So there’s a story out about how Apple is going to “mine the mainstream” and boost our share of the PC market. See it here. But note that the main source for this article is Mark Stahlman from Gartner. He’s reiterating his frigtarded idea that Apple should get out of the hardware business and instead license OS X to Dell. Folks, know one thing: Mark Stahlman has been lurking around in the back alleys of Wall Street for about 20 years and has never, not once, made a correct prediction. Which is why he keeps popping up someplace new every six months or so. How he has managed to survive in a business built on seeing into the future is beyond me. Yet people keep hiring him. It’s like hiring a blind guy to be a ferry captain. Check out his bio. It leaves out about a dozen other places where he’s been briefly employed. The kind word for a guy like this is “gadfly.” The unkind word, of course, is “frigtard.” Worse yet, despite his appalling track record, he’s always trying to get himself quoted in the press. He doesn’t even wait for the reporters to call him; he bombards them with email, touting some crazy new theory and begging to be put into stories. IBM should buy General Motors. Microsoft should license Linux, rebuild Windows. HP should relocate to China. And whenever anything happens in tech, Stahlman mailbombs all the tech beat hacks saying, “Mark Stahlman is available for comment.” He’s like the crazy guy in your apartment building who goes around sliding “the world is ending” flyers under everyone’s door. (Much love to Katie Cotton for doing the investigative work required to file this blog item. You’re the best, Katie.)

What kills me is that if you read to the end of this story the writer puts in all her pious obligatory little caveats about which analysts work for firms that make a market in Apple shares, as if to reassure us that now we can indeed trust everything these sell-side whores are saying. (And as if somehow this will also assure us that thestreet.com is a legitimate source for investment advice. Ahem.) But nowhere does she say, Warning: The guy I’m quoting throughout this story, Mark Stahlman, is a press-whore publicity hound who is famous for being consistently wrong, yet I’m quoting him anyway and building my entire story around his insane, self-serving theories, which are designed solely to draw attention to his deservedly unknown firm, and which even Mark himself does not truly believe, but I’m telling it to you anyway and hoping maybe you’ll believe it. Or maybe just because I’ve got a deadline to meet and no ideas, and here’s this loonie-tunes in my email box saying he’s ready to get on the phone right now.