Sabotage!

Check out this story about an Apple store in Maryland where people have been buying iPods only to find angry Unabomber style notes inside them telling them they should free their minds and read a book. Ha! As if. Of course nobody actually took this crazy advice, but nonetheless we feel compelled to track down the source of this tampering. Because as Ron Johnson says, if we don't stop it here, what's next? Anthrax pellets? Notes telling people to spend their money feeding the homeless instead of buying ridiculously overpriced consumer electronics? Damn, yo.

Our first instinct, of course, was to blame bloggers, so we've sent subpoenas to TUAW, Crazy Mac Rumors, Cult of Mac, Your Mac Life, and the rest of the loonies to find out who knew what and when. Took a while to get the discovery done and to unshred and recreate all the paper in their shredders and for Moshe and his boys to conduct their polygraph exams using a batch of SP-17 truth serum obtained from the Russian secret service. Turns out they weren't lying -- these bozos really don't know shit about anything. Apologies to the dozen or so hacks who were inconvenienced by this search but it had to be done. And, um, Leander Kahney? Much love and a huge namaste for telling us all that stuff about your years in boarding school. Hilarious! And just FYI, don't you ever dare step out of line, or we'll put that video up on YouTube faster than you can say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

So after scouring bloggers we were back to square one. If it wasn't bloggers putting angry notes inside iPods, who could it be? Apple employees? Impossible. Maybe someone visiting the store? Not likely since the safety wrap was not tampered with. So who was the last person to touch these iPods before they were wrapped? Then we realized -- it's those bastard kids in China! Fuckers! Ingrates! We've locked down the labor camps. Nobody goes in or out, and all privileges are revoked until someone coughs up the culprit. Moshe and a team of elite commandos are on their way to Shenzhen now. I'm warning you, Chinese child workers: We'll fire each and every last one of you. I'm not even kidding.

UPDATE: Dear reader Peter points out that according to the very story to which I linked (ahem) the Unabomber notes were found in iPods purchased in a Wal-Mart, not an Apple retail store. Much love to Peter for the correction. To those Apple retail employees who were wrongly dismissed, what can I say? Shit happens. Feel free to re-apply for employment with us after your six-month probationary period is over.