Seven Names for Seven Roles...

So, since my last post about HBO's cast for the Game of Thrones pilot the eggshell dam that held back all the exciting news has been shattered by the Hollywood reporter. They officially announced what GRRM has been hinting and anti-hinting about for days. Seven of the lead roles have been cast so far and the picks look pretty impressive from where I'm sitting.

The roles and actors cast are as follows:

Ser Jorah Mormont - Iain Glen
Jaime Lannister - Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Robb Stark - Richard Madden
Theon Greyjoy - Alfie Allen
Daenerys Targaryen - Tamzin Merchant
Sansa Stark - Sophie Turner
Arya Stark - Maisie Williams

The last two are young and relatively unknown actresses, although there is another actress named Sophie Turner, but she is not playing Sansa. :)
Honestly, this is just a short rundown here, but Martin gives an excellent description of the actors, their reasoning for the picks, as well as his hints decoded at Not A Blog.
Well, here's hoping that the rest of the casting goes smoothly and I can report on those pics too, in the near future!

A Song of HBO and Publishing

So, for those of you out there who don't know yet, I am a huge fan of George R R Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire". It is incredibly well-written chock-full of skillfully crafted characters and rife with heart-pounding adventure, nail-biting suspense, and brain-twisting intrigue. I read a lot, but I have never picked up a book that lead to nearly five thousand pages without me getting bored. And still I salivate for the next installment. George is a master of his craft, that is certain, yet his last two books of the series have been slow to birth. The wait has become infamous among his fans, (some of whom have even gone so far as to make a "hurry-the-F-up-blog") taking nearly five years for each of them. Yet for me, the pins and needles persist.

I remember the day I first laid my hands on GRRM's masterwork. I was working the night shift at a convenience store of the interstate in Valdosta, GA. My supervisor was the owner's son, Joe. He had read the first three books already and was still waiting on the fourth, A Feast for Crows, to hit the shelves. I still remember his warning: "Don't read 'em too fast, man. You'll want to. You won't be able to stop, but you have to pace yourself. I read them all as soon as they came out, and now I am still waiting on the next one. It has been years since the last one came out. Pace yourself!" I laughed. He didn't. I was sure just by looking at these stout paperbacks, that it would take me months to read them, maybe a full year or more. I was wrong, so wrong. I worked every night and in the hour-long lulls through my graveyard shift I read voraciously. I couldn't get enough of the hyper-realistic POV's in the pseudo-historic settings and the gentle trickle of mystery and magic(?) as the story progressed.





It only took me a couple of months to be chomping at the bit for the Feast I needed to quench my Martin fix. As soon as AFFC came out, I was on it in a heartbeat! I bought the hardback copy just so I could start reading a week or so earlier. Again, I ignored Joe's initial warning and poured through the pages with fervent zeal and finished in record time. I reread it and waited for the next volume. That was in 2005. I'm still waiting. We are all still waiting, some of us less patiently than others, but wait we must.

However, there are new updates and reasons to be excited. For example, HBO has decided to begin work on a pilot for a Song of Ice and Fire live action series. As of the typing of this blog post, seven roles have been cast! GRRM talks more about this on his LiveJournal "Not A Blog". He has given us hints and anti-hints but refuses to tell all unntil they give him the go-ahead. Another great resource for ASoIaF discussions and speculation is the Tower of the Hand forum. The self-described Encyclopedia of Ice and Fire is my favorite place to flesh out my own theories and relate to other GRRM freaks.


(I love this image of GRRM as a lord from Westeros, found here, at the cimmerian.)

Well, that is enough ASoIaF chatter for now, I will come back atchya with more soon!
peace all

Mind-blowing Audio-Visioptitronics...

This wonderfunk artwork can be found on YouTube among other interweb spots, and it is just itching to completely blow your mind! An interesting multi-dimensional trip through the fractal folds of existential hypereality, artist Marco Brambilla is sure to leave your pineal gland pulsating. Below is a blurb from www.toast-jam.com :

"Civilization, a video mural created by Marco Brambilla for the new Standard Hotel in New York City, depicts a journey from hell to heaven interpreted through modern film language using computer-enhanced found footage. This epic video mural contains over 300 individual channels of looped video blended into a multi-layered seamless tableau of interconnecting images that illustrate a contemporary, satirical take on the concepts of Heaven and Hell."

Erik Davis and Dennis McKenna

Hallo friends and fiendrs!

I know it has been long months since my last return, I have had busy semesters and rocky soulquakes. Yet here I am with the promise of a son just days away. I hope none of you have forgotten my plots and plans, because I certainly have not!
One of my most profoundly influential non-personal relationships has been my fervent audio-pursuit of the infamous and beloved Terence McKenna. Lorenzo Haggerty and B Art exposed me and guided me through a lengthy course in Bard questing, and I relate his words into all of my favorite discussions. Today, I discovered that another great mind in consciousness expansion has his own radio/internet audioshow. Erik Davis of Techgnosis fame has been producing the Expanding Mind show for a few weeks now, and his most recent episode is being filtered through my headset as I type. This week his guest is Dennis McKenna, brother and collaborator of Terence. His work in entheogens and ethnobotany continue to inspire and educate generations and hundreds of independent psychonauts. It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to hear these great thinkers discuss their own ideas on such a complex subject.
Another major occupation of my recent years has been my pursuit of a degree in the field of anthropology. The further I have gotten into my anthro-research, the more I have realized how I may be able to bind and intertwine my interests and garner a more exciting path into entheogenic and anthropogenic works. My first step, the way I dipped my toes into independent research was through the activity of Parkour. My colleague and I participated in the rush and run of urban gymnastics and free-form exploration of the built environment. Our understanding became formed around the notion of redefining the ways in which humans, citizens, are allowed to move through, around, and over the modern landscape. This work is not exactly entheogenic, but is definitely resonant.
While I am still working in the realm of understanding place and landscape from an anthropological approach, my next independent work is to be in the vein of ethnopharmacology.
The same colleague with whom I worked with on Parkour and I will be taking an anthro-approach to the understanding of the presence and use of entheogens in human cultures. We have developed a syllabus for our work and will be following it synchronously with the Fall 2009 semester. We hope that the work we produce from this independent course will provide an example of our abilities for use in application to graduate schools, as well as gleaning a new or more complex understanding of the subject.
At the moment I am simply priming all of these engines, because my life is soon to be exponentially more complex, yet I believe spinning a dozen plates may just help me stay on my toes, however much I may wish to kick back and chill while it all falls down. So, I will bring this ramble to a temporary close as I get back to work. Until next time, breathe easy....

photo courtesy of: http://www.xoxomusicvideos.com/2009/03/everytime-lustral.html (not my own!)

Best Batman clip ever?

Best Batman clip ever?

Irrefutable Evidence

Bush is a Criminal.

Just saw this on VYPH, had to share it with anyone who'll listen! Check out the entire article!

Pulitzer Prize winning author Ron Suskind’s new book “The Way of the World” presents multi-sourced evidence on a number of damning topics surrounding the Iraq war. Apparently, the Bush administration knew that Iraq didn’t posses WMDs before the invasion and even had the CIA fake a letter to create a fictitious link between 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta and Sadam Hussein. From the article:

What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:

The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush — a man still carrying a $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush’s famous deck of wanted men — has been America’s secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, “resettled” Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.

Read the whole thing here.

To many people this may come as no surprise, but the legal ramifications of this are huge. It means that there is now undeniable evidence that the administration inappropriately used a government agency (the CIA) to promote its own agenda. This is illegal and impeachable. From the Article “The mission [creating the Habbush letter] is a statutory violation of the charter of the CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting the CIA from conducting disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.”

Please forward this article on to your friends and family. Impeachment proceedings would go a long way to showing that the rule of law actually runs this country and that no one is above it. Sign the petition to impeach Bush http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer. You can also Sign Dennis Kucinich’s petition here. Write your representative and ask them to support the articles of impeachment. Our Government is meant to be a servant to the people not the other way around - let’s remind it.

Perhaps I should've written a better forward and actually exert the effort to create an original post, but I'm exhausted from two and a half days of moving and I'm runnin on two cups of coffee and five hours of sleep, and now I'm at work. So, sorry guys, I hope this is creative commons stuff!

MAPS!!!

This one goes out to Wolf King, Ser Rosby, and WorthEarth!


I, of course, have a deep appreciation/obsession with George R. R. Martin's epic A Song of Ice and Fire, in keeping with that, I feel it is my duty to give you a compilation of links/sites with the maps of Westeros and the various lands of ASoIaF. I have drawn from a couple of my favorite sites(TotH, westeros.org's Citadel, ASoIaForum) and give all credit to the original artists. So, without further ado, I give you. . .


SOME STUFF TO LOOK AT!

First up, the incredible, interactive map of Westeros at Tower of the hand.com



I've edited this page to remove all images and simply redirected to the source. I hope this helps without offending. Try it out and let me know if there are any problems!


Westeros, now in Technicolor!

How about a little, King's Landing?

Now, Lands of the Summer Sea

Let's not forget The Free Cities!


And finally, a proposal for a map of (most of) the World: