R.I.P., Ben

Assignment 1: finished and uploaded. That’s really the only thing I needed to do before we left. So today will be much like yesterday: errands, loose ends, etc.

We have three Summerlicious reservations made already, but it just seems that I’m destined to never eat at Canoe. I was so close that one time…so close…but all I get from now is a busy signal.

Getting pretty excited now…we leave tomorrow afternoon. I’m debating tactics: stay awake during the flight and sleep when we reach London (which would be about midnight EST)? Or try to sleep on the plane? I have no problem with flying, but it’s hard to sleep in those seats and I’ll be totally hopped up anyway so sleeping might not even be an option.

I gotta tell you, I’ll be happy just to get on the plane and not think about work or school. This is our first vacation since Xmas, and my head’s getting a little spinny…

PayPal and the RIAA

Let’s think about that for a minute – 87% of people will pay $1 for a bagel if you put out a jam jar with a hole cut in the lid, so why wouldn’t the same number of people pay 50c for an MP3 if you give them a PayPal link?

Oh good, ’cause I so enjoyed this the last garbage strike.

Canada’s Live 8 lineup & location finally confirmed blah blah blah. First of all…Barrie?

Second of all, what retarded archaeologist dug up this set list?

• Bryan Adams (This might’ve been a good choice twenty years ago. I had no idea he was still alive.)
• Celine Dion (Oh, come the fuck on.)
• Blue Rodeo (See Bryan Adams, subtract ten years.)
• Great Big Sea (You know, every time these guys get on stage, the whole of Atlantic Canada shudders. These guys are about as east coast as the yob from the Keith’s commercials.)
• Our Lady Peace (This surprises me. If I were Raine Maida and lived with Chantal Kreviazuk, I would just never leave the house.)
• African Guitar Summit (Who?)
• Barenaked Ladies (Ah, the comic relief. God knows Dan Aykroyd and Tom Green won’t provide it.)
• Jann Arden (Seriously? No, but…seriously?!)
• Bruce Cockburn (See Bryan Adams, add ten years.)
• Deep Purple (What?)
• Gordon Lightfoot (OK, all kidding aside, I honestly thought Gord was dead.)
• The Tragically Hip (To the great surprise of no one. There would’ve been an inquiry called if they hadn’t been signed up. As much as I don’t give a shit about the Hip anymore, they’re the logical choice for a shindig like this.)
• Tom Cochrane (See Blue Rodeo.)
• Motley Crue (WHAT?!?)
• Sam Roberts (Finally, the last band listed is the one worth seeing. That means he’ll be on a side stage at 1:00 PM getting drowned out by Vince Neil’s vomiting.)

I’m embarassed. Why in the fuck are we perpetuating to the world the myth that the only two worthwhile Canadian musicians are Bryan Adams and CELINE FUCKING DION!!?!??

My kingdom for an Arcade Fire…

[update] As TOist points out Bryan Adams and Celine Dion can’t even be arsed to come to Toronto Barrie to perform. They’re conferencing in from Las Vegas.

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…