That’s right, Ben. Even when things are at their very worst, remember that you are truly a beautiful snowflake. Somewhere under that shifting mass of living orange concrete beats the heart of a man, and that man is more than the sum of his parts, even when those parts might be better measured in tons rather than pounds. So keep the faith, Mr. Grimm.

And for those that don’t see you for the lovely creature you really are, for those that don’t appreciate that you’ve got just as many feelings as the next lumbering hulk of stone, I say this:

“Throck ‘Em.”

In other news …

I’ve been busy. We held auditions for the next NFDC show last week. Turn out for both initial nights was quite good, particularly since the male-to-female ratio went entirely against expectations. As a result, our cast for Much Ado is exceptional even by potential alone and that can only mean good things as rehearsals progress until May.

And yes, I do plan to fill more slots in my Presidential Fantasy Cabinet roster. But selection takes time and as I was going in alphabetical order, the pickings for Defense are slimmer than I imagined. I’ve a perfect candidate in mind, but rules state that the office can only be held by citizens ten years out of military service. Maybe in 2020? So I think I’ll skip Defense for now and head on to Education. Expect a new one next week.

Final Fantasy III has been filling much of my time. I’ve been trying to explain to folks that somehow I managed to miss the initial uprising of Nintendo, having caught the wave late with the arrival of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64. I was an Atari kid. And even with the N-64, the system wasn’t mine. So my fascination with the lore and story of Square Enix’s remake of FF3 on the diminutive DS Lite is almost kid-like. But really, how can I find fault at all with a game that has revealed to me less than half of its secrets after a good 13 hours of total play?

Speaking of games, Turbine Entertainment cast out invitations last Thursday for a weekend stress test of it’s upcoming Hobbit-laden Massive Multiplayer Online game, Lord Of The Rings Online: The Shadow Of Angmar. Being the beta-hound that I am, I had to try it. Nikki gave it a brief shot as well.

My initial impressions range far and wide. While the look is quite good, benefiting greatly from what must be a kind of cooperative design license from the movie geniuses at New Line Cinema, the feel is rather remote. Actions that should be graceful, aren’t. Animations that ought to have some kind of visual weight, like running, don’t. For the test, I made three characters: a dwarf, an elf and a (hu)man. I spent most of the time online with the human, a thief burglar named Hops.

Why Hops? The character generator recommends Middle Earth appropriate names based on the character’s origins. Folks from Bree have plant-like names, apparently. Unfortunately, the random way in which new armor is rewarded in the game has left Hops with blaring red pants and a decidedly odd feathered cap, thus making Hops the most conspicuous burglar ever.

(Panels from Fantastic Four #60. Art by Jack Kirby.)