Oh, the wonders and perils of this thing you mortals call "sleep"! After four consecutive days of having our minds caressed by its lethean wiles, our first night of withdrawal after its subsequently forced absence sent our brains into throes of creative anarchy. (By the way, why isn't this stuff regulated by some government agency? It's far more addictive than heroin. Not that we'd, uh, know or anything.) The result? The first scene we produced in our newly sleep-deprived state prompted several "best scene ever" plaudits from the peanut gallery, but at what cost? Was it worth our very souls?

See, a faithful viewer who shall remain nameless-- the person works at Apple, you understand, and "Communication with AtAT" is apparently one of the Seven Deadly Apple Sins right alongside "Tackiness" and "Halitosis"-- took us to task for blithely swinging our chainsaw wit in the general direction of Steve Ballmer's children by "implying that they are hideous abominations." This came as something as a shock to us in the harsh light of day, because we certainly never intended to do any such thing; voicing astonishment that Ballmer had successfully reproduced-- twice-- was merely the natural expression of our fundamental disbelief that any woman would let the guy near her without acting under the influence of strong narcotics and also suffering the long-term effects of a major head injury. But hey, the heart wants what it wants, and we're sure that Mrs. Ballmer is a wonderful woman.

Meanwhile, making a reference to Ballmer's kids behaving in a simian manner was intended solely as a comment on Ballmer's own obvious genetic divergence from our own species; in other words, we meant to imply only that his offspring had to be monkeys, not ugly monkeys. Clearly our aim was a little off. Attacking a 12-year-old by hinting that he's a "hideous abomination"? We swear, the thought never crossed our minds. But then, we did mention that he was the offspring of Steve Ballmer, so what else could people have assumed we meant? So we're sorry, because after reviewing the scene in question we see that we clearly went way over the line, and we fully agree that we never should have let a couple of innocent kids get so close to the spatter. After all, do we want our own kid judged by the world at large just because her dad happens to be a drooling, obsessive freak scribbling a seven-year manifesto in the corner? Of course not.

So Ballmerkids, on the off-off-off chance that you're tuning in right now, you have our sincere apologies. No one gets to choose who his dad is, and indeed, most kids wind up rebelling so completely against the ideologies and actions of their parents that you both clearly have the potential to wind up being two of the coolest people ever to walk the face of this here earth. So again, sorry, guys, and don't let the 3 AM rantings of a dork who actually spends untold hours every freakin' day cranking out this tripe get you down. Honestly, we're not worth it.

So. When we say something stupid, we can offer a public apology and blame the booze and the voices in our heads. Can Steve Ballmer do the same?

Well, sort of, but we wouldn't exactly call it an "apology." Our scene that inadvertently caught the Ballmer offspring in the crossfire was only produced in the first place because Ballmer had painted every iPod owner as a thief via his very public comment to the press that "the most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen.'" A day after that assertion brought flaming retribution down on his head (and, sadly, the heads of his family) from every corner of the law-abiding iPod-using globe, faithful viewer David Poves informs us that, according to a Silicon.com followup, Ballmer's only comment on the whole sordid affair was this: "I don't know what I said exactly, but it was baaaaad!" So, if nothing else, we finally know what the non-ape genetic makeup in Ballmer's DNA is: apparently he's two parts ape, one part sheep. (Insert obligatory predictable reference to "following the herd" here. Flock. Whatever.)

He doesn't remember what he said? Yeesh, given that a) he'd only said it at most two days before and b) he's been quoted incessantly by every publication on this planet (and several on Mars and Venus) ever since, you'd think it wouldn't take much to jog his memory, but maybe the narcotics-and-head-injury thing is more widespread than we thought. If he honestly doesn't remember, we hope he seeks medical attention before Microsoft's investors find out, and if he's just trying to weasel out of owning up to a monumentally dumb comment to the press, well, we bet at least his kids would have the backbone to accept the consequences...