In the "Rumor Is Stranger Than Melodrama" department, remember last week when Palm's CEO Carl Yankowski resigned his post so he could spend more time collecting stamps or something, and we jokingly suggested that Steve Jobs take on a third CEO position to work his turnaround magic on the beleaguered PDA company? Well, get this, irony fans: faithful viewer Jeff Richardson informs us that over at Palm Infocenter, there's a rumor floating around that Palm's next CEO won't be the Stevester... but it will be another Apple alumnus. No, not Gil Amelio-- something that funny would have killed us dead with laughter. Instead, ladies and gentlemen, it's Sculley Time!

Now, don't get too excited, here, because it's just a rumor. Still, it's fun to think about the connections. First Steve lures Sculley to Apple from Pepsico by tossing around some vague taunts about selling sugar-water. A few years later, Sculley pulls a power play and gets Steve kicked out of the company he himself cofounded. Sculley rules Apple for several years more, and the Soda King's pet project is a whole new kind of computing device: a personal digital assistant called the Newton. The Newton is a massive flop (or, should we say, a "mussite flag"), and amid a series of other debacles, Sculley resigns. Let's get ready to rumble!

Fast-forward past the Spindler years-- Amelio's in the house, trying to turn things around. He buys Steve's NeXT company and brings Steve back into the fold... and Steve gets him kicked out. And not long after, the Newton, which is finally turning into something really special, gets Steved. Is the man petty enough to have done it out of revenge on Sculley? Heck, don't ask us-- we just work here. But it's true that the Newton never did terribly well; instead, people were buying smaller, cheaper, and lighter devices made by Palm, a company with a fair number of ex-Appleites in the trenches. Hmmm.

So if Sculley winds up taking the helm at Palm, he, like Jobs, will have sort of come full circle, albeit to a lesser degree. In a way, we really hope this comes to pass... after all, if Sculley does get the job at Palm, we'd just love to watch the fireworks as Steve taps into Apple's $4 billion war chest to launch a hostile takeover bid for Palm-- just so he can kick out Sculley in the interests of karma. Man, somebody get George Lucas on the horn, because this is a real epic in the making...