Via Slate, for the release of World of Ice and Fire, co-written (perhaps too much so, if you read the Amazon reviews) with Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson, “creators of the renowned fansite Westeros.org.”
Late Night Long
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Gravenstone
OT, but Noisemax hed, “Dick Morris: Joni Ernst is a smarter Sarah Palin”. Low motherfucking bar there, Dick. Very low motherfucking bar.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gravenstone: Okay, she is smarter than Palin. Fine. Is she smarter than a sea cucumber? Let’s use a useful comparison, for the love of Christ.
Violet
@Gravenstone: I think the “Putin has cancer” headline is far more interesting.
BruceFromOhio
What’s that? You’re a fan of of Game of Thrones? Like to read or watch?
GRRM hates your fucking guts.
redshirt
Reading The Silmarillion made me truly realize I was a nerd, and proud. I find it endlessly fascinating.
Mike in NC
@Omnes Omnibus: Been to Iowa. They have pigs. They have corn. Pretty much nothing else.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus:
Who is the pearl fish?
(For those who don;t know this fish, please google up a video or two. Oh hell, here ya go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00DXYXVRHkQ
)
The Dangerman
Fuck the
YankeesGiants.Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: You interrupted my Joy Division wallow.
Mike J
@Mike in NC:
One of my ancestors not only donated the land the state capitol is on, he’s buried there. Of course he had left Iowa to go somewhere better and died on the way and they just brought his body back.
Micheline
I am really worried about the Dems losing the senate. When I hear Harry Reid talking like this: “Frankly, a Republican House and Senate could go beyond shutting down the government — they could waste months of our lives on impeachment. And every month that goes by without solutions, struggling Americans are in pain,” he writes (emphasis in the original).”
You can’t help but worry.
Omnes Omnibus
@Micheline: Go phone bank. Officially if you can. Or, unofficially, call people you know and remind them that is is important to vote. If you do that, you will feel better no matter what happens.
The Dangerman
@Micheline:
About impeachment? Not gonna happen.
About gridlock from the Senate? Same as it is now.
Losing the Senate will suck but it’s far from the end of the world.
Now, for end of the world SERIES, I do have to give props to Bumgarner; if you have to go back to 1909 to find a comparable performance, it’s one for the ages. Dammit.
redshirt
I’m phone banking Friday and Monday. Damn if I’ll sit on my ass and watch LePage get re-elected with 36% of the vote.
mdblanche
@Gravenstone: Sort of like how Chris Chistie is a skinnier Baron Harkonnen.
And speaking of Noisemax headlines, fuck the airlines for making me have to take Franklin Graham’s side for once.
@Micheline: The message Reid is really trying to send you is to vote and take Omnes Omnibus‘ advice if you can.
piratedan
@The Dangerman: fucking hasn’t happened yet… gotta have faith til the rigged machines have been wiped clean and the thousands of registered voters have been turned away at the poling places. I’ve been pinged something close to 20 times with surveys over the land line during the last week and I’m not sure that the models that are being used take much of an account to how many people don’t have a land line these days. There’s a lot of disgust out there with politics in general and the MSM and the insane volume of advertising does make it seem like we’re in a “plague on both their houses mode” as they do their level best to hide who the fucking culprits are.
Still… I’m voting, you’re voting and we’re still doing all we can to elect the folks into positions that will actually try and do something to solve some of the problems we face. I refuse to go quietly and let the intellectual toddler brigade just walk in because we’re tired of the tantrums. Time out those duplicitous fuckers.
SatanicPanic
@The Dangerman: Why? They’re a fine team. Go California!
John Revolta
@Mike in NC: Been to Iowa. They have pigs. They have corn. Pretty much nothing else.
Oh, I dunno……………….they’ve also got some of the worst goddamn pizza on God’s green Earth. And yes, I’ve been to England.
Major Major Major Major
My friends brought two of those to a get together last night. I asked what it was and they said “oh, it’s the Game of Thrones sourcebook.”
Unrelated: maybe Giants fans can light fewer of the buses I use on fire this year.
joel hanes
@Mike in NC:
Been to Iowa. They have pigs. They have corn. Pretty much nothing else.
We have beautiful hardwood-forested valleys, limestone bluffs, a few nice lakes, some interesting glacial terrain, some canoeable rivers and a couple nice trout streams, a patch of restored prairie with bison and elk, a world-renowned fiction writers’ program, some good colleges, a relatively high level of education for a rural state, and a great number of affordable, lovely homes in woodland settings.
We just don’t share them with people whose starting point is contempt.
Especially if they can’t even identify soybeans in the field.
Know what I mean ?
Omnes Omnibus
@joel hanes: Aw, come on, your state’s name is just an acronym for Idiots Out Wandering Around.
I keed, I keed.
joel hanes
@John Revolta:
[Iowa has] the worst goddamn pizza
Conceded.
But why would you order pizza in Iowa?
That’s like going to Paris and ordering bratwurst — a fine meal in its place, but the wrong venue.
Iowa has some fine places to get beef and pork.
Order a steak, or an Iowa chop.
And most little towns have at least one restaurant where you can get a dynamite breaded pork tenderloin on a bun with pickles and mustard and a big slice of onion — the local specialty, like ordering bratwurst in Germany.
Citizen_X
@Gravenstone:
That’s like praising somebody as “less sleazy than Dick Morris.”
joel hanes
@Omnes Omnibus:
I keed
We’re used to it, believe me.
And we play on it. Take a group of Iowans into Chicago, perhaps to the Palmer House, and one of them is likely to drawl a bit too loudly “Goll-lee. Think of all the hay you could put up in a place like this!”
Any bunch of people who willingly sing “The Tall Corn Song” with hand gestures can be assumed to be familiar with self-satire. Iowans are purposely, self-consciously hicks in the same way that Bostonians behind the wheel of a car are purposely, self-consciously jerks.
John Revolta
But why would you order pizza in Iowa?
Force of habit, I suppose, or not knowing what else to go for.
Now I do!
joel hanes
While I’m shilling for Iowa, allow me to introduce you to Maytag Blue Cheese.
http://www.maytagdairyfarms.com/aspx/welcome.aspx
Here in California, Safeway carries it from around Thanksgiving to New Years.
Some of the recent Wisconsin artisanal blue cheeses have now IMHO surpassed it,
but it’s still damned good stuff, much better than any Danish blue.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Revolta:
“If it moves then you fuck it
If it doesn’t move you stab it”
Sorry, Elvis Costello obsessive here.
srv
LIVE FEED:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/sfriots
People screaming “MORE MATRESSES FOR BONFIRES!”
Cop scanner “WE’RE TAKING BOTTLES HERE!”
Now, it’s been two years, do they not have butterfly nets to take chilled, full beers (yes, they throw full beers here).
NotMax
@joel hanes
Dunno if they still exist, but Iowa was the only place I ever encountered Wonder Dogs. Four foot long Slim Jims, which we ducked out for on late night munchies snackage runs when I visited for a week back when.
srv
ALL RIOTERS, PROCEED TO TWITTER BUILDING FOR TWITTER RIOT!
joel hanes
@NotMax:
Wouldn’t know.
I don’t eat Slim Jims or anything similar, because I know what they’re made from.
I do know that in a pinch, when the foosball rods get sticky and you don’t have a can of Triflo handly,
you can buy a Slim Jim from the bartender, squeeze it until the fat globs stand out on the end, and use that for grease. It’ll get you through a couple more hours of play before you have to wash the rods clean and do it over.
joel hanes
@NotMax: @srv:
late night munchies
In Iowa City ? he asked innocently, having once lived there.
taylormattd
I just watched that whole thing. NERD.
NotMax
@joel hanes
Des Moines.
The Winder Dogs were tticker than Slim Jims, and more flexible, sort of like meat whips. They were not packaged, rather draped over a horizontal rod by the register at whatever the convenience store was (Piggly Wiggly?).
srv
@joel hanes: All my relatives in the IC are Irish. They are probably fast asleep.
Joel Hanes
@NotMax: @NotMax:
draped over a horizontal rod by the register
Ah. I can see them now in my mind’s eye.
No, I never ate them, nor can I remember anyone I know eating them.
How odd.
Batocchio
I had to comment on a post that mentions The Silmarillion. (I’ve read it twice, and it’s got some good tales, but it’s a hard slog because Tolkien died before he could revise and polish most of the content.)
I’ll have to take a peek at World of Ice and Fire, but I’ll adjust my expectations. Thanks for the warning.
chopper
@joel hanes:
Iowa city, home of the mealy square ‘bagel’. Yeesh.
Chris
@redshirt:
In honor of the times we’ve talked Star Wars, I will say that my introduction to the franchise was through a couple of the Essential Guides I was given at Christmas by an aunt who thought (wrongly) that surely I of all people would already be into that.
The worldbuilding is half the fun of universes like these.
raven
WTF-K?
Baud
Where’s AL?
Edmund Dantes
I wouldn’t buy it. It’s written from the viewpoint of a maester. There are intentional narrator errors in it. I don’t want that in a world book.
Skipjack
I’m enjoying it but it’s also frustrating a bit in that the narrative part is truncated. Like if you are an obsessive fan like I am, when you turn to an entry, you already know the first half of it, and the second half with new info just starts getting good before it stops.
Further, there are entries where clearly GRRM laid out a huge story in his notes, but here it’s completely abbreviated and lacking literary punch. Like, we get a sketch of the conflict between the Rhoynar and Valyrians that drives the Rhoynar out of Essos to invade Dorne, but it’s like the Cliff’s Notes to the Aeneid.
@Edmund Dantes
It’s not so much narrator errors deliberately to mislead, but more like a wink that sometimes the audience will know more than the maesters. Like when he says no one has seen a giant for hundreds of years. Also, it leaves GRRM some room to flesh out the story. A good example is the Dance of the Dragons, which he has already treated at length elsewhere. Only problem for me now is if he ever expands on it (a big if) I’ll feel spoiled by the thumbnail version.
Randy Khan
@Batocchio: The Silmarrilion is a slog, for sure. I read it twice, too, but found it most illuminating when I then re-read LoTR after the second time, as references that I’d passed by made more sense.
Also, it made me understand why, on a certain level, the elven leaders seemed so weary in LoTR.
redshirt
@Randy Khan: It also greatly adds to the depth of menace of Sauron.The story of him being defeated and captured by the Numunorians (sp?), only to eventually corrupt and destroy them is chilling.
joel hanes
@chopper:
[ disparages bagels available in Iowa City ]
Iowa was settled mostly by Germans, “Bohemians”, and Scandinavians, and their descendants still dominate the population. The Irish and Greeks came in the next wave.
Damned few Jewish people in Iowa; too few for great bagels or deli (mostly; Ames used to have an Irish/Jewish deli, “Dugans”, with good boiled bagels, onion byali, Guiness and Harp and Pilsner Urquell on tap.)
Damned few Italian-descent people in Iowa; too few for good pizza, or Italian.
No good Indian or Thai to my knowledge.
There is at least one Chinese restaurant in most larger towns, but they’re seldom very good; I think it’s a lack of proper Chinese markets as much as anything.
Many good Iowa restaurants are run by long-resident Greek families, but they tend to take a meat-and-potatoes Midwestern menu and add a few Greek touches — wonderful lamb, chicken roasted in oregano and oil, or Greek-spiced chicken livers, or a nice Greek salad with feta and onion and olives and maybe some dolma.
Most towns over 25,000 people now have at least one passable Mexican restaurant.
Tehanu
@Omnes Omnibus:
You must mean Sheldon J. Plankton, whom I’ve treasured ever since I noticed that his file cabinet drawers were labeled “Evil Plans,” “Megalomaniac Schemes,” and “World Domination.” Which I immediately copied on my file cabinet at work. Alas, hardly anybody ever notices.