It’s not often I believe a movie deserves the praise it receives, and Hollywood suffers a fair deluge of not entirely undeserved criticism concerning its dearth of ideas lately. But The Dark Knight, oddly enough a “sequel” to 2005’s Batman Begins–the most recent in a long line of Batman based cinema stretching back to Tim Burton’s Batman from 1989 (I don’t count previous attempts)–proves the industry isn’t entirely staffed by unimaginative, self-gratifying hacks.

So, I have finished moving. Understandably, I’ve been keeping a low profile while packing, and the day of the move itself was rather long and arduous, involving three trips along various highways to and from the old apartment for disinfection and other sundries. I was done with everything around nine on Saturday. Sunday, I unpacked a goodly amount of boxes, but I’ve got quite a few to go. And Monday…

Yeah, really I’m fine. Cardiologist gave me a quick look-over and pronounced the episode I had a couple weeks ago a fluke, but that I should keep an eye on it and report back to her if it happens again. In other news, she says my performance in the stress echo is “fantastic,” so there’s that. I’m giving away three boxes of my books, but the people at work get first dibs.

Reports of my demise are highly exaggerated. For those who haven’t heard, I paid a prolonged and unexpected visit to an emergency room on Wednesday. There I was, sitting at my desk doing some last-minute queries sipping a decaf iced coffee I’d acquired from Dunkin’ Donuts, when I’d started feeling somewhat odd. Not to be a worry-wart, I shrugged it off and continued banally pounding-out horrifying SQL resplendent with awe-inspiring and highly convoluted JOIN statements when my heart began pounding like I’d just finished a brisk 20-minutes playing DDR.

I think it’s time I reveal my little secret to where I’ve been acquiring financial news and commodity trends. While none of these can be considered a penultimate resource, their combined effervescence should explain at least a fragment of my pessimism concerning our economy. As I elucidated back in December, the over-leveraging of our fractional reserve banking system in the housing market to the tune of several trillion dollars has, like your hopes of being the first to impregnate Jessica Alba, tragically ended.