Shards of Memory

Fair warning: This entry contains spoilers for the first episode of Game of Thrones, the new HBO series based on George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. That probably means spoilers for the books too, though I haven't read any of them.

As a self-proclaimed hardcore sci-fi and fantasy geek, I am probably a failure in the eyes of my fellow geeks for not having read A Song of Ice and Fire. In my defense, most of my years of geekdom have been consumed by Star Wars and it's only fairly recently that I've branched out to other series, with a few exceptions (Ender's Game, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time). I stumbled upon (via StumbleUpon, no less) a list of must-read sci-fi and fantasy novels and authors, and of course George R. R. Martin's books were there. I was fully intending on buying A Game of Thrones sometime in the near future. And then this TV series comes out, which seemed fortuitous; I could get a taste of the series before committing to buying the books. As you might have guessed, this didn't turn out as well as it could have.

My ignorance of what the books actually contain is probably to blame for my reaction to the first episode. The show starts out slow (which would normally not be an issue, but for a pilot episode it seems risky) but eventually escalates into a level of gore that blindsided me. Dismembered corpses, sudden decapitations, festering roadkill - and that's only in the first 10 minutes or so. The violence diminishes as the episode progresses, only to be replaced by nudity and sex. There are a whole lot of naked breasts and butts, but no penises (which could probably be construed as sexist but in this particular case, I'd rather not look a gift horse in the mouth). And this is a big spoiler, but it needs to be said: what the heck is with all the incest? Granted, there are only two instances, one of which is ambiguous, but that's two more than I expected to see outside of fanfics and porn. It's not called the "universal taboo" for nothing.

Far be it for me to judge people's sexual proclivities, but it's not like this show is porn. All of these things are mundane and probably even vanilla in the context of porn, but not on a network show. Or am I being naive? Does True Blood showcase the same (or an even greater) level of depravity? I wouldn't know. My point is that, questions of morality aside, are all those things essential to the story? I'm referring to not only the plot, but also character development, setting, mood, etc. Looking back, it seems like the people engaging in lurid sexual acts were the same people we're being led to think are evil or villainous, but that seems like such a cheap way of portraying antagonists. For the most part, all the sex and violence just distracted me from the plot. Unfortunately, they could not completely distract me from what was, in my humble opinion, sub-par acting, but I won't go there.

I'm not sure if I'm going to watch the second episode. Maybe it's unfair to judge the entire series based on the first hour of content. But that's exactly why pilot episodes have no room for error; more often than not, your viewers won't give you the benefit of the doubt nor a chance to redeem yourself. That said, I probably will give the next episode a chance. People who have actually read the books are raving about the first episode, so maybe now that I actually know what I'm getting into, I won't be so scandalized next time.

Thank you to ozymandias.com and Youtube for being so entertaining.

SO VERY TRUE. No offense :P

( youtube spree (cut for politeness) )

In case you haven't noticed, don't I have the cutest moodtheme ever? :D

*goes back to being lazy self-imposed hiatus*

My mom emailed me this Youtube video so, since I have nothing to do anyway, I might as well just spread it around.

I don't know how authentic this is, and the guy could very well just be making everything up. But I don't see a reason why he would. If this is real, I wonder what the government is doing about it.

I found a really good artist on DeviantArt (thanks to Oliver). He draws very cute and funny spoofs of various video games. My personal favorite is his version of Mario Kart; if Square Enix ever decides to go with his idea, I'd buy the game in a heartbeat. I find his God of War spoof hilariously cute, even though I have no idea what the game is about. He also has some amusing sketches of Yoshi's Island and Dragonball Z, and his short Darth Vader comic (2 pages) exaggerates Vader's character so much that it's funny. I wish he had more stuff; the world could use a lot more examples of decent video game fanart.

Looks like going for exchange is in this season: Gail and I to Canada, Cassy to China and (tentatively) South Korea, the Ateneo people to their various JTA locations. Applying to the University of Toronto has been a bit of a hassle, but I'm looking forward to the experience. The program starts on May 14, but I'll be leaving Singapore on May 6 to visit my brother in New York. I'm pretty sure we'd both rather skip this whole reunion thing, since he has a lot of work to do and I'll have practically nothing to do while I'm there, but I'd rather not give my dad something to nag about. I did manage to cut down the length of my stay from one week to 3-4 days, and afterwards I'll be heading to Boston to stay with scyphs and Martin at MIT. I'm actually pretty excited about going there (PS2!!!!! joke lang); I haven't seen the two of them, especially Martin, in a long time (flattered kayo noh? haha), and I've always wanted to see what MIT is like. I might even be able to sit-in in (redundancy?) some of Emzo's classes. After that, I'll finally be going to Toronto on May 13 and stay there until June 30, at which point I'll go back to New York, stay overnight at my uncle's house, and then fly back to Singapore. I'll be going back to the Philippines from Singapore on July 3 (stupid international dateline). Unfortunately, if Cassy goes through with her South Korea thing, this means we won't be in the Philippines at the same time (the Korea program starts on July 2 or 3). So, sadly, the Possie/GBTC/WHORES/Chi-WHORES/etc. will be incomplete this summer :(

In case anyone's wondering, the title is completely unrelated to this post. It just happened to be raining when I started writing, but it's not raining anymore so.. Yeah. Randomness.

WARNING: Nerdiness. Blame it on my being a Life Science major if you want :P

( a watery debate )

Anyway. Enough nerdiness. Today was the last day of classes before the exams. We don't have classes until Thursday next week, and the first exams will start on Friday. And then we'll finally be able to go home! :D If we survive the exams. *sigh* Oh well, there's no sense in worrying. In the words of the oh! so wise Cassandra: Bahala na.

I think I'm starting to get addicted to KoL. Does anyone know a good place to get Muscle points? My HP is pathetically low, so I'm not progressing as much as I should. Any help would be greatly appreciated :D

What an interesting day it's been. And to think I woke up this morning (yes, it was still morning when I woke up :P) dreading a day of doing lab reports and studying for exams. I guess evil people DO have a purpose in the world: amusement.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My day really did start out as expected. I had to wade through this confusing lab report and then study for my exam on Monday. I eventually decided to rest for a while and just chatted on YM. All of a sudden, I got a message from Juanchi, who for some reason was in invisible mode. Here's how our conversation went:

chi: kirs? :(
kirsten: yes?
chi: ang laki ng problem ko :(
kirsten: ano un?
kirsten: chi?
chi: kirs :( sorry huh nasan kna :(
kirsten: ano ung problemang sinasabi mo?
chi: si tita ko kc nasa hospital :(
chi: critical nasa icu :(
kirsten: ano nangyari sa kanya? :(
chi: na hearth attack :(

Suspicion #1: "Hearth" attack? And he didn't even bother to correct it. Is he that overwhelmed with grief? Yes, I know this sounds callous, but I'm a suspicious person by nature so deal with it :P

chi: nag email ako kay tito ko sa states kso
chi: wla pa ring reply
chi: kirs help me naman

Suspicion #2: How am I supposed to help him when I'm all the way over here? Oh, maybe he's looking for sympathy...?

kirsten: what can i do to help?
chi: need naneed ng cousin ko makacall sa states kso wla naman load ok lng ba syo hiram muna ako syo ng 3k pay ko na lang modnay

Suspicion #3: "Need na need"? "Makacall"? "Modnay"? Hindi ganito magsalita si Juanchi.

chi: kunin ko na lang tom kung meron
kirsten: pano ko ibibigay sa yo?
chi: ok lng ba kirs papabile muna cousin ko ng card? :( pra makacall sa states then pay ko na lang monday
kirsten: at paano mo nmn ako babayaran?
chi: sa monday katips ok lng pero kung d pde
chi: sorry kirs :( sensya na sa abala

Suspicion #4: Kukunin mo sa Monday? Sa katips?? Good luck nalang sa iyo. Mas mahal pa pamasahe ko papunta diyan kaysa sa 3k.

By now I'm sure you've realized that that "person" wasn't really Juanchi. At this point, I messaged Chimoms to confirm whether this was really a hacker or not. She agreed with me that this "person" was trying to scam me but told me not to expose him yet. Pagtripan ko raw muna. So I did. And it was FUN :D

kirsten: d nga pwede db?
chi: ok lng sorry
chi: :(
kirsten: pwede sa tuesday nlng. magkaklase nmn tayo db?

Disclaimer: This was _chimoms' idea :P Evil Momo! Haha.

chi: tuesday na lang kita byaran? :(
kirsten: ok lang. anong oras nga pala klase natin?

Around two minutes passed with no response.

kirsten: well? anong oras nga?
kirsten: alam mo, medyo walang kwenta kang hacker
kirsten: pinili mo pa ung isa sa mga taong makakabuking sa yo agad
kirsten: congrats

Haha. Ang taray ko. But he/she deserved it :P Poor Juanchi. This is the second time he's been hacked. He should be more careful with his account. We were lucky this time; the hacker was unfortunate enough to choose one of the few people on whom this tactic would NOT work and would actually result in his/her exposure. And I'm proud to say that I know Juanchi well enough to recognize his way of speaking :P

But my day didn't end there. After this incident, I had dinner at McDonald's with eternalmortal, Gail, Michael, and Wayne. I was innocently munching on my McNuggets when Wayne suddenly asked, "Kilala niyo ba si _ _ _ _ _?" It's a good thing I had already finished chewing by then or I would have choked. Cassy, of course, was laughing hysterically, much to Wayne's confusion. After we had calmed down, Cassy replied, "______ kasi siya ni Kirsten". The conversation eventually moved on to other things. After a while, Wayne does it again; he asked, "Batchmate niyo rin ba si _ _ _?" Again, I was lucky enough not to be eating/drinking anything at that moment. I just shook my head and said, "Wayne, ang sapol talaga ng mga tanong mo. Grabe." Fortunately, nothing else happened afterwards. We just played cards and then went home. But still, what a way to end your day.