"2006 Vacation: Day 7"

In case you haven't been following this news item...

In an article by Jennifer Quinn for Associated press...

"...a long and winding legal road took another twist for The Beatles' record company (Monday, May 8th.) when a British judge rules that Apple Computers is entitled to use the apple logo on its iTunes Music Store.

Apple Corps, guardian of The Beatles' commercial interests, contended the U. S. company's use of the logo on its online music store broke a 1991 agreement in which each agreed not to enter the other's field of business.

But High Court Judge Anthony Mann said the computer's logo is used in association with the store, not the music.

Though Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs said he was "glad to put this disagreement behind us," Neil Aspinall, the manager of Apple Corps, said his comapny would take the case to Britian's Court of Appeal."


This upsets me in a number of different ways. For one thing, it doesn't seem to hold up an trademark protections of a logo. This could lead to just that much more bootlegging of products you thought was made by the original company. Foreign bootlegs are bad enough on the market; you can find them at any "swap meet" or flea market. By allowing this infringement in the agreement, it's like saying, "Well...it's okay for him to use the logo, so I guess I can as well, although I'm not associated with either company".

Also I think it's a damn nasty way to treat The Beatles, a group that produced music that will never be forgotten, and has inspired literally hundreds of thousands of musicians since they first appeared in the early 1960's.

But...that's maybe just my opinions.


The rain finally stopped about 10AM yesterday morning, so at 11AM I went out and got all my supplies together, and took them up on the roof to attempt to get that repainting task completed. I was right down to the nitty-gritty of the gallon of green paint when it began raining.

Fortunately, it didn't cause much damage; a bit of streaking on a few places, and I had to re-keel some of the white areas where the still not quite dry paint ran down the drain spouts, but nothing major. The worst part is that I didn't get it finished. I had only enough paint to do about 90% of the steep areas, and the flat part of the metal, which is about 60% the size of the rest, is still without a new coat of paint. So, I'm putting that off until Tuesday when it appears that the weather will finally clear up and my next day off. Which will give me time to go get another gallon of green roof paint. Time spent on what I did on it thus far is about 2-1/2 hours, and I figure probably about that much more time to complete the job.


And I had about 1/2 of the work I did today done when a friend of mine stops by and wants to know if I want to ride with him to the closest comic book store (35 miles from here). Had to turn him down due to needing to get the work done, plus now I've spent any extra money I could have spent there. It's like, "Where were you Saturday when they were having their 20% off store-wide sale and Free Comic book Day?"

Speaking of which, has anyone out there literally lost a comic book? After mentioning the Just A Pilgrim series on yesterday's blog, I went to look for issue #2, which I know I have and have read. But try as I could, and looking for a good hour, I couldn't locate that issue. Not in the primary and secondary or anywhere else in the 10K+ collection of comics around here.

I checked autograph collections (in case it was such and I had put it seperately), and I checked Beatles app.'s, but it was no where to be found. So, finally, I started checking about a 1,000 dup's I had around here, 'cause, with the number of books I've bought, I figured I could have always made the mistake of putting it among those. Sure enough, I found it half way down the second stack of the first box of them. Geez, I hate that when it happens.

And today we went to visit with my wife's dad, who is doing well considering his condition. We had a nice visit for about three hours, enjoying the conversation and munching on White Castles. We also went by and got our insurance check endorced by the bank and deposited that and stopped by the antique mall for a little while. I found 2 more issues of Animal Man I needed, bring that number down to about 14 of the 87 issues. Slowly but surely I'll have that collection complete yet!

This has been blog post #299. Join me back here next Tuesday (May 16th.) for Elmo's Junction's 2nd. Anniversary & Post #300!