It's finally official: we're stupid! Not that we haven't long suspected that fact, mind you, but it's nice to get some objective confirmation from an impartial third-party source, because we can hardly trust our own estimation of our potential stupidity, right? (We mean, what with being stupid and all.) All that's left is for us to receive our official certificates in the mail, spend two or three hours trying to figure out how to put them into frames, and then settle in for a nice, resigned life of incessant stupid behavior. We suppose that means we should really start watching a lot more UPN or something.

Although, before we do anything quite that drastic, we should probably consider the authority of the body proclaiming our stupidity: it's Napster. See, faithful viewer Paul Detzler dished us a New Media Age article outlining Napster's "aggressive marketing campaign against Apple's iPod," which kicked off-- er, touched down-- er, launched in a completely pun-free manner with the company's $2.4 million commercial during the Super Bowl. You remember-- the commercial that ranked dead last for effectiveness out of all 55 ads shown during the big game, largely because it 1) forced football fans to read something and 2) commanded them to "do the math," both of which are probably just about the last activities anyone watching a football game-- on TV-- on a Sunday-- are going to want to do... whether they're stupid like we are or not.

Anyway, Napster CEO Chris Gorog (gee, any relation to Gorog the Destructor, Eater of Planets and Emperor-for-Life of Rigel 3?) recently yammered to the press that the portable subscription model of Napster To Go, which requires customers to pay $15 per month to rent as much music as they can download and carry, is "exactly what consumers want to do." See, apparently extensive market research has proved conclusively that consumers are practically aching to shell out $180 each and every year for the rest of their lives for the privilege of not having their entire digital music collections evaporate overnight. We never would have guessed, which is probably because we're so stupid. It all just slots in perfectly with Gorog's (the Napster guy, not the thousand-foot-tall Rigellian Space Minotaur with eyes like red fire and a necklace of freshly-decapitated heads of the gods themselves) insistence that "it's stupid to buy an iPod," which is, of course, how we know we're so face-smackingly dumb. Because we bought two.

At least we're in good company, because there were ten million of us iPod-buying stupid-heads as of the end of December, and we wouldn't be surprised if our numbers have swelled to at least twelve million by now. And we're willing to bet that hardly any of us are smart enough to understand how Gorog's (again, that Napster weenie, not the horned cosmic beast to whom the bloody destruction of the entire human race would be but a facile swipe of his mighty claws as his very pores drink in the death and mayhem and exult in the steaming spillage of an ocean of blood-- but there is a family resemblance around the eyes) strategy of flat-out insulting the single largest demographic of potential Napster customers could possibly be a good idea. Clearly it takes someone of non-iPod-buying intellect to grasp the intricacies of his subtle and cunning plan.

Of course, there's the slimmest of chances that Gorog (again, the Napster one, not the-- you know what? Even people as stupid as we are know which one we're talking about by now) is the one with the severe mental deficiency if he really thinks that people are going to fall all over themselves to rent music that's DRMed to the gills and can't be played unless the downloader's subscription is paid in full each and every month. Suppose it's a possibility? Maybe we should all hold off on the UPN thing until a few months' worth of sales figures are in and we know once and for all who the stupid ones are. (But don't worry, you can still TiVo Alyson Hannigan's guest-starring role on Veronica Mars a week from Tuesday. Ain't nothin' stupid 'bout that.)