Garrulous Geek

So, on Saturday Alison and I went out with my brother. We went to a pub with a hearse parked outside it (no word of a lie) and had a drink and a chat. My brother has just finished uni. He got a 2:2 and was declared employee of the year in Bars/Ents, so that's pretty well done. It was good to chat and catch up and hear about what he's doing. Alison laughed a bit at the pair of us ranting away, putting the world to rights. Still, someone has to do it, eh?

After the pub, we went along to the cinema to watch Batman Begins. I indulged my Revels habit for the first time in ages, which was nice, and had my phone on vibrate so my dad could text me the result of the Murray/Nalbandian match. Gotta admit I was quite gutted at the result, but a good effort nonetheless. Anyway. The film had pretty naff trailers with the exception of a proper full on long trailer for Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Woohoo! However, as Alison said to me, it's still difficult to tell if it will turn out to be any good at all. I have faith in Tim Burton as a weird, dark director and Johnny Depp's ability to act like a total nutcase, so I have faith that it will turn out well. I'll let you all know what I think in a month.

Batman was rocking. It's dark and gritty in the way that the first two (Burton directed) films were, along with the comic books and the like. It's good to see Bruce Wayne creating Batman out of what has happened to him, and all the training and so on. The development of all his gear, the Batmobile, Batcave and so on is also well done. You really get the feeling that this is where Batman, uh, Began.

The cast is absolutely wonderful. Bale is great as the cold, hard Batman and as the smooth Wayne. Morgan Freeman does a fine turn as the research lab type person, and Michael Caine very nearly steals the show thanks to some great lines. It's even got Gary Oldman in it as Sergeant Gordon! Amazing! Liam Neeson as the trainer is great too. The villains do a good job of being weird and creepy.

The action and the effects are good. If I had any complaint it would be that it was hard to spot quite what was going on at points, but I guess the point is that Batman is fast and near impossible to follow, because that's how some of the action turned out. The plot is good, barring obvious movie physics microwave related idiocy, but we'll let that slide. The pacing works well, and the tension builds very satisfactorily towards the end.

Go and see it. It's awesome.

Well, I went home and booked an appointment with my doctor. While sitting at home waiting the three hours till then, my dad texted me to ask if I'd heard the news about an asthma warning. Something of a coincidence that I couldn't breathe, so I called him and had a quick chat. He'd read this article about asthma in the paper which says that pollen and smog and thunderstorms and stuff have been triggering a lot of asthma. It was good to know what was causing it at least.

So I went along to the doctor and had a chat and she said she'd give me some pills and new inhalers (my old inhaler expired in 2003 - no wonder it was doing no good) and then offered to nebulize me, which was pretty cool. A nebulizer is a machine that creates a nebula (hence the name) or fine vapour of liquid medication so that you can inahle it directly. Basically, you sit there with an oxygen mask on and this machine puts a mist of salbutamol into the air you breathe which relaxes your lungs. It's a very relaxing experience, especially after spending a whole day struggling to breathe.

So, anyway, I've now got to take a weeks course of steroid pills to prevent my body having another reaction to all the pollen and smog and stuff. I have to take 8 pills a day, all at once. Weird, huh? They're these little tiny scarlet pills, about the size of the hole in a Polo mint. Quite why I couldn't just take two regular sized pills is beyond my medical knowledge, but there you go. Either way, the pills work and I can breathe again, which is the main thing.

So I'm not dead.

I'm going to tell you all about Batman Begins this afternoon.