You know, we can't be completely sure, but we suspect that we may have burst something vascular back when Microsoft was mouthing off to the press about how its new online music store was an original and innovative endeavor that had absolutely nothing to do with the iTunes Music Store. Ever since that Redmond veep said stuff like "we definitely would have done this on our own" and "we were on a path already to provide great music services and so the Apple effort didn't really change what we would have done" (when, as anyone can plainly see, Microsoft's offering is its usual shallow and wholesale Designer Imposters ripoff of Apple's original creation with two quarts of Quaker State 40-weight UGLY poured in), we've had this throbbing pain behind our left eye and we think we can hear colors. Is that bad?

We know, we know, we shouldn't let that stuff get to us. But it's the sheer baldfacedness of the lies, you know? How can we just shrug that off? This is, after all, a company that has been blatantly copying every decent piece of software Apple has cranked out for decades, now, and it's still yammering to the press about its "commitment to innovation." (Just not its own, we suppose.) So yeah, Microsoft ends up with the glory, the market share, and the money, Apple winds up getting shafted, and we get a burst cranial blood vessel or something. By the way, did we mention that everything now smells like almonds and "new car smell"?

So we'll probably be dead by the weekend, but at least we can go out in a blazing fire of righteous correctitude, because Microsoft has finally owned up to the obvious. See, faithful viewer David Poves shot us a New York Times article (found via MacMinute) in which David Pogue decides to refer to the MSN Music Store as Redmond's iTunes Music Store, mostly because it "couldn't look more like Apple's iTunes Music Store if you ran it through a copying machine." (Well, maybe a copying machine that can collate, staple, and uglify. But whatever.) After running down a list of features and characteristics that Microsoft's store just happens to share with Apple's, Mr. Pogue quotes a Microsoft manger-- that's like a manager, but it doubles as a place to stow your infant when there's no room at the inn-- who finally admits that "Apple set the bar very high... we're trying to match that. We told our developers, 'Look at how Apple does it.'"

Finally! Sweet vindication! We smell victory in the air, and even though it smells a whole lot like someone spilled an Amaretto sour in the front seat of a new Dodge Stratus, we're just glad that someone at Microsoft decided to tell the truth for once. Heck, if someone there will go on the record and admit that Microsoft has been copying the Mac OS (both Classic and X), QuickTime, iMovie, and a few dozen other products since the dawn of creation, we might even pull through. We're not starting any long novels, though.