A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book had a lot of great scenes - my favorite scenes from the TV show and more. (view spoiler)[I’m INCREDIBLY surprised that the TV show thus far has not incorporated resurrected Catlyn (hide spoiler)] This was where the two versions of this story began to diverge wildly. Overall, I continue to understand why various choices were made given that HBO only has 10 hours a season to get their story told. However, I also now completely understand why people got so upset about the extra rape and anti-women stuff. The reunion scene between Jaime and Cersei in particular was quite a different tone.

Last night I had a dream that combined Games of Thrones and Perl programming. Like it was in the GoT world, but we had to do some Perl programming to defeat the Lannisters.

Today’s post is facetious - I know the answer is that men and men’s desires control Hollywood. But, as I watch Game of Thrones, I end up seeing so many breasts and so much female pubic area that it just ends up making the ridiculous absence of penises pretty abundant. Especially in the scene in which a guy is purposely taunted to get hard ….. no wait…this happens twice and both times with bad results. One time, the dude’s penis gets cut off and the other time a leech is attached to it. Neither time is it shown. Yet during a scene at a whorehouse, we see an acrobatic girl essentially put her vagina right into the camera.

A bit of a news roundup for this week’s political post.

[caption id=“attachment_6120” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Game of Thrones - coveted by Australians[/caption]

Apparently, illicit acquisition of the Game of Thrones is making things awkward for the United States Ambassador to Australia.  He’s asking Australians to please stop getting the show off the Internet. After all, the US is quick to put (or threaten to put) other countries like Spain onto their special list if they start grabbing TV shows off the net.  But Australia is an important ally so it’s embarrassing for them to be pushing the US’s buttons. Here’s where they could have done better by listening to something I’m constantly complaining about. See, according to the linked article, the issue is that for seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones it was not available until a few weeks after it had aired in the US.  There’s no reason for that. It’s not like the days before current technology where physical objects need to be ferried around the world.  It’s all digital - all parts of the world should be able to watch all programs at the same time. Because NOW that it’s available a few hours after it shows in the US, the people in Australia don’t care - they’re already used to getting it for free online. So - the whole cliche about the genie being put back in the bottle.