You know, there are plenty of benefits to never sleeping: saving a fortune on pajamas, getting to use one's bed solely as an action-figure-populated scale reproduction of the Mos Eisley cantina on Tatooine, etc. But there are a few drawbacks, as well; for one thing, it's a lot harder to fight off the office cold-- just ask our mucous membranes. For another, both visual and auditory hallucinations are common, and while usually we can list that in the "pro" column (free entertainment!), occasionally it can make it tough to distinguish between reality and the sleep-dep light show. For example, the first time we saw Steve Ballmer we assumed he was the hallucinatory byproduct of a 37-hour no-sleep bender and the highly experimental sauerkraut-'n'-grape-jelly smoothies we'd had for breakfast; imagine our shock to find out that other people saw him, too. Scary stuff.

So we always have to be very careful whenever we think we see or hear something plotworthy, because if we incorporate something that never actually happened, that tends to throw the viewing audience for a bit of a loop and then you all just get disoriented and switch channels to Walker, Texas Ranger or whatever. But we swear we're pretty sure that all of the following really happened: 1) Steve Ballmer did, in fact, call all iPod users thieves; 2) when called on it, the guy subsequently claimed that he forgot what he'd said; and 3) now Microsoft is (sort of) apologizing to outraged iPod users and claiming that, contrary to what the company's simian CEO may or may not have remembered saying, iPod owners are actually super-duper honest.

That last bit comes courtesy of faithful viewer jkundert, who we're pretty certain we didn't hallucinate sending us an article from The Register which is also most likely a real thing in this here plane of existence. Basically, somebody was irked enough by Ballmer's initial comments and subsequent refusal to recant them (bleating like a sheep didn't quite count) that he actually fired off a complaint to Microsoft via the company's web site, and amazingly enough, he got an actual response. (Had it been us who'd received it, we'd have been dead certain that it was a hallucination.) According to Microsoft's Department of Backhanded Apologies, the company "would like to assure you that when Steve Ballmer implied that most of the music on iPods were [sic] stolen, he absolutely did not intend to single out iPod owners for criticism."

Okay, let's pause here for a reality check-- what Ballmer actually said was that "the most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen,'" so he "implied" that "most of the music on iPods is stolen" only in the same sense that we might "imply" that Ballmer was cloned from a cancerous lesion removed from the hindquarters of an unusually stupid baboon by saying that "Steve Ballmer was cloned from a cancerous lesion removed from the hindquarters of an unusually stupid baboon." And how is it that Microsoft can assert that Ballmer "did not intend to single out iPod owners" when a) he only mentions the iPod (which is kindasorta the definition of "singling out") and b) by his own admission, he doesn't remember what he said in the first place? Has Microsoft perfected some sort of human-to-baboon-tumor-clone mind meld which they haven't yet shipped as a product?

Whatever. What's truly spectacular is the way that Microsoft's CEO first publicly called all iPod owners music thieves, and now the company has evidently amended that position just slightly to state that, and we quote, "[iPod owners] are likely among the most law-abiding consumers of digital music." It's a subtle difference, but if you think about it good and hard for a while in a quiet room free of distractions while wearing your thinking cap and sipping a smart drink, you might be able to pick up on the distinction.

So, iPod owners, rejoice! According to Microsoft, you're not all thieves after all, and if you accept the premise that "it takes one to know one," the company is clearly in a position to judge. Suppose we all get certificates?