I’m on hold with MasterCard. I’m listening to a muzak version of REM‘s “So. Central Rain”. It makes me very, very sad.

Music that’s slipped onto my Nomad in the last few days:

• Bright Eyes . “When The President Talks To God”
• Say Hi To Your Mom . “The Twenty-Second Century”
• The Shout Out Louds . “The Comeback”
• Novillero . “The Hypothesist”
• Belly . “Full Moon, Empty Heart”
• Dead Meadow . “At Her Open Door”
• Yellow #5 . “Moon Man”
• Youth Group . “Shadowland”

There’s a long tradition of using geeky names for software, but this crosses the line from geeky to dorky:

YubNub: a (social) command line for the web.

If you know what “YubNub” is, you’re a geek. If you don’t hate it, you’re a dork.

We just got back from Batman Begins (imdb | rotten tomatoes), and…whoa. It was good. Better than I expected,to be honest. The last few Batman movies were just so so bad that not even the combination of Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale (not to mention the supporting cast) gave me a lot of hope. But we saw it, and it delivered.

Much, much darker than even the first two Tim Burton films, it started out better than it finished. But even then, the second half was interesting enough to stay entertaining.

Back to the supporting cast: Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Katie Holmes (who I don’t hate, but I think there’s a non-acting-related reason for that), Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Rutger Hauer…quite a lineup. They gave it a good flavour, and Bale didn’t embarass himself the way George Clooney or Val Kilmer did (though I think that had as much to do with Schumacher and the script as with their lack of bat-charisma), so thumbs up on the cast. The back-story (well, the whole movie was back-story, so…the back-story to the back-story) was well done too. The fight sequences were, as seems to be the norm these days, frantic and confused to the point of being unwatchable, but whattaya gonna do? Overall it’s a good couple of hours.

Oh, by the way, we saw the trailer for the Dukes Of Hazzard movie. Bikini-clad Jessica Simpson or not, I’d rather fuck an angry raccoon than see that piece of shit.

My wife bought season 1 of Alias yesterday to occupy herself while I study, so it’s been non-stop spy-and-action television in our condo since last night.

Still, better Jennifer Garner than a John Hughes 80s marathon, says I…

Happy Father’s Day, all you pops out there. Unfortunately I can’t be there to spend the day with mine, but I’ll see him in a month or so. Hopefully he enjoys the CD I made for him, which should arrive early this week. And a HFD to Nellie’s Dad too; I’m sure if he were here he’d sit back and enjoy a cold one to mark the occasion.

The reading is coming along. About 20 pages to go, and then I’ll get a start on the assignment. With any luck I’ll finish it tomorrow or Tuesday; I don’t want to be writing a paper the night before I leave for Europe; something tells me I’ll be busy.

OK, this could be a problem. I’m really starting to get hopped up about this trip to Europe, but that’s dangerous; I still have a lot of work to do to get my first assignment out the door by Wednesday, but right now all I want to do is study maps and read travel guides. Shit…gotta concentrate. But it’s hard when I know that one week from now I’ll probably be sipping a pint in Edinburgh.

And, not that we care too much, but just through bad timing we’ll miss some pretty fun events: Canada Day, pride week, the distillery barbecue & craft beer festival, even a party on the recently refurbished patio at The Pilot.

Something odd happened today: as I was buying a muffin & orange juice at a nearby cafe, I bumped into the lady who looks after my building. She introduced me to the cashier, and pointed out that we’re neighbours. She lives in the unit next to mine, and I would have never recognized her.

Ah, big-city anonymity…ain’t it grand?

By the way, the ‘recent consumption’ section of my sidebar has been wonky in Internet Explorer (I never use IE anymore, so it didn’t occur to me to check…I know, I know, I’m a bad coder), so I’ve messed with it a bit. It doesn’t look great now, but at least it works in either browser. I don’t have time to do a proper fix, so it’ll just have to stay ugly.

Last night we chilled and watched a couple of movies: The Incredibles (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and The Motorcycle Diaries (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Both suited my mood; first a light and fluffy animated, and then pensive road movie.

Both also lived up to expectations. The Incredibles was as well animated as any Pixar release, but played a little darker and more adult than their previous features. Started a little slow, but picked up steam as it went. Same goes for The Motorcycle Diaries; it took a good 30 or 40 minutes to really get going, but became surprisingly gripping somewhere around northern Chile. I admit to knowing very little about Che Guevara, but I think that helped me here. I actually wish I’d had no idea who he was; it would’ve been fascinating to find out that he went on to do what he did in Cuba.