Boycott Game of Thrones??

Boycott Game of Thrones!? 

Did that get your attention?  It sure grabbed mine.

I don’t believe I’ve ever been so impressed.  As I read this incredible article—and there’s simply no other word for it—I couldn’t help but answer some of the outstanding questions it posed.  

Yes, the article is on a satirical website.  But I’ve heard too many arguments just like this, and once I got going, I couldn’t shut myself off.  And—frankly—I’d already written it.  

It’s not that far off the mark from what so many crazies out there really do believe, so I decided to put it up anyway, with the disclaimer that this is a satire of a satire.  I got a whole “Inception” thing going on.

Enjoy.

(Read the whole article here:  www.Christwire.com - 12 Reasons to Boycott Game of Thrones in 2010)

 12 Reasons to Boycott Game of Thrones in 2012


“1. Sexual abnormality, including incest and lesbianism, appears in graphic detail.
From casual rape to group orgies, each episode of Game of Thrones has something astonishing for viewers. For many children, this will be the first time they are introduced to wanton fornication. Will they choose to experiment like this in real life?”

You just ignore that MA rating on a premium cable channel.  Turn off those parental controls so the children don’t miss out on this early morning preschool adventure. Because even though Mom & Dad encourage the kids to watch any old HBO original series, this is surely the first time they’ve been exposed to “wanton fornication.”  And kids never experiment without gratuitous and explicit prompting.  And if HBO is going to market this show as a sexier "Dora the Explorer," who am I to prevent the children from watching it?

Also, I never knew that the words “appear” and “glorify” were synonyms. Thanks for clearing this up.

“2. Witchcraft is presented as empowering while Christian values are utterly insulted.
Deadly potions and menacing spirits dominate the storyline, but there is no mention of Jesus despite the fact that His love was the backbone of wisdom in the Middle Ages.”

At first I, too, thought this show was set in Europe.  I can suspend my disbelief and accept that zombies, dragons, giant wolves, decade-long-summers/winters, fictional countries, and even the thousand-foot-tall wall of ice were (and are) a part of everyday European life.  But the idea that any overland travel through one country in Europe could take a month?  Please.  I wasn’t born yesterday.

“3. There is far too much violence and this prevents the overall plot from ever becoming compelling. Do we really need to see all these bloody close-ups of beheadings and elaborate jousts? It just doesn’t contribute anything educational to the viewing experience.”

If you’re watching HBO for educational reasons, you’re doing it wrong.  Although I’ve always found jousting obscene.  If the Lord wanted us to ride horses, why did He invent spaceships?

“4. Emilia Clarke is such an untalented actress that her only role in the show is to be eye candy for pedophiles.  This pretty young girl unfortunately lacks the intellect or the sophistication to appear on prime time television. The producers seem to know this and require her to disrobe in every scene. Her gentle, undeveloped teenage body does not evoke womanhood, but the innocence of a lost child, alone on the side of a highway and ripe for the picking.”

Daenarys?  An innocent child ripe for the picking?  Ridiculous.  Every legal-age young woman longs for the day when her abusive older brother will force her to marry a foreign warlord in exchange for a chance to reclaim the home she cares nothing about.  And those two or three scenes where she was topless totally turned me into a lesbian for a full three weeks.  I was halfway through the divorce proceedings before its demonic effects wore off.

“5. By depicting the traditional heterosexual family unit as dysfunctional and a socialistic revolutionary army as an ideal alternative, the show reveals its underlying communist bias.
Should it come as any surprise that author George R. R. Martin, a power broker in liberal Hollywood, named the dominating spirit of these soldiers “The Red God”?”

Yes, all those homosexual families were WAY too happy and loving—TOTALLY unbelievable—and those Starks were absolute monsters.  I mean, come on…what cheated-on wife HASN’T welcomed her husband’s bastard into her home with open arms?  And are we really supposed to believe that heterosexual marriages—especially politically-arranged ones—don’t result in deliriously happy families every single time? 

“6. Actor Peter Dinklage, who plays a dwarf on the show, has become the poster child for sodomy amongst America’s youths.  Children identify with Dinklage because of his small size and comical accent, but his obsession with anal penetration crosses the boundaries into pure propaganda. How many children will watch the little man and want to try his grunty thrusts at home?”

This poses an interesting argument about whether he really is a dwarf, or if he just plays one on TV.  And I, too, share these concerns that several seconds of iffy, soft-core, maybe-sodomy-but-probably-just-doggy-style dwarf lovin’ will transform an entire generation of America’s youth into orgy-starved catamites. 

“7. At times, the series appears to be little more than an excuse to display illicit homosexual scenarios. Flamboyant costumes, effeminate longhaired men, boys shaving each other’s armpits… Add to this the voluptuous, swarmy acting style of gay porn star Kit Harington (who plays sycophant Jon Snow) and you’ll feel like you’ve been transported to a San Francisco bathhouse full of the apes from Star Trek.”

From dictionary.com:  Syc·o·phant: noun: a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite.

I didn’t know that “sycophant” describes someone who forswears ever having a family so he can commit himself to a lifetime of service defending his country. Although I’m sure no one in Middle Age Europe (where this story totally takes place) ever had long hair or flamboyant costumes. Codpieces, shimmering suits of armor, lacy cravats, and jester’s motley were only invented to humiliate the red man. I’m pretty sure that’s right.

Although that comment about being “transported to a San Francisco bathhouse full of the apes from Star Trek” is exquisite.  And absolutely correct. The entire Game of Thrones series is, scene-for-scene, no different than watching gay orangutans in Star Trek costumes have drunken orgies in a San Francisco bathhouse.

“8. The Irish actors willfully glamorize severe alcoholism.  The ignominy of Ireland has always been the weakness of its people when it comes to alcohol indulgence. Why must Games of Thrones attempt to find humor in such a national disgrace?”

First, I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who feels comfortable making fun of dwarves in a public forum would also be a racist.  Second, I’m getting sick of saying that this show did not take place in Europe, so there are no Irish characters in Game of Thrones.  Third, you’re right.  Every alcoholic in the show was a paragon of morality and virtue.  Drinking was never once portrayed as a vice, and it never EVER came back to bite them later.  King Robert’s death could in no way be attributed to the fact that he was stumbling-down drunk during a boar hunt. 

“9. Pet wolves and dragons mirror demonic spirit guides in pagan cosmology.
When you pair up children with conduits of divination, you are inviting them to experiment in spiritually reckless ways. Sadly, atheism and Satanism await them down this path.”

Look, you have to start teaching kids early on that pets are only to be used in Satanic rituals.  How else will they become the world’s youngest and most powerful atheist warlocks?  I can’t do this alone, people. 

“10. The show is incredibly difficult for adults to understand.  Most parents will find the thick European accents of the actors confusing. The story, vamped up from the original book, is frustrating for its leaps of logic and implausible romantic scenes. The producers of Games seem to understand this and have crafted the series so that it intentionally turns away older viewers. Should we be suspicious that they have worked so hard to have some private alone time with America’s children?”

It’s all so clear to me now.  This show must be aimed at children, because it’s just too smart and challenging for adults.  No adult wants to think.  No adult believes in implausible romance (there’s nothing more realistic than a Harlequin novel or the first few minutes of a porno).  And the British accent is harder to understand than ancient Egyptian calculus.

But you show me a child who says he doesn’t enjoy multiple convoluted plotlines, dozens of characters, hours of dialogue, and beautiful scenery, and I’ll show you a liar.  Game of Thrones might as well be a Spongebob Christmas special.

“11. There are no positive role models.  It may sound a bit old fashioned, but what ever happened to the strong male figures we had on shows like Little House on the Prairie and Touched by an Angel? Instead we have Littlefinger and androgynous Joffrey Baratheon prancing about as heroes for today’s confused young men who appear to be insanely obsessed with this outrageous series.”

And why isn’t watching “Dexter” more like grocery shopping?  Why isn’t the song “Get Low” more like washing my hair?  Why do twelve-year-old-boys look like twelve-year-old boys, instead of like Sean Connery?  Why isn’t my child learning more life lessons from pizza boxes?


“12. The moody, dark cinematography will make teens depressed.  Many youth subculture groups, including Goths and Skinheads, prefer to inhabit the world of the night. In darkness they find convenient cover to master their addiction to drugs and sexual violence. Does Games of Thrones actively promote marijuana usage and rape? Should parents really sit idly by as we await the answer to this important question?”

That’s right, because teenagers have to find excuses for being depressed and smoking weed.  Most of them were super happy and not at all rebellious until this show came along—a show clearly better aimed at preteens than Twilight—and none of them knew what rape was until Game of Thrones made it look so darn fun.  But you couldn’t swing a direwolf familiar at a gay family orgy/birthday party without hitting a Satanist who's sodomizing a pre-teen while toking up some Hawaii Skunk.  They call it Hawaii Skunk, too, because this show is totally set in Europe.



For the record, I am a devout Christian and there are things on the show I could do without.  I don’t enjoy looking at women’s breasts or watching simulated sex of any kind, gay or otherwise.  And I would never let my children watch this show.  But that’s the difference between being a child and being an adult, now isn’t it?  Grown-ups can do things that kids can’t. You don’t want your kids to see you having sex with your spouse, but that doesn’t mean you should stop doing it.  I can enjoy a movie, TV show, or book series without insisting they be Bible stories.  And if I was going to talk about how horrible a television show is, I’d at least watch it first.

(Once again, I must reiterate that this is a satirical reply to a satirical article, but it’s so realistic that I couldn’t resist answering it as though it were real!)

How thou dost afflict me!

A form rejection on a full?  Really?

Look, I know agents are busy. I know they have to sift through encyclopedias of bad grammar, incorrect punctuation, and poorly-constructed storylines, but come on. How can an agent gush about how much they loved my partial and can’t wait to reading the rest of it, then come back with nothing more than a brief, soul-crushing, “Thanks for the look, but this is not for me?”

REALLY?

It’s insulting, is what it is.

If you loved the first three chapters, what about the next 18 turned you off so much? At what point did you say, “If I try finish this load of crap my head might explode?”  Did you start to hate my characters? Was the ending unbelievable? Did parts of it drag? Was it too sexy? Too violent? Not sexy or violent enough? What? Give me something, anything, to work with. Even a brief sentence or two describing what aspect of my novel poured icy water on the coals of your enthusiasm would be appreciated.

I’m not saying this agent should have offered unconditional representation. I get that my book will never be everyone’s cup of tea. I get that it probably needs work. But how can I fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong?

Giving a one-sentence form rejection on a FULL MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION is like finding out you’ve been dumped when your boyfriend changed his Facebook status to “single,” then never speaks to you again.  It’s like stumbling into a void that wasn’t there ten seconds ago.

I hate emotions. They’re so depressing. Up, down, up, down, sideways, backwards, upside-down, over and over again, until I throw up.  I feel like a manic-depressive or something, and I am not enjoying it.

Maybe I need to find another couple of Betas.  Or maybe I just need to go eat my feelings. Perhaps curling up with Watership Down and half a cheesecake will take the pain away.

Only one way to find out…

At least April's almost over...

It's been a bad month.  I'm not going to go into all the details, because that would just be depressing.  But I've been greatly looking forward to May.

With only two days left in the month, I felt pretty good when I woke up today.  My first thought when I opened my eyes and found my two dogs snuggled close beside me was, “It’s gonna be a good day.”

Big mistake.  Everyone knows the best way to piss off the gods is with cheery optimism and happy thoughts.  So my second thought was the blinding white light of utter panic.  What was wrong with me?  I’d ruined my day before it had even begun. I could almost feel the angry brows of unimaginable forces furrowing at my blatant and arrogant assumption that I’d have a ‘good day’ without their express written consent, and with two full days left in April!  What had I done?

The unhappiness began almost immediately.  I put my contact lenses in, only to nearly bite my tongue off at the mortal agony that shredded my left eye.  I don’t know what was in there, but I’m fairly sure it was some sort of microscopic razor wire tipped with box jellyfish venom, because I couldn’t even pry my eyelid open enough to remove the offending plastic for what felt like an hour.

I managed to get the lens out—clean as a whistle to my untrained and savaged eyeball—and fix whatever problem it had with me.  Then I fed the dogs, who decided to have an all-out brawl over a stray piece of kibble I’d thoughtlessly let fall to the floor.  After they nipped the ends of my fingers off for daring to interfere in a battle that was clearly none of my business, they tore off into the yard and worked themselves into a frenzy over the roofers hammering away at a neighbor’s house.

I tried to calm them down because my husband works nights, but they would have none of it.  I gave up efore I lost a toe and set off for work, only to get stuck in an unnecessary traffic snarl because the city of Denton doesn’t know how to properly organize a traffic pattern.  There were only eight cars in front of me but it took 15 minutes to travel the three blocks between the mall and I-35.  I was then almost hit by three different cars, got stuck behind a teenager driving 5 MPH to check out the girls walking to class, and spent 45 minutes looking for a parking spot.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced the joys of staff parking at a university, so let me break it down for you.  I get to work a half an hour early every day to search for a parking spot.  Every.  Day.  And every day, I still end up 10-15 minutes late.  Well, almost every day.  There are rare and precious occasions (usually Saturdays) when Jesus smiles down on me as though to say, “You’ve suffered enough for one week,” and I find a good spot within the first twenty minutes.  And by ‘a good spot,’ I mean it’s only two blocks from my building, rather than eight.  A spot you'd laugh at, call names, and then dismiss if it were at Wal-Mart.

Most days, however, I have to drive around and around the one-way streets at the breakneck speed of 15 MPH--slamming on the brakes whenever some idiot student leaps out from behind a tree to play chicken with my car--until I find the last spot in the darkest corner of the farthest lot on campus.  Especially for the last 3 weeks, when construction on a new parking garage (which will cost extra $$$ to use, of course) has blocked some 75% of the staff parking spaces.  “Green Campus” my @$$.  I spend a half a tank of gas a week simply searching for somewhere to safely leave my car, where it won’t get ticketed, booted, towed, crushed, and melted.

What could be more fun than that, you ask?  Why, paying for the experience, of course!  That’s right.  I get to pay $250 a year (or $500 a year for a “Premier” or “A-Class” parking spot) to idle around campus for an hour a day and walk eight blocks to my job in the rain, snow, blistering heat, or whatever else Texas decides to throw at me along with its sadistic laughter.

The university should really take me out to dinner before they take their parking fees from my paycheck.  It just seems polite to wine & dine someone before you #%$@ them.

Motivational Speakers

This is a satirical piece I wrote back before I learned how to fake an injury to get out of those mind-numbing teambuilding seminars.  Uuugh.  Now I know better.  Now I just think about actually sitting through it, and the nausea moves through me until I'm actually too sick to attend.  Crisis averted!  May you enjoy reading this as much as I hated attending it.


Motivational Speakers

Hello, everyone.  Welcome to your Company-sponsored lecture on leadership, productivity, and self-improvement.  I know you're all being forced to attend this seminar, and most of you are rolling your eyes and glancing at your watches, just waiting for me to say we’re all going to have a super-fun time.  Well, we’re probably not.  I mean, this is the same brainwashing, behavior-modifying, pop-psychological, propaganda-based waste of time we’ve been regurgitating and feeding back to the public every three years since the Hitler’s Youth program.  

That’s right; the only things we change are our catch phrases; like “See it and Be it,” “If you Believe it, You can Achieve it,” “Be Your Own Cheerleader,” and “Have You Hugged your Rainbow Today?”  And yet, some of you here today will still walk away believing that today has forever changed your life for the better.  So let’s get started!

Now, let me first tell you what we’re all about.  We’ve been hired by your Company to steal away precious hours of your life under the pretense of elevating your self-esteem, managing your time more efficiently, and bettering your overall lives.  In truth, however, it’s just much cheaper for your employers to make a meaningless gesture in the form of this tedious seminar to boost profits and productivity than to give you all raises or offer some sort of incentive program.  As a bonus, we make your heartless, money-driven Corporate Machine look like they actually care about its fully-disposable employees.

The same goes for your schools, ladies and gentlemen.  Yes, I can fully guarantee that if your children aren’t already enrolled a class that hammers these mind-controlling precepts into their fragile, impressionable young minds, they soon will be.  There are classes out there in every elementary school, junior high school, high school, and college that are devoted exclusively to these time-wasting exercises, designed to shape the weak-minded, gullible masses into the performance-driven automatons every employer dreams of.

But we’re getting off topic.  Let’s talk about time management.  Now, when I say ‘time-management,’ am I referring to your recreation time, your time at home, away from the office?  Of course not.  How would that help your Company pay my ridiculously overpriced bill?  No, I’m talking about better managing your time here, in the cubicle that will slowly but surely drain from you all life and vitality, leaving you a cold, hollow shell praying daily for a swift and painless death that will not come.

I know most of you are saying, “How?  How can I better manage my time to benefit my Company?”  Well, let’s just think about it for a moment; do you really need to take a lunch break?  Couldn’t you better use that hour by eating at your desk and finishing that paperwork?  Of course you could.  Just don’t choke on that chicken bone.  All the resulting paperwork would really slow down your HR department.  And what’s that, folks?  That’s right:  It’s…bad for The Company!

Today I’ll teach you about the power to “Choose Your Own Attitude.”  What a revolutionary concept, you’re thinking.  And you’re right.  You can decide how to feel today, and every day.  Do you want to be happy?  Then just be happy!  It doesn’t matter that you rear-ended a police car while driving your underage daughter to the hospital after she miscarried her cousin’s unborn child.  Suppress those unhappy, counter-productive emotions; block out those gloomy thoughts until they’re somewhere you’ll never find them until you suffer a psychotic break.

Just put on a happy face, and the rest will fall into place.  Don’t bring your problems to work; nobody cares about them anyway, and it can only decrease your performance level and the effectiveness of your co-workers.  Remember, The Company is everything, folks.

But what about problems at work, you say?  Well, those are your problems, and they’re your fault.  You shouldn’t selfishly lower your colleagues’ productivity by making a big scene when you’re passed over for that promotion in favor of the intern who gave in to your supervisor’s bizarre sexual advances.  Don’t sue over unpaid overtime or complain about working weekends.  Is that good for the Company?  No.  It doesn’t benefit anybody, and frankly, it can only make it that much harder for you to turn that frown upside down.

We all know that The Company is a fine-tuned Machine, and it can only work best and most effectively produce revenues if all the little people—I mean little pieces—are working together as one unified, non-individual-based unit.  Only if you all work your tired fingers to the bone, ridding yourself of every drop of individuality and hope for a better future, can the Company maximize its output.  That means higher profit margins and more money than a printing press.

But not for you, disposable employees.  No, no; that’s what I’m here for.  A meaningless gesture from your superiors to give you that false sense of loyalty and respect you so desperately thirst for, in order to keep you operating at the back-breaking pace they need to improve those bottom lines.  Yes, folks; if you listen and apply everything you hear today to your lives as a whole, I guarantee your Company will hire us to do this at every office they own.  Soon every employee will be volunteering to work weekends, giving up overtime pay, forfeiting vacations and time with friends and family, and feeling great about it!

Over the next four days, you’ll learn all about:

·         How guilt at missing unreachable quotas can be offset by working off the clock
·         Visualizing how the same repetitive, meaningless tasks performed over and over again will somehow make you president of The Company

·         The smug futility of mission statements

·         How to forge a false sense of unity through Company-based sports teams, retreats, and other mindless ‘teambuilding’ exercises

·         The degradation of the points-based ‘reward’ system

·         How competing in non-monetary awards programs for attendance/safety certificates can make you feel ‘special’

·         Better customer service though personal humiliation

And so much more!

Why I don't use a certain writing forum anymore

Ah, my first tirade! I put this up on a writing forum I no longer frequent in protest of a certain administrator's delete-happy 'vision' of a well-censored venue for 'free expression.'  I'm betting some of you even know who he is, but I'll be polite and delete his name.  Enjoy. 


C*****'s god complex has defeated me.  I shan't be coming back.

I like my creative outlet administrators just a tad less Hitler-y, thanks. Get a life, dude. Just let people express themselves without your endless nit-picking. Do you seriously have nothing better to do than monitor every single line of text entered into every single thread every single minute of every single day? I wish I had that kind of free time. Although I like to think I'd spend it in more constructive pursuits, like spending time with family and friends and realizing my dreams. You know, frivolous stuff like that. Nothing like becoming the tyrannical overlord of a writing forum, I know; but us little people have to dream smaller than that.

There are better forums out there, folks, where C*****'s Nazi regime and endless, needless, pointless rules cannot reach you. Hope to see you there. Also, he doesn't even know what a query letter is. So don't listen to him.

I bet this post stays up for all of thirty seconds, because he has absolutely nothing better to do with his life than quell the insurgents. If there's one thing C***** hates, it's free expression. I mean, it's not like we're all trying to be creative professionals or anything, right?

What are you gonna do? Kick me off the forum? Send me another email about my infractions? I'm shaking. Seriously. Can you tell? I can barely type through all the tears at the mere thought of Herr C***** Big-Brothering my every keystroke.

Sieg Heil, jerk.


(By the way...it was removed in less than a minute)