It’s been a while since I have written anything about Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. I have been struggling to figure out what to talk about. Then the other day Kelly and I were talking, and it occurred to me that Donald Trump and Cersei Lannister actually have quite a bit in common.
Follow my logic, if you will.
Goodbye 2016, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. All things being equal, this year was a social, geo-political, and popular culture disaster. From the deaths of David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Leonard Cohen, Ron Glass, and Michelle McNamara, to Mohammed Ali, John Glenn, and Elie Wiesel, the list of those we mourn is really long and really hard. Then again, Hell also got a little more crowded with the additions of Antonin Scalia, Fidel Castro, Rob Ford (the crack smoking Mayor of Toronto), Phyllis Schlafly, and Nancy “Just Say No” Reagan.
Continue reading “This is Your Card – Our Annual Holiday Post”
We had our first real snow of the year this weekend. The only animal that made it outside to run around in it was Dash, and he came right back in after running out to use the bathroom.
These are things that have been rattling around in my head since the horror began to reveal itself last night. Some of them are fully formed letters, other are just too long to be tweets. Read them, share them, do what you will (with credit of course). Fair warning, I don’t have the tolerance or patience to argue with Trump supporters, anyone who opted out of voting yesterday or who voted 3rd party. If you show up here spouting crap that in any way irritates or stresses me I’ll bring down the ban hammer so fast it won’t just be the door hitting you in the ass on the way out.
Oh, yeah, and I’m probably gonna break my own rules and swear. It’s the apocalypse. I think my mom will understand.
Continue reading “Notes and Open Letters Regarding the Election”
This would be a noteworthy and historic election in any circumstances because of the selection of Hillary Rodham Clinton as the first woman to be nominated for President of the United States by a major political party. And as much as I have problems with many of Clinton’s policy choices over the years, generally speaking I would consider her to be a highly experienced politician and quite well qualified.
Then there’s the other party and their nominee. If someone had written this story ten years ago as fiction, people would have thought it was totally over-the top. An egomaniacal reality TV star has gained the party’s nomination for President, and in the meantime, has also pretty much wrenched control of the party away from the establishment. And to top it all off, there are now questions as to the exact nature of the relationship between Trump and Russia, for God’s sake.
Continue reading “The 2016 election takes a turn for the surreal”
because the real world has been just awful lately. Terrible. Horrible. I just can’t bring myself to talk more about it because it’s just too depressing. Things just get worse and worse rather than better.
So yeah, let’s talk about Westeros – the North in particular, although I am sure I will wander around to other places at some point.
In the time since our last posts, so much has happened in our lives, and in the greater world, and in the world of GoT, that it feels truly overwhelming. I can’t keep up with it all. If I was to try to describe everything in great detail, it would take multiple posts of extraordinary length. And right now I don’t have the time or the energy.
I am just going to try to summarize everything with just one one post. At least for now.
Continue reading “Sometimes, there’s just too much going on to write”
Frankly, I am just stunned that the voters of the United Kingdom decided to leave the EU. Obviously I am not British, and I can’t pretend I understand all of the issues going on there that might motivate people to vote that way. But I do know that many of the consequences predicted were not good. And I also know that many of the people who voted to leave are in the parts of the UK that depend on the EU the most, like Cornwall. The government of Cornwall is now insisting that the UK government make up for the 60 million pounds a year of EU funding that will be lost by Brexit. To quote from Cornwall directly:
Prior to the referendum we were reassured by the ‘leave’ campaign that a decision to leave the EU would not affect the EU funding which has already been allocated to Cornwall and that Cornwall would not be worse off in terms of the investment we receive. We are seeking urgent confirmation from Ministers that this is the case.
Suddenly Cornwall is like some teenage kid who seriously pisses off his parents, and then suddenly doesn’t understand why they aren’t going to pay his college tuition anymore. You guys really didn’t think this through, did you? And you believed everything that the Leave Campaign told you?
Oh, dear.
You know, that would be comical if it wasn’t so damn tragic, because there are going to be real consequences now, which will affect a lot of people’s lives.
Continue reading “Brexit, or when people vote to harm themselves”
As a part-time first responder who is interested in emergency management, disaster recovery, and safety in general, I read pretty much everything related to those topics that I can get my hands on, including a lot of stuff about how people respond in a crisis. It’s fascinating stuff, and some really excellent books have been written about it, such as Amanda Ripley’s The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – And Why.
A side effect of this is that I have started paying attention to what I would call “unusual” deaths and accidents. People keep doing things that I would consider to be pretty damn unsafe, and it costs them. Recent examples are plenty. A man leaves the designated paths at Yellowstone, and falls into a spring that is so high-temperature and acidic that there is literally no body to recover. A young man accidentally shoots himself while taking a selfie with a pistol. A tourist in Australia goes swimming at 10 at night in an area clearly marked with signs warning about crocodiles and gets killed by a crocodile over 14 feet long. Or the guy in Georgia back in March who decided that it would be cool to pack an old lawnmower with 3 pounds of Tannerite and then shoot at it from only 40 feet away. He blew off his own leg, and the whole thing was caught on video.
And I realized that what all of these people had in common was this: a lack of fear. Specifically, a lack of what I would consider to be the healthy kind of fear.
This is a thing? Snopes has to talk about it? Wow. OK, where do I start.
Continue reading “Wow – there are zika virus conspiracy theories now”
The Books are Taking Over... 