Oh fuck, is it 2009 already?

And I didn't even buy a sweater. [/randomness]

So yes, 2009 is upon us. The year that Barack Obama will step into the White House, 2 solar eclipses, a zombie apocalypse and a strange beast attacking New York and tossing the Statue of Liberty's head about willy nilly.

And - hopefully - it'll also be the year that The Raider's Dream is seen on the shelves of lots of bookstores. But one can dream, no?

Didn't have that great a new year - was working for the majority of it, from 5.30pm - 8.00pm, and then again from 12.45am - 3.30am. Wasn't allowed to get drunk between it, so kinda just ambled about with a very drunk Fee for the actual bells. Still, got paid £200 cash in hand for my troubles - we were putting down flooring on the ice rink so that a caelidh could be held, and then we had to pull it all back up again. Should pay for the copious amounts of arnica cream and back massages that I'm now going to need.

Was going to try and go see Che (Parts 1 and 2; Cineworld are having a 1-day-only showing of the whole film with a 10 minute interval), but I'm rather stiff, and sitting on the couch all day with Guitar Hero, Prince of Persia and my laptop stuck me as a much more appealing idea.

Speaking of Guitar Hero, it's still damn good fun, and I now have the drums and the microphone. The drums are actually surprisingly realistic, given how unlike real guitar the guitar parts are. Although on 'Expert' difficulty it puts drum-beats in that aren't actually there, which is kinda weird, but I'm managing just fine on Medium and Hard. Same cannot be said of Fee, who has failed to progress properly past Easy mode. But yeah, it's excellent fun, and rattling off the solos in Lostprophets Rooftops or anything from earlier than 1985 is extrordinarily satisfying.

Prince of Persia is great too. The best way to describe it would be if someone watched a surreal edit of all the best bits of Hero and House of Flying Daggers whilst playing Sands of Time, all the while huffing a rather superhuman amount of marijuana smoke. The action, fighting and free-running is spectacularly lyrical, and the dynamic between the two leads - whether it's bantering or in terms of actual gameplay - is surprisingly sweet. It more than makes up for the fact that the game is surprisingly - almost shockingly - easy, and that the combat is rather dull, repetitive and occasionally rather frustrating (the words 'I need to be closer' my eventually become synonomous with your tossing the controller out the window). But when you're belting from one side of the map to the other, taking in lush environments - you almost forget any of the minor niggles that bug you when you're fighting. It's a damn fine game, and I reccomend it to anyone who's able to play it.

That's about it, really -fantastic excitement and rather numbing pain in my arms. Good times all round, then.