In an article detailing 100 news stories from the past year, BBC News re-ran a piece revealing that the Cowardly Lion's costume from "The Wizard of Oz" was, in fact, made from real lion pelts. Which is a little gruesome. The Cowardly Lion was a slightly more-sympathetic character before I discovered he was Leatherface.

I played about an hour more of "Final Fantasy XII" this evening -- this portion involved a quest to sneak into the Imperial palace to... steal some junk, I guess. As described in our hero's dialogue, there was supposed to be some grand motivation for the break-in involving 'taking back what was stolen from the people,' or something like that, but when it's finally executed, at no point in the entire operation is there a single hint of anything grander to our hero's plan than to prance around the palace treasury for a few minutes filling his pants with whatever silverware and finery will fit, then jumping out a window and taking it all to the nearest pawn shop.

The process to get into the palace was a complicated one -- it involved getting a magical stone from a wise old coot, then getting a SECOND magical stone to charge the first one... and the second magical stone was in a village to the south... and the only way to get one, when you finally reach the village, is to seek out a missing child in the desert, who -- when you find him -- actually forces you to make the magical stone yourself... And then when you've got your stone charged, you had to sneak through the sewers into a back door in the palace, then pose as a member of the palace cleaning crew, then sneak past a dozen guards, then use the magical stone to activate another door, then sneak past a dozen MORE guards... And when our hero finally breaks into the treasury, his reaction is basically, 'Huh! Treasure!"

Very impulsive, that kid.

Then you steal ANOTHER magical rock -- there are a lot of these -- and get accosted by Sky Pirates during a raid on the palace, and that's where I ended it for the day. It's a pretty game. I'll play more.

Till monday!