Actually, that atrocious mockery of movie hackery represents exactly the kind of thing we the Magi are here to save. Oh yeah, we could so totally save that. Are you curious? You are, aren't you? You know you are.

But if you're not curious about that in the least, and you're just here to read whatever random handful of keystrokes I've managed to pound out for you, it's right here. Actually, it's been hiding on the R&R page since last night, in case anyone felt like just going there. I had it ready, but I didn't have a mainpage update, and it was too late (read: I was too lazy) to write one.

Not that anyone really has to believe me about any of that, I mean it's there now, and that's all that really matters. It's not like I'm going to take it down or anything.

And a happy new year to you, which should damn well be capitalized, and yet here I am not correcting it.

Saw Sweeny Todd today, and thought it could have been darker. Not should have, mind you, but could have. I was actually surprised that it wasn't, which should have you wondering little bits about me should you see the movie.

For this New Year's Eve, I am asked to work an hour earlier. Let me correct that, I am not asked, I am informed by way of the posted schedule that I am expected to work an hour earlier. To put this in perspective for you, I specifically chose to work in a refridgerated environment as an alternative to working an hour earlier, as it is not in me to be at work at 6:30 in the morning.

Boo hoo, you say, boo hoo. And I say, to you, who say, "Boo hoo," that all who walk the creek of the clock will cross to shore on different rocks. That's the way it'll always be, so some of you, those most like me, will pass your days and never see the sun's first light upon the sea or land--wherever you may be.

Okay, that was weird.

Going to a New Year's party tonight, a masquerade of sorts. I'm going as a lion, and I'm convinced I'll fool everyone. I'll tel them all I'm a rabbit. It'll be so much fun.

Worked late again last night, and I won't lie, I'm happy to receive the money. But something happened that concerned me. There was an evacuation because of an ammonia leak, so we all (the eight of us who were there) went from one end of the building to the other, because let's face it, if we can separate tempurature zones so drastically (the freezer section is between the refridgerated section and the room temperature section) we can feel pretty confident that the environments are suitably segregated.

I learned of the evacuation, however, when a supervisor walked up to me and told me about it. When this happened, and we turned to evacuate the building (into another part of the building) I saw the fire fighters donning their masks in preparation for their entry into a room that directly connected to the one I was in.

They told me I have nothing to worry about, it's not like I inhaled any of it. If you inhale ammonia, you will know it. (It'll smell like urine.) But not even the supervisor knew that we were to evacuate until he saw the fire trucks outside!

There was no alarm. There were no recognizably out-of-place sounds or lights to warn us of our (theoretically) impending nasal distress, which on top of smelling bad has some ramifications to personal health.

There are evacuation drills. I have participated in several. There was one the day I started. Seems to be one around every three months or so. What concerns me is the fact that while the alarms work fine when management turns them on, in case of an actual problem, wherein people could be in actual danger, the alarms somehow fail to notify us. Thank god they still manage to summon the fire department.

Still, it has me, as I mention above, concerned.

All the same, if you're not easily queezy, and you enjoy a dark antihero, and you want something truly dark (I said not as much as I'd expected, I never said it wasn't plenty dark) go see Sweeny Todd.

Thank you, thank you. Your applause isn't necessary. Really, it isn't.

I'm lying, of course. Clap!

Magi Creations has taken on a new client, so we'll be busy. I've much writing to do if I'm to catch up on what I've missed, which I intend to do, even if it kills me... or I have to hack it up. But at least I'll try to hack it up well.

And the last of the new things, which has nothing to do with our mysterious journey of discovery, is that I'm currently throwing an idea around in my head--well, more like playing one-man squash with it--about an article to write about our society's behaviour regarding the topic of death, from a couple of viewpoints. Yes, this is largely because of the funeral I spoke of before, and yes, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

You can email them to me at wordsmith@magi-creations.com.

In the meantime, I have accepted a guest review from one of my previous guest reviewers. Rene Hebert has given his thoughts on the new Nightwish album, "Dark Passion Play."

(Don't let my big block of text keep you from noticing Jason's update: Avatars is up.)

So I've managed to energize myself a little again. I've done this by starting to play Final Fantasy IX again. That one's got some pretty decent replay value, in my opinion. The battles don't drag on like in VIII, it's got decent story, likable characters, and enough extras and side-quests to make me say, "This time, I'll (insert objective) different/better/with gusto."

On another note, can anyone tell me if all the Terry Goodkind hard-covers (the original releases) were as clumsily narrated as the last one? I was quite honestly shocked at how redundant some of the magic talk was. It was as though he figured out the metaphors he wanted to use, and just wrote them into every spot, with the intention of cleaning it up when he found the most effective spot, but then forgot to erase all the other identical descriptions.

I'm not saying I didn't like the book, but this was a contrast against all the others, and I find it hard to believe that he just suddenly got clumsy. Maybe it'll be cleaned up by the time the soft-covers are released. This is exactly the type of thing editors exist for, in this case the substantive editor, to trim the caribou herd of the weak and the sick sentences.

Now I'm reading GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE, which doesn't share the narrative pace of Goodkind's SWORD OF TRUTH series, nor even the pace of the original DUNE. I don't mean the old movie, that was worse than crap. It made no sense, and the characters were portrayed as either cackling lunatics, dumbfounded morons, or non-entities. It didn't resemble the book at all. The mini-series on store shelves now actually tells the story, with the characters reasonably intact. But I don't mean the mini-series either, I mean the original book. That was excellent. GOD EMPEROR is the fourth book in the series, and I feel I'm identifying most with a character who is still, at 200 pages, trying to figure out the plot. So this book isn't really rejuvenating me like I'd like, but I'm determined to finish it, and actually get the answers. The first and third books were much easier to read, which is probably why they're the only ones that've been made into mini-series.

And then there's FFV. I played through the game to get a clear idea of the villain, which was actually torture. There's a reason it wasn't released over here. If they'd released the original II, III, and V over here, IV and VI wouldn't have been anywhere near as successful, if they'd been made at all. It was like Nintendo used all of Japan as beta-testers, and those ones didn't make the cut.

So as if playing the damn thing wasn't bad enough, I came up with what I was convinced was a great idea for how to approach the villain review, the idea of a narrated flash file. Jason's mentioned this in the past. After our initial failed attempt at making funny, I recorded what I thought was a great one. It had energy, it had speed, it had every unnecessarily convoluted move in the game narrated in under six minutes. As I was tweaking the recorded file, the program crahed, and I lost it. Now, my computer swears there's an Audacity temp file that it can't open automatically, but if I can find it, I can recover my lost recording.

If you've ever written a twenty-page anything, and then lost it to something like that, you know never-going-to-get-it-quite-that-perfect-again feeling. Which ultimately means one thing: I'm not quite free of Final Fantasy V.

Predictions on the outcome, anyone?