Stuff before I paint

I have one more small section of painting to finish (up in the soffit, ugh!), but before I do that, I just need to clear my brain a bit:

-- I don't understand why everybody is so annoyed with iTunes. I have it, and I listen to music purchased through iTunes all the time, in my car even. One way to do this is the way that Apple most wishes us to do so: buy an iPod. I have one and an FM transmitter gizmo that lets me listen to music through my normal car radio. The transmittter works better in the Mini than it did in the Camaro, either because of the location of the antenna or the age of the vehicle... Anyway, I could also buy an adapter for my car radio to plug the iPod right in as if it were a multi-CD box, but since the FM transmitter works great, I haven't bothered to do that -- yet. Another way to listen to my iTunes-purchased music in my car is -- duh -- burn a CD. That would make it just like every other music-purchase service on the planet. If I prefered to use some other means of listening to my music -- say, some off-brand mp3 player, I could even (gasp) rip the CD I burned from iTunes, and have perfectly usable mp3 files. Some wag will suggest that they can tell the difference between first- and second-generation copies of the music. I say those people who can tell the difference probably are not shopping on iTunes to get music all squished by Apple's proprietary compression scheme. So can someone explain what's the fuss here?

-- The US Surgeon General has finally noted something that children of smokers have known since forever: second-hand smoke makes people sick. Oh, and I saw another smoking-related story today about how quitting smoking can relieve symptoms of asthma. I'm sorry but I don't see how this could possibly be news to anyone. What I really want to know is, we have a dangerous DRUG that obviously harms people's health, and yet, we do not include it on our list of controlled substances. I don't get it. No, I do get it, but to me, the arguments for keeping cigarettes legal are very much the same as the ones for letting illegal aliens stay in the US: It would be too hard to stop it now that it's happening, so we will just talk about it a lot and hope it goes away. Right.

-- CNN Money says The Woodlands, TX, is #73 in the Best Places to Live. Their #1 choice, some place in Colorado, has crime statistics suggesting that just thinking about the city gets you robbed. How is that good?? Apparently people are willing to have a high likelihood of becoming a crime statistic, in return for a 15-minute commute. I don't get it, myself.

-- When I am done with this last dab of painting, I would like to go see Johnny Depp prance around in a pirate costume. Who's with me??