Once more on the iPod

Back to MC's amazing technological discoveries: Yesterday, in a noontime fit of despair brought on by the malevolent chiropractor, I visited my friendly neighborhood Target, whereupon I finally bought iTrip, which is a shortwave radio doohickey that allows you to play your iPod through your car stereo without benefit of wires, rabbit ears or aluminum foil.

I don't know why this amazes me, but it does. After a few mishaps - battery's dead, preset radio station doesn't work, etc. -- we fired it up on the way out for hippie pizza tonight and it was awesome. In one, 15-minute trip in my 15-year-old Honda, we got to hear Liz Phair, REM, G. Love and Bob Mould -- something my old cassette player never coulda spun up.

This means no more car trips with a boom box with external CD player and a mess of jewelboxes on the passenger seat. No more whining about my inability to hear any albums made after 1994 -- which apparently is when I gave up dubbing CDs onto cassette -- in the car. Instead, I can whine about my old-school iPod's lousy battery life... in a vehicle without a working cigarette lighter! Woohoo!