Barnabas Cuffe is a professional hater.

[Transcribed via Dictaquill]


Editors tell me to abandon all hope ye who want to still attempt to use the journals as an actual source and credible witness, so to speak. I fully intend to try to stick this one out and see what can be sourced from them. It's right under our noses. Do they count as public statements? So if a celebrity were to write something in their journals that wasn't warded, we couldn't use that as a quote from them? It just seems so obvious. And no, it's not too late.


Haven't slept for days, up all night coordinating what's to be written with the newer reporters and writers and then in return having my stories inked all up and being told to rewrite them, while zipping back and forth from here and the flat and having to come back here after power naps. I stopped napping at my desk after finding my Dictaquill was documenting me talking in my sleep. Meanwhile, my mother sends countless owls reminding me of how she wants to be taken to a quote-fancy muggle restaurant-end quote for a quote-fancy muggle dinner-end quote for Valentine's Day. As if it's a tourist attraction, and as if Valentine's Day wasn't bad enough. I don't know why she doesn't ask my father to take her, he knows more than I do about it. And Annabelle is busy. She's always busy. She's the worst spinster I've ever met.


What was I oh yes I remember. Note to self. Finish muggle weapons and arms race story. That should be good. All right. Stop. End. How do I stop this-

[Transcribed via Dictaquill]

I believe there are some of us who possess the opinion that writing while waking up from a quick slumber on one's desk somehow invalidates points made in the discourse, but I find this works out exceptionally well. It takes off certain social filters and frees an individual up to say whatever they please. The same can be said for writing in one's journal after drinking alcohol, but that is merely problematic at the core in general. Plus, I have always pitied those who make journal entries while at parties. Then again, I never bring my journal to parties with me. I must go to more exciting parties if that's the case.

Speaking of parties, Miss Burbage, you looked lovely at last week's Halloween fancy dress party. Positively smashing and beautiful. See, I probably wouldn't say this if I were fully-awake and writing in here. But you did. And I'm completely comfortable in writing this in a public manner, because I see it as my social responsibility that you are always telling me about that you looked beautiful in your costume.

It was a very fun little impromptu party, I do have to credit you two, Emmeline and Fabian. That dip was interesting, to say the least. It is refreshing to eat party food, I do have to say. And I haven't had muggle crisps in forever. I love food-stuffs with heavy advertising attributed to them.



I got tea on my shirt.

[Warded to Damocles Belby]

If you're doing anything on Halloween night I expect you to invite me along with you. No more of this waiting around to be invited by you because you're a right inconsiderate bastard and I don't want to waste my fleeting youth for that to happen. Normally I wouldn't care because really, drinking myself sick isn't that interesting once you get out of Hogwarts, but you and your old housemates seem to swear by it, and though the vast majority are simpletons, Emmeline Vance is actually quite interesting. And Charity's bloody adorable

You may wonder what's spurred me onto this drastic action, so to spare the speculation I will tell you. The intern who gets the editor's tea has invited me to his mother's house for a Halloween fancy dress party. It's really quite embarrassing for him, because nobody goes, but I've realized also that it's equally embarrassing because it's the only invitation I have received this year. I didn't inquire as to whether there are any other parties going on around the office, as we're all quite busy with all the hubbub, but still. It's damn depressing. And I expect you to cheer me up.

[/end ward]


Last minute Halloween fancy dress party get-ups. Brainstorm session. Commences now.

I should lose my journal under stacks of paperwork and half-written stories more often. I get much more work done. I wonder if there was a measure of productivity in the workplace taken before and after the invention of these journals. People spend so much time in them. I find myself so fascinated by this for some reason, though perhaps I have been spending too much time in my office and sleeping on my desk. Which I just did. I found I was using this as a pillow.



My roommate doesn't know who Queen Victoria is, I don't think. Muggle or not, I believed this was common knowledge for everyone. That's what you get for having a muggle father to teach you while your mother is away at work all day and night. Perhaps I shouldn't admit that. Maybe he'd get kidnapped, Mister Whosewhoever that sounds like a Doctor Seuss book. I do know that muggle, too. Grew up on those books, learned to read with that, partly.



Social responsibility is publishing all the shite that gets to us. All sides. Everything. So you know what's happening out there. Squabble over it all you want -- that's the point. You're squabbling because you don't like something you read. It's confronting. That's social responsibility. Get it all out there. Now I'm sle_______

As if I didn't have anything more important to do during work, I found myself searching through the old muggle pop culture archives we keep in one box in the basement. I should state as of now that half of them are contributions of my own, being old muggle musical recordings originating from the Detroit area of Michigan. I should also point out that we really only use these archives during holiday parties at the office. This gives you an indication of just how much the DP staff stays in touch with the world outside. I do hope it's not a representation of our society as a whole - though perhaps it is some relief to not know that muggles live in fear of a nuclear holocaust onslaught by the Russians.

I am assuming, mind you. I wish I could follow up on muggle current events more often, but as you can see, my free time is spent doing other things - like trying to find out for myself what a "lightsaber" is.

Luckily I found one account of a film review, three years old, called "Star Wars." Apparently a muggle culture phenomenon completely passed over my head despite taking the rest of the world by storm and Benjy Fenwick is smarter than me in this manner leaving me completely oblivious.


I still don't see what the hubbub is, after reading more about it. It can't be better than "Barbarella," my favourite of the few muggle movies I have had the opportunity to see.

And I still don't know what a lightsaber is. Of course, one can be a specialist in uncovering unreported truths and such, but it is little things like this that you cannot find an answer to and get all sorts of confused.

I've often wondered how or if the use of journals would ever affect the nature of or find a use by the media. Years and years ago I heard some old wizard in the breakroom here at work say that soon enough news stories would just be printed in the journals and the readers would instantly take part in discussion - an open forum, I suppose one could call it, to speak in. Of course, as a nineteen year old just starting in the business, this slightly worried me, but after a while I simply let the thought fade away. Now and then it pops up in my mind, a question of if it could happen or not, but my mind becomes occupied with other things. There is the issue of always having to have your journal open and accessible at all times to see when these stories break, so to speak, but I've noticed that this doesn't seem to be too much of an inconvenience for many. Journals seem as close to us as our wands are.

Is it unprofessional to use the journals as a means to reach the reader directly? A different type of magic or technology, if you want to call it that, but I find myself thinking this more than ever as of late.

This also causes me to wonder if we can use what individuals say in their public, unwarded journals as content in our stories. Does that verge on tabloid journalism? Does it gain or lose credibility when it comes from a journal? In order to stay in tune with current trends, what lengths will we go to? Our society has never been one for massive changes of any kind that shift our way of living - will this social-linking of the journals prove other uses, or simply stay as it has been?


Perhaps this is a foolish question and perhaps I'm wasting my time. It is late and I find myself scribbling in this journal at my cubicle as I put the last finishing touches on a project here at work.



Come to think of it, that old breakroom wizard may have been an old janitor kept on staff just for nostalgia's sake. I haven't seen him in a while, also.

Regarding the contents of Braithwaite's article and the proposed measures of the Domestic Precautionary Act, I have to say I find myself rather neutral. Perhaps it is merely selfish of me, but I have found that living in a drafty flat above a muggle curry restaurant tends to keep all possible intruders away, as well as insects and pests. That would include unwanted owls sending junk post, yes. It would also include keeping my mother away, which is the measure of a protective ward in my opinion.

Although I also hope it doesn't keep the ward-casters out and away. I find with a nice bubblehead charm one can breathe freely on crab curry night. Perhaps I do need the extra warding.

 
[Private]

I think I picked the wrong career path. I wonder if this Broderick Bode gets paid for writing that sort of stuff. Sounds fucking brilliant if you ask me. Not like watching the editorial board pick three-quarters of the words out of your stories before they can be published. The piece sounded like a goddamned classified ad all up in the front page.

I actually miss writing about shite restaurants and Warbeck now. How embarrassing. How goddamned embarrassing.


[Miss Skeeter]

I reckon you should dig up what it is exactly that Unspeakables do all day - because if that one man's brilliant I-don't-know-what is any indication, I want to just sit about and yammer on about muggle scientific things and try to sound smart. Creative freedom seems like a good perk, too.

I have noticed that there is quite a bit of speculation surrounding the name of this already-infamous organization. I've heard people denouncing that it is terrible PR on the "Death Eaters'" part (notice I capitalize it, Miss Skeeter, as it catches the eye much more clearly that way), but perhaps in having such a nonsensical, stereotypically "EVIL" name, it keeps people wondering why they decided to go with such a contrived title. I think "death eaters" and I think of those muggle circus-workers who swallow fire and spit it out.

Or a recent diner at the curry restaurant below my flat.

And thus, it keeps the name on everyone's minds. Like an annoying advertisement that you hate to see or hear, but you remember.
If it had been up to the media to coin a name for the group, I'm sure I would be able to give it a better name. I'd name it "The Black Hand." Or "The White Foot." Some color and some body part. It worked well for muggles that started the war in the beginning of this century, I do believe. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. And it sounds much better than "death eaters." It makes no sense - incredibly annoying.

I have a right mind to put an official inquiry up to the organization, but it does seem they have more pressing matters on their hands. Maybe this accounts for the ridiculous name.

( And although pratfalls can be fun, encores can be fatal )