Well, THIS diary has sure been melancholy for a couple of days.

You know, just last week I was thinking, "Gee, this diary just can't compete with all the l33t goth depressed kiddies. [You know the ones: "this font is black like my soul."] I need some sort of pathetic pseudo-crisis to keep the ratings up!"

I kid, I kid.

Seriously, I'm a little more tripped out about this move than I should be. So much so that I'm using phrases like "tripped out".

I mean, I am fully aware and cognizant that I'm lucky to be employed, especially in what appears to be the Week/Month of Diaryland Layoffs.

But if I were a psychiatrist - which I am not - I'd probably venture that this move is conjuring up my new "stability issues" since all of the suicide/death threat stuff from last year destroyed my sense of home, and I've never been able to recover it.

So my heart goes out to the people - both here at SimCompany and at other companies - that continue to lose their jobs in this black hole of an economy. Please forgive me if I can't get off the self-pity bandwagon just yet.

So we lost our IT people, our Mastering people, and lots of the support staff.

But we also lost our Localization Manager. He was so bad at his job that he was the only person not invited to the Localization lunches. He never did any work, and the localization dlist would get "WAH" [working at home] or "OOO" [out of office] emails from his's admin assistant [bless her soul] about 2-3 times a week on average.

You know, they didn't even tell his assistant that he was laid off until the day after his last day.

It was actually a bit weird. He turned up at the big SimCompany Is Moving meeting on Tuesday. Early on, our GM mentioned that some people "were let go as a part of the process." When asked if everyone who was being let go knew, the GM responded with "I think we've told everyone."

But just a few minutes prior to that, Mr. LocManager had been pulled out of the meeting by one of the studio bigwigs.

And that was his last day.

Oddly enough, I just got a meeting cancellation from the Corporate Ghost of Mr. LocManager. I wonder if that was him or IT.

Meanwhile, in the land of Disney Geeks, it is in face a sad, sad day.

First Comcast makes a [pretty much hostile] takeover bid for the Disney Company.

Then Pluto [one of them] is killed as he is walking with the Share a Dream Come True parade into the park. [When I say "the park", I mean the Magic Kingdom.]

I've worked as both a float driver and a costumed parade character (Sesame Place, not at Disney), and it sure isn't easy, and it can be scary - but it never really crosses your mind how dangerous the limited visibility really is in those situations.

I hope that Cast Member can rest in peace, and my heart goes out to his family. :( Hard to believe that trying to make people happy can go so very wrong.

That incident is really going to rip a hole in the Entertainment department there -- I'm sure they really don't know how to handle it at this point.

And as for Disney? I think that the universe is trying to tell them something about Michael Eisner. Disney geek or not, I'm glad that I don't have a job there or my fate would be in his aging hands. Come hell or high water, that man needs to be out by the end of March.

Much like we need to be out of the apartment. See? We've come full circle.