maniacal rage

I'm French now. At least Apple considers me to be. I opened iTunes this morning and popped over to the iTunes Store to find myself knee-deep in French music and stories about Zidane. But then I started listening to the top songs and I realized that most were in English. In fact, out of the top ten songs, seven were in English. What's that all about?

I wouldn't be so surprised at the number of English-language songs if the songs in question weren't so... well... stupid. Don't get me wrong, music is subjective and people like all sorts of things, but if you're going to listen to English music in France, you might choose something other than Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake. Granted, Justin is doing a little better in the US, but Nelly Furtado? Really? Maybe you guys missed the Nelly Furtado of 2000—remember "I'm Like a Bird"?—but we didn't, and it stunk. She recently resurfaced after five years with a totally different "attitude," one which can only be described as "singing songs that sound like they were written by a whore." I mean, the album is called "Loose," which I'm pretty sure is a direct metaphor, and among the track list are gems such as "Maneater" and "Promiscuous."

Man, I would kill for pain au chocolat right now.

The remainder of our photos from France are now available on Flickr, which includes the shots I took at Omaha Beach and Pointe Du Hoc, as well as Le Mont Saint Michel.

Paris was fun, but there was something extra nice about our first european roadtrip, and I'm looking forward to doing something like that again soon.

We're back from France, jetlagged and unpacked. I've got a ton of email to catch up on, including lots of SimpleLog feedback (always a good idea to release an app right before leaving for nearly two weeks!), and I'll get to everything tomorrow. Also, we over a thousand photos to go through and post. More soon, sleep now.

From a hotel review in the Normandy region of France:

The French in Normandy are still very grateful to the Brits and Americans for liberating them in 1944, and we found them all to be very hospitable and gracious.

Talk about some serious speculation. "Well, they were nice to us... they must be grateful for WWII!"