Oh my God heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" being more or less the only noise that can approximate the glee that explodes in my chest every time I watch this:

Anyone who knows me knows I am a huge fan of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and also that I'm not honestly that into T.V. shows unless there's something exceptional to get me interested.

This, we will categorize as "exceptional". Sean Bean--who I'll confess to have more than a minor mancrush on--and Peter Dinklage notwithstanding, the cast kind of has me queasy--the guy playing Jaime Lannister in particular, but then again, this is a character who did say "There are no men like me. There's only me"--but I'm hoping I'll be pleasantly surprised. I've never been a TV guy, but, well. I can be.

Fingers crossed. C'mooooooon, 2011. What with the release of The Wise Man's Fear, and what looks like a viable possibility of seeing A Dance For Dragons in print, next year promises to be a biggun.

This is What Me Writing an Essay Looks Like

This post was written while writing an essay for my American Literature course. Images and anything in brackets were added afterwards for clarity. The rest is full-grade I-shit-you-not serious.

Lime energy drink. Oh God mistake.

Blue energy drink. Much better.

Oh God the aftertaste. The aftertaste.

Water. Lots of water.

Revisiting one’s origins to discover oneself … I need to watch cartoons.

Pokemon! Gotta catch ‘em all!

Oh my God I am writing the wrong essay. Pokemon and Oscar Wao would’ve been brilliant.

Too late now. This is why I shouldn’t wait so long to write my essays.

The first season of Pokemon probably doesn’t count as American Lit. anyway.

The first season of Pokemon definitely doesn’t count as American Lit.

Okay that is the third time Milkman’s name became Ash Ketchum.

Pokemon is way better than I remember.

Also way worse.

I bet Junot Diaz (pictured right) is a cool guy.

Probably a bit of a dick though. No one reclines like that in the real world. Look at me, I’m cool and post-modern and bald!

I wonder if I can slip in the term bildungsroman without researching it.

If I wanted to be a clever asshole and risk getting skewered I’d put in one of those Diaz style footnotes and explain I know what bildungsroman means because as a twelve-year-old a doctorate student gave me a blistering criticism of my “Trite run-of-the-mill bildungsroman trash.” I was twelve.

And seriously, is that the best a goddamn postgrad student can muster? Against a twelve year old?

Probably wasn’t even a real postgrad student.

I mean seriously, I was a twelve year old writing about dragons.

Is that a Simpsons Christmas episode? Awesome!

Carol of the Bells is possibly the best Christmas song ever.

I wonder if anyone actually knows the lyrics to it.

I remember once I thought to myself “Only douchebags use words like limning and subverting and juxtaposing.” That thought has prevented me from using each of those words about three times each, thanks to some weird sense of loyalty to pastMatt. PastMatt was an idiot.

Third time I called Song of Solomon by Native Son. (Two novels we studied on the course).

Oh my God is it three thirty AM? I still have two paragraphs to write.

Better put in A New Hope. That’ll help me write.

Holy shit I love Star Wars.

“And these blasters, too inaccurate for Sand People. Only Imperial Storm Troopers can miss this damn badly.”

Maybe I just lack the capacity to be a woman, but Robert Pattinson does not seem attractive. I mean, I can look at a guy and say “That’s a good lookin’ fella.” But at the wrong angle ol’ Robert’s face looks like a foot. Particularly that pouty angle he’s always doing for Twilight.

Dear Professors,

Pleas stop rewarding my procrastinating. It's forming some really bad habits.

Sincerely,

Matt

Yeah, I know what bildungsroman means

One of the definitions that may appear on my American Literature final is bildungsroman.

For reasons exclusive to my own past, this is all at once a giveaway mark and a horrible, horrible memory that scars my consciousness to this day.

When I was twelve, I was--if you can believe it--an aspiring young writer. I was also, one will note, twelve. My age might've varied anywhere from 12-14, but it was certainly not much out of that range. As any 12-14 year old who read fantasy with a love bordering on the obsessive, I wrote simplistic, childish fantasy: you know, swords, dragons, elves, dwarves, that stuff. Mine were tinged by a subtle undercurrent of JRPG trends, since at the time I played more or less nothing but JRPG videogames, but the differences were mostly aesthetic.

Anyway, like a good many young, aspiring writers, I posted my stories on Fictionpress, in the hope of receiving some constructive criticism, and praise. Okay, let's face it: I wanted praise real bad. I wanted people to be like "Dude, you should get published right now."

Unsurprisingly, this did not happen. There was a fair bit of praise, though, which naturally swelled my little head like an overblown balloon. Little did my poor, balloon-headed 13-year-old self know that a post-graduate needle was hurtling towards my ego at ramming speed.

One day, I log on to my fictionpress account and check my reviews. One new review, the counter says! "Yay!" I think. I then read the review.

What followed was to be an absolutely blistering criticism of just about every word that I had written. Naive kid that I was, I endeavoured to contact this person and try and benefit from their insight: they were, you see, a post-graduate student.

Actually, I don't even know if they were postgrad. I just know they had some sort of degree in English.

Anyway, this person proceeded to sneer, snark, and generally mock my genuine attempts to understand just what the problem was with dragons and elves and dwarves and whathaveyou. At one point came the somewhat illuminating phrase: "You've basically written another generic bildungsroman, and not even a good one."

Not wanting to be a fool, I feverishly googled bildungsroman and learned all I could about it.

So, yeah. That's how I know what bildungsroman means. (Also, if you check the wiki for bildungsroman, The Name of the Wind is listed as an example. How cool is that?)

Discrepencies

What I SHOULD be doing: writing my final essay for my American Lit. course.

What I AM doing: watching the first episode of Pokemon.

OBVIOUS ANALYSIS

SARAH PALIN TWEETS A LOT AND LOOKS DUMB DOING IT.

HAHAHAHAHA.

WHY CAN'T WE STOP TALKING ABOUT HER OH GOD.