may have used the letters "M," "A," and/or "C" in some published content at some point in their histories. Basically, it's about Microsoft CEO and Resident Genetic Road Accident Steve Ballmer and his recent rant to the London press about how all iPod users-- and remember, that's a heckuva lotta users-- are dirty, stinkin' thieves who should all be rounded up, shot, stuffed, mounted, painted orange, and used as roadside traffic cones for their crimes.

At least, that's our best guess at a translation into English from whatever Missing Link logic-deficient backwoods patois the Ballmer actually speaks. Silicon.com quotes the man-thing as having said (and we assume that this is a phonetic transcription): "We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'... we are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use."

It's like he's trying speak to us, we just know it.

Okay, so apparently the Ballmer thinks that everyone with an iPod fills it up by wantonly downloading all of their music from illegal sources, which certainly would never happen if those people were only using Windows. Just for giggles, let's completely ignore the fact that, by now, most iPod owners are Windows users. (It was ages ago that Steve Jobs mentioned that Apple was selling more iPods to Windows sad sacks than to Mac users, but hey, why let that get in the way of a freaky foam-flecked Ballmerian rant about how thieves lurk around every street corner?) How, exactly, is this DRM that's been in Windows "for years" supposed to prevent people from pirating music and slapping it onto an iPod? Or, for that matter, any other portable digital music player on the planet, since they all either play MP3s or some other easily rippable format and not just DRMed Windows Media?

See, somehow ape-guy seems to have conveniently forgotten that Napster (not the new pay-to-listen service with the same name and logo, but the original Napster, with all the illicit downloading and the bootlegs and the Metallica lawsuits with the hey hey hey and the pretty LAAAAAAdy glayvin) ran on Windows for eons before someone slapped together a Mac client. The same goes for KaZaA and, we imagine, pretty much any other software commonly used to swipe music without paying for it. He also seems never to have encountered the concept of a "CD," a clever medium whereby consumers can purchase a selection of music in a legal fashion and then transfer said music to an iPod all in a completely above-board context. Heck, we filled up our first 5 GB iPod within twenty minutes of opening the box, just with music from CDs we'd previously imported into iTunes. We've tripled our CD-encoded iTunes library since then, and we've still got dozens (if not hundreds) of discs to rip if we ever feel like getting comprehensive about things. If only the Ballmer hadn't been thawed from a glacier before Microsoft shaved him and stuck him in a suit, he might know of such wonders of civilized life, and he might not play so fast and loose with the slander and all.

But none of that is really what's helping us conquer our most recent bout of sleep addiction. No, for that we have to look at this Ballmer quote from the end of the article: "My 12-year-old at home doesn't want to hear that he can't put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it." Let us guess: did said Ballmer-son register his disapproval with his dad's strict notions about copyright law by screeching and flinging fecal matter? (No, we didn't just sink so low as to insult a defenseless 12-year-old; we've always been down here.) Imagine the look on our unaccustomedly well-rested faces as the dawning horror sank in: the Ballmer has spawned. Frankly, the possibility had never even come within twenty feet of the curb, let alone actually crossed our minds, because, well, look at him for cryin' out Pete's sake.

This is precisely the sort of thing that natural selection is supposed to prevent from happening. But nevertheless, the Ballmer has offspring (two kids, apparently), and that's enough to keep us awake for another decade, at least.