Game of Thrones, where justice is best served by not being served

I'm in the midst of Game of Thrones and it's a pretty rough struggle.  When I say "Game of Thrones"* I mean the books and when I say "struggle" I mean life struggle.  I'm literally 3000 pages in and, since I don't want to give anything away, I'm going to use an analogy to describe how I feel on a pretty regular basis.

Let's say you enter grade school as a transfer in the 3rd grade to a Finnish grade school (I'm specifying Finnish, not to distinguish a difference in the culture, but so you can get a feel for how fucking hard it is to keep the names straight).  You get there day one and you meet some people. Some seem cool and others seem like they are kind of a dick.  Some seem important, others are clearly in the shadows.  Time moves on and you realize that you really like some people, they are great and treat you well, and are well liked by all, and even their follies are the kind we all make.  Others are just cruel, evil, wanton destruction types.  They are the bigger, badder bullies and they do terrible things.  The kind of terrible things that you feel bad about, even if they weren't done to you.

But this is no matter, there are teachers out there who will right the wrongs, recognize the good, punish the bad, and expel the wicked.  Such is the way of life, in a just world.

That is not how things are going as you come to finish (get it?) 3rd grade. The bad kids seem to have curried favor with the teachers, the good kids have been put in a corner, and the best kid just got expelled (if you watch Game of Thrones, I think you know where we are).

Ok, well not how it was planned, but we have 3 more years till we graduate, plenty of time to make amends.  But fuck no, you get no such justice.  4th grade comes and the bullies have been promoted to hall patrol and given gold stars.  Your friends, the ones plainly seen as good by all (even the bullies see their good) are being expelled left and right.  On top of that, you are being forced into the same classrooms, and onto the same sports teams, as some of the bullies, and as you get to know them, instead of their crimes being punished, they are explaining them from their point of view and you are starting to side with them.  The truly good people are being expelled and the bad guys are seeming not so bad.

5th grade is upon us.  Really cutting it close on the justice being served side, especially since your expelled friends aren't making it back to this school system any time soon.  Probably time to start dolling out at least a little justice.  This will be a good year.  It must.  A small victory perhaps.  At least one punished bad guy...right?  No.  The rest of your friends are expelled.  Four remain and all four are in some stage where they are completely helpless to exact any revenge.  The bullies continue to rule and are relatively unopposed.

Admittedly, I have another year and a half to go, but a year is a long fucking time and you can't unexpel these people.  Also, I've become so calloused to the calamities that befall my friends, that nothing you can do to the true bullies will possibly be horrible enough to fulfill the revenge I want for my friends.

This book could be considered a deeply depressing lesson in actual life, but actual life is generally much more fair.  Fuck you Game of Thrones.

*Note: It's funny how the name "Game of Thrones" has stuck, which is a fantastic title; while the actual title of the series, "A Song of Fire and Ice", is completely lost.  Probably because if fucking sucks.

Oh great Loan Forgiveness

Oh great Loan Forgiveness, please look upon my weak soul, know that I have sinned, and forgive me for my past borrowances.

I am but a meek and mortal man; feeble and childlike in the face of the temptations of earth.  Most regularly, I would find myself tempted by the flesh and evil-delights of this world like food and wireless internet.  During my trite schooling, I was forced to borrow great sums of money from you, all so that I could shame my loathly self by paying for a bus when I could have walked in the rain or purchasing ice cream after my meal of rice and cheap meats.  Once...oh it's so hard to admit, I celebrated the termination of a semester by paying for alcohol at a bar.  Perhaps it was even more than once; I dare not think too deeply on such matters lest I should find myself gazing on my black soul.

And these transgressions; these pitiful displays of my beastial soul, have left me in oh such great debt to your kindness.  I find myself with much for you to forgive.  More than I can really think about.  Or later pay, which is kind of where you come in.

But oh there is more!  Whether it is my weak soul that sours my mind or a small and worthless mind that allows my soul to get so filthy, I cannot begin to know, but I do know that this weak mind is not allowing me to really get how these loans work.  I have oh so many loans, and all seem to be different, with many of your cryptic abbreviations.  Abbreviations that I am sure you will have explained to me in full whence this dreary life has ended and I am in your ultimate light.  And out of your debt.  But until that time occurs, I am greatly confused by them and when the grace period starts and ends and if something different needs to be done for my undergrad loans and why you randomly capitalize parts of loan names.

I have spent a great deal of time studying your parchments and texts and .gov pages, but to no avail.  Please, oh great Loan Forgiveness, send me one of your earthly priests who is wise in the ways of Perkins Loans and Grad PLUS to tell me what is best financially for my future.  Or possibly just go ahead and forgive them now and I'll be like, super grateful.  Either way oh great Loan Forgiveness.

Master meeter

Trying to meet up without a phone now is pretty mind blowing.  I know it's possible, because I'm old balls enough to have done it, but it's ridiculous.  It's like trying to masturbate without the internet.  It takes a lot longer, requires a lot of mental effort, and has several points where you almost give up, but it does work in the end albeit several shades more painful.

Misfits, but really, it all fits.

I watched the first 10 minutes of this show while on call and the resident I was with said, and I quote, "I have no idea what they are saying, this is stupid, let's go round".  That ended Misfits for me for 6 months.  Then, one day, my world was opened again on a whim to kill an hour.  Three days later I emerged having watched two twelve episode seasons.  I'm not confident I showered in that time.

When I describe this show to others, I say, "think of Heroes and Community mashed together, but better than both".  In the first episode a group of UK kids who are doing community service for minor offenses are caught in a storm and get special powers.  So did everyone else caught in the storm.  You end up with five fuck ups with "special power" (Ok, mutant powers. Give credit where credit is due, all of these shows are just reruns of X-Men*) who end up killing their probation worker and have to hide him.  Drama ensues.  Hilarity ensues.  Hilarious drama ensues.

This show has everything.  Absolutely everything.  It has moments that Breaking Bad and Dexter should be shown so they can understand how to build suspense.  "Oh, I see. Get the audience to believe what the characters believe.  Weird, who knew that would work."  There are stylized episodes that would make Community bow and say, "well done".  There's a Nazi episode, a cult episode, an episode where a guy has a power that makes him think he's in Grand Theft Auto that is so on point with Grand Theft Auto that you would believe the actor they got to play the GTA guy is the actual guy who did the stop-motion for the game.  And yes, of course it has a zombie episode.

It is also fucking hilarious.  The main guy, Nathan (Robert Sheehan of well, absolutely nothing) is one of the funniest on screen actors I have seen.  Remember when you were watching 2 Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place and you were like, "Wow, this show blows. Although...that one guy, he seems to have something special" and that guy turned out to be Ryan Reynolds (regardless of what you think of him now, admit he was good when you first saw him.  Admit it.  Now.  In writing.  Leave a comment.)?  This guy is like that.  His delivery is something special.

The directing is spectacular, the writing is amazing, the characters even better.  Even the theme song is a great Rapture song (Echoes, if you're looking for it) and they have some awesome music in their show.  Fuck, even the cinematography is top notch.

So please, get on hulu, spend 4 days and get caught up on all 3 seasons, and we can have a Misfits party before season 4 comes out.

*Note: And just like X-men and all of these shows, there is some awkward time traveling stuff.  I didn't say every episode was perfect, just that most were.

Bond. James Bond. James F. Bond? Ok maybe it's under something else.

The life of a secret agent is probably a lot more dealing with front desk clerks than shooting people.

"I believe there's a package for me under the name 'Frank Wilson'"
"Ok what kind of package?"
"Um, a package with some stuff in it.  It's under the name 'Frank Wilson', here's my ID and Passport"
"Great, thanks, what kind of package is it? Big? Small? Envelope?"
"Let's say smallish. Maybe heavy.  Or maybe it just has papers in it.  I'm not really sure."
"Who sent it?"
"Um, I'm not actually sure."
"Well what's the return address on it, that's what I'm really asking"
"I...don't really know."
"Well can you check a tracking number, or call the person who maybe sent it, or check an email?"
"No, not really, that was all destroyed."
"Ok, so smallish, maybe heavy package with an unknown return address and the name, 'Frank Wilson' on it.  I'll just go to the back and look through the 300 pieces of mail we receive a day at this depot and see if I can't find it.  Do you have 3 hours?  Also there is a guy in a suit standing behind you who keeps telling me to go ahead into the back, I think he wants to talk to you."