Holy wintergreen tartar-control gel on a cracker, they actually did it: as Apple describes in an official press release, Uncle Steve did indeed take the wraps off of the fifth-generation iPod at today's special media event-- and it does video. No, wait, that's ridiculous; Steve said on numerous occasions that video on an iPod would be silly. We must be dreaming. Somebody pinch us.

Nope, didn't feel a thing. We are dreaming!

What's that? You say you're not actually here with us to pinch us physically, and as of yet no one's invented a way to pinch people over TCP/IP? Oh. Well, then, yeah, there was no sign of the rumored Madonna iPod, but the new non-celebrity models do in fact come in both white and black enclosures, they're indeed slightly thinner than their predecessors, they do come with larger hard disks (at least at the $299 price point-- now it's a 30 GB model instead of a 20), and-- here's the kicker-- they do, miraculously enough, show actual video content, just like the kind that Steve Jobs said people would never want to watch on an iPod screen. Of course, that was when iPod screens were a piddly inch-and-a-half diagonally; the new iPods pack a 2.5-inch widescreen (well, as wide as a 2.5-inch screen is likely to get, anyway) display that looks more than adequate for showing off little iMovies of the kids shaving the dog.

Or even watching actual movies and TV shows. True, you're not going to want to watch the letterboxed version of Lawrence of Arabia on one of these things, but catching up on a sitcom or two while riding the train to work ought to be just fine. Indeed, Apple is so sure that people are going to want to watch prerecorded television on these things that it's just released iTunes 6, which extends the iTunes Music Store's pay-per-song model to pay-per-show. Now you can shell out $1.99 per episode of selected shows (mostly just Lost and Desperate Housewives for now) or per music video to tote along with you.

Personally, we're a little skeptical about this whole "pay $1.99 for a TV show episode" thingy; 99 cents is pushing it for a song price, but at least with a song you buy you're probably going to want to listen to it more than once or twice. Not so with a sitcom episode. But even if no one wants to buy show episodes a la carte, that doesn't mean the video iPod won't sell like hotcakes; we figure the first quick-and-dirty freeware apps to convert illegally downloaded TV shows and movies into an iPod-friendly format will surface within days. And Apple's probably counting on that.

Anyway, we want one. We predict Apple will sell a kajillion of them. And we predict that whoever invents and patents NetPinch™ will one day be rolling around naked on a big pile of cash.