'Tis the season to wreck houses, fa la la la la, la la la crash. Remember way back in June when we mentioned that Steve Jobs had been trying to take a bulldozer to a mansion on his Woodside property because said mansion was allegedly "a dump"? He ran into some opposition, you may recall, from local historical societies, who acknowledged the dumpiness of the mansion, but insisted that all such dumpitude had accumulated on Steve's watch. They moved to block the demolition of the building on the grounds that, since it was "an authentic example of the Mission Revival style of architecture" and had been designed by famous architect George Washington Smith, it was a dump of significant historical significance and should therefore be preserved.

Well, you all know the speed of bureaucracy, so apparently not much has happened between then and now, short of Steve Jobs having taken out ads offering the house for free to anyone willing to come cart it away. Evidently no one has taken him up on the offer (what do you suppose FedEx charges to overnight a mansion?), because faithful viewer Josh Lockie pointed us toward a CNET article in which it's revealed that Steve has finally gotten the official go-ahead to swing the wrecking ball... or toss the dynamite, or fire up his otherworldly heat vision, or turn big and green and smash with his mighty fists-- however it is he plans to reduce the mansion to its component particles, thus clearing the site for whatever he wants to build in its place. (We're picturing a fifty-foot golden statue of himself cradling a G4 Cube.)

Yes, the Woodside Town Council finally voted 4-to-3 to deny the appeal by the preservationists-- and we're a little confused as to why the vote was that close, or indeed why the council allowed the appeal in the first place, since reportedly the main reason Woodside cited for turning down the appeal was that there are "no historic preservation ordinances on its books." Given that no law would apparently have given the council any authority to grant the appeal on the grounds for which it was filed, we almost wish that Steve had lost, because the resulting lawsuit would probably have been a humdinger.

So is it clobberin' time yet? Well, not quite; reportedly Steve still can't blow up his own mansion until he's been given a permit, which, for undisclosed reasons (maybe the guy who prints them out just takes really long lunches), won't happen for another six months. In the meantime, he's required to continue advertising in "historic-preservation magazines and publications" just in case there's anyone out there willing to foot the bill to have the mansion moved elsewhere. How about it, folks? Anyone out there with a love of architecture, a big, empty lot of land, an overwhelming desire to own any building in which Steve Jobs once resided (no matter how much he now refers to it as a "dump" and an "abomination"), and way more money than sense?