Oh, no it didn't!
Please, please, tell me Gnome did not just start playing the damn mp3 when I hovered over its icon on the desktop.
It can't have!
But it did.
Bastard.
Update: What the _hell_?! When I selected a couple of mp3s in order to delete them, one of them started playing _and wouldn't stop even after the files had been deleted_. And that's a 60+ minute podcast, so I wasn't going to sit around waiting for it to finish. I had to kill the mpg123 process manually. Bastard!
Update again: Noooo! The transfer of the mp3s to my cell phone had silently gone booboo, and now they're all gone. Bastard!!