A Quiz of Ice and Fire

The Song of Ice and Fire House Test

Your Score: House Stark
27% Dominant, 45% Extroverted, 72% Trustworthy

Responsible. Respectable. Dour. That’s not shit coming out of your ass--it’s honor. You are clearly of House Stark.

You are a submissive personality, meaning that you are more than willing to relinquish control to someone more qualified; you will unflinchingly accept any responsibility that is thrust upon you, including servitude. Unfortunately for you, your unending patience and accommodating nature often make people look to you for a leader. In essence, you are the perfect leader: someone who has no desire to lead, yet is substantially well-qualified to do it.

You are also introverted, which means that people sometimes have difficulty understanding your thought process. Your dependable nature makes you predictable, but you’ve probably got all sorts of emotional dysfunctions when it comes to more intimate relationships. There are very few people whom you trust unwaveringly, and you’re not the type to confide in other people. So cold, so aloof--so Stark.

Finally, you are trustworthy--the very definition of the word. All secrets are safe with you. All of your vows are unbreakable. True to your name, you world is a stark place; there is black, and there is white. Your rigidity tends to undercut your overall value as a friend and ally. Honesty such as yours is hard to come by, which is easy to understand when you consider how easily manipulated you are by less decent individuals. Essentially, you’re the nice guy, and you’ll always finish last.

Representative characters include: Eddard Stark, Jon Snow, and Sansa Stark

Similar Houses: Frey, Lannister and Tully

Opposite House: Baratheon

When playing the game of thrones, you play it with one sword in your hand and another up your ass.
My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 7% on Dominance

You scored higher than 21% on Extroversion

You scored higher than 65% on Trustworthiness

Does this mean I get to make out with the Hound?

Cheap DVDs!

All FOX Television DVD sets are on sale for $19.99 at Best Buy. It says FOX TV, but it must include 20th Century Fox productions that aired elsewhere, because Buffy and Angel are included. Angel Season Five, you will at last be mine!

(Psst! And if you buy them at the store in person and use this coupon, you can get them for only $9.99!) Never mind. I didn't realize when I linked it that it's not an online coupon, it's just a scan of a hard copy somebody picked up in the store. I'm pretty sure printing copies and trying to use them isn't kosher.

Found via Whedonesque.

End of Season Pop Culture Round-up

It's a bit late, but here's a smattering of the things that have held my attention over the last couple of weeks.

NOTE: I'm avoiding spoilers up front, but feel free to be as detailed and spoilerific as you like in the comments.

OTHER NOTE: If you don't want to get spoiled, don't read the comments.

OTHER OTHER NOTE: Or the Gray's Anatomy commentary at the bottom.

In Theaters: Bug - this only held my attention because I paid money to see it (or my husband did, anyway) and I was kind of stuck there with nothing better to do until it was over. Dear Lord in Heaven, I can't remember the last time I felt so ripped off by a movie. We actually sat in the theater after it was over debating whether there was a chance that the theater would give us our money back, since we stayed for the whole thing, and decided probably not, since it's not like it was the theater's fault that the marketing for this movie was a CAMPAIGN OF LIES.

I can't really say that this movie sucked, because for what it is, it's technically well done and features some excellent performances. I can give it that. But what this movie is is TOTALLY NOT A HORROR MOVIE, you LYING BASTIGES. Seriously, I spent the entire movie waiting for a payoff that that the movie's marketing led me to expect and that never came, and it pissed me off too much for me to be able to say anything objective about the actual film. Just know if you decide to give it a chance that you'll be seeing a not-that-thrilling psychological drama about domestic violence, conspiracy paranoia, and craaaaazy Okies ('cause we're all craaaaaazy, donchaknow), with some dark humor that may or may not be intentional, depending on how much credit you want to give Ashley Judd's acting skills, and that doesn't contain a single, solitary mutant monster bug. Because did I mention this isn't a horror movie?

Sigh.

Rentals: MST3K: A Touch of Satan. I didn't mention the last Mystie title we rented, Hellcats, a movie so abominable that not even Joel and the 'bots could infuse it with entertainment value. After that, AToS was like a breath of fresh comedy. It's a cheesy (what else?) early 1970s horror-movie-slash-love-story about a pair of witches and the salvation and true love that only devotion to Satan sorry - Mormo can bring. It has enough unintentional humor all by itself that the commentary is almost an afterthought. Also, "This is where the fish lives" is my new catch phrase.

Books: Finished White Night, the latest entry in The Dresden Files, and it deserves its own post, and will get one later. But I loves me some Harry Dresden. Started The Line Between by Peter S. Beagle, and read the sequel to The Last Unicorn contained therein, and cried and cried, and vowed to reread TLU later this year. Also started The Android's Dream by Scalzi. I'm not very deep into it yet, but it's a pretty entertaining read so far.

Television/TiVo: The Gilmore Girls finale made me cry, in the good way. I still feel a little cheated that they waited until the last minute to reunite Luke and Loralei, but their reunion was so perfect, and the entire episode felt so right. The Veronica Mars finale (and the four episodes leading up to it) made me sigh. I actually thought the last part of the season showed signs of improvement, and now I'm sad that the threads that were left hanging will never be resolved. And I still love Logan. What will I do without my Logan fix? Sigh.

The two-part Supernatural season finale also made me cry a lot, in addition to kicking about twenty different kinds of hinder. This is dangerously close to becoming my official favorite show. It's only real competition at this point is...

Heroes, whose season finale did not disappoint, and kicked an equal amount of hinder. And also made me cry. Do you sense a theme? I want to hug the Petrelli brothers. Among other things.

Gray's Anatomy (SPOILER ALERT!)

So let me get this straight: You have a couple who's getting married, and the bride is totally into planning the big wedding, and the groom would really prefer something simple and low-key, but he goes along with the hullabaloo in the interest of making his would-be spouse happy, and this is... completely normal; but if you reverse the genders on this equation, then it's a sign of a fundamental flaw in the relationship and proof that the one who wants the big wedding just doesn't love his intended enough to be down with her non-girly ways? Is that the message I'm supposed to be getting? Or is it that Burke's an artard?

But I can't pick on Burke, because I'm not any more irritated with him than I am with the rest of the entire cast. Except Alex, because he actually did the right thing choosing not to be a home wrecker, Izzie Stephens, and by the by, if you are truly George's friend, and you truly love him, then you do NOT burden him with your inappropriate (and still unbelievable) feelings and ask him to throw away his marriage so that YOU can have a stab at happiness.

Dear Marti Noxon (and company): Please don't make me hate Izzy. I finally made my peace with "Seeing Red" (see two posts down), but I'm not ready to give you so much credit that I trust where you're going with this George business. So just stop it right now, pleasekthxbai.

I guess really the only other people who suck right now are Derek and Meredith. Particularly Derek, because he knew she was self-absorbed going in, and he waited until a particularly stressful and horrific time in her life to decide he's not okay with it. Kind of reminds me of a certain Initiative soldier who waited until his superheroic girlfriend's mom had a brain tumor to decide he couldn't handle her independence and wanted her to be needier. And I will stop making Buffy comparisons now. Promise.

But I can't promise to stop blaming everything on Marti. Old habits die hard.

And I am officially caught up on my television viewing for the 2007 spring season. Now I'm eagerly awaiting July and the summer season, particularly Big Brother (yes. Shut up.) and Dr. Who. In the meantime, methinks my temporary Blockbuster discount card will be getting a workout.

Angel 2.0

David Greenwalt has been hired to executive produce CBS's Moonlight.

Er. Huh. They really are just doing their darnedest to bring back Angel, aren't they?

It could always be worse.

As infuriating and distracting as is all of the roof construction hereabouts, at least it's not as bad as all this:

Cube News 1: Between the Plastic Sheets*



*Affiliate link

*POUND*

Another day, another round of incessant pounding. Ooh! Ooh! And now there's also drilling! Joy.

I might be ever so slightly less cranky about it if I didn't stay up past my bedtime to watch the Lost finale, but I did, and all I have to say about it is this: now I KNOW they're just screwing with us.

Seriously, wtf?

Win a Date With Tad Hamilton....'s One-time Co-star!

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If you think that's intimidating, just check out some of the competition:



Hee. Be sure to check out the other video entries. It just gets more embarrassing (and hilarious) from there.

And don't worry. If Mirelly's not your thing, upcoming "prizes" include Emmy Award Winning Producer Scott Sternberg, and The Bachelor's Andrew Firestone. This is, of course, a chance for much hilarity to ensue, and ensue it does. Check out the rest of the competition as well as other free videos at GoFish.com

Weekend Pop Culture Roundup, Part 1: The Non-TV Bits

In theaters: Mama Mia! - this would be in the actual theater, pronounced "thee-ah-tah" if you're kind of pretentious. I love this show like I love Abba, which is an unabashed lot. This is the second time I've seen it, and I think I liked this cast better, and not just because the male lead reminded me a heckuva lot of Nathan Fillion. I thought the actress playing Sophie had both a better voice and more chemistry than in the last production I saw, plus, not to imply she had anything but a lovely figure, but I appreciated that she wasn't a twig.

On Netflix: Near Dark - yes, I thought of Nathan Petrelli the entire time I watched this, because it's not as if Adrian Pasdar has had a long and varied career in between now and when this movie first came out. Even so, I started to get the sense that he's getting typecast: likeable, well-intentioned guy with understandable aspirations (getting laid, becoming president... same difference [insert your own Clinton joke here]) gets in over head with evil, murderous group who wants to make him a pawn; he doesn't really want to go along with it, but he doesn't exactly stand up to the bad guys, either, at least until his family becomes threatened. Yes, methinks Pasdar had some prior experience at playing that role. But besides that, Bill Paxton is cheesier and more over-the-top than ever in this movie, and I can't help loving it.

Croupier - this one was a pick from Matt's queue. Clive Owen stars as a writer turned blackjack dealer who's really researching a book, except that secretly he really wants to be dealing, and he almost unknowingly sleeps with his step-mom-to-be... or something. Clive Owen is pretty. That's what I mostly remember. That, and he needs to give The Edge back his hat.

In comics: - I'm slowly but surely catching up on Astonishing X-Men. I read #s 16 and 17, and so far, I'm with Kitty: "YeahbuhWHA?" I need to track down issues 18-20 so I can understand what the heck is going on. What I can say for sure is that I adore Joss's treatment of Wolverine, and also that he's made me love Kitty almost as much as Buffy. And, I hope Emma's not really evil, and has a good excuse.

Take an Art Break

Sponsored post!

Russian Artist Victor Lysakov is a former Soviet engineer turned full-time painter. He's a celebrated artist in his own country, and I expect he soon will be pretty renowned in this country as well. For the first time he's making his work available to the American public. I've been perusing his web site, and I gotta say, I like his work. Some of his more traditional motifs remind me of Van Gogh, and his more modern expressionistic work has a vaguely creepy, ethereal quality that appeals to me. He uses a palette of rich, calming colors that increase the dream-like quality of his paintings, except for when he trades calming for disturbing reds and dream-like for nightmarish, as in The Abyss, which just might be my favorite. I especially like the way there seems to be a story accompanying each painting, as though he's captured a brief scene of something larger. If you're interested, quality prints, digitally replicated on museum-quality canvas, are available for purchase from the Lysakov Art Company.

LoudLaunch - Compensating bloggers for their unbiased opinions, reviews, and analysis. View the LoudLaunch campaign release this post was based on.

eBay meets The Price Is Right

This seems to be a unique concept for a contest: Bid4prizes lets you place bids for prizes that are up for grabs, with the twist that the lowest unique bid is the winner. They have some pretty great prizes, including sports cars, giant plasma TVs, iPhones, vacation giveaways and up to a million in cash, with one grand prize given away daily. They have a paid, ad-free membership that allows you to bid from your cell via text messaging, but they also have a free membership that lets you bid on the web site in exchange for putting up with ads. I'd think if you have a cell plan that makes you pay for text messaging, the latter would be preferable anyway.

MyGeekSpace

Ad alert!

I just signed up to Sci-Edge, a new social networking site in the vein of MySpace for science, technology, and science fiction geeks. I haven't done anything with my page yet, but if you go sign up there, be sure to friend me. I never did get around to creating a MySpace page, so maybe this will make up for that. This looks like it's more for my kind of people, anyway.

Of course the greedy cash-mongering blogger in me is excited about their paid blogging and affiliate program, wherein they will pay you for blogging about pretty much anything you can tie in to science, technology or science fiction (you can even branch out to fantasy and horror), so long as you can link it back to their products. Having yet another potential writing/blogging income stream at my disposal is peachy-keen by me.

Jean Claude: Backgammon Master

Ad alert!

Did you know that recently a 5,000 year old backgammon set was unearthed in Iran? Talk about a classic. Despite the game's inarguably enduring popularity, mine and my husband's attempts to learn backgammon seem to be taking about 5,000 years. It would help if we could find rules that were written in plain English instead of badly translated Engrish. Rules that were recited by an adorable animated tiger would also probably get us a lot further in the game.

Thankfully, there's Jean Claude, the number one backgammon master, who also happens to be an adorable animated tiger, to help us through. And backgammon isn't the only subject on which Jean Claude is an expert. This interactive cutie can provide the answers to a plethora of life's quandaries, from how to chop onions to advice on following your dreams. Read all about him below, and then go check him out.

http://www.BackgammonMasters.com is using a ground-breaking and original approach to promote and establish their skill game software in the online game market. Introducing the #1 Player at BackgammonMasters, Jean-Claude the animated tiger. BackgammonMasters creates a new dimension in online backgammon branding in their 5 part interactive animation series titled 'Life According to Jean-Claude'. Jean Claude - Backgammon Masters Animated Tiger Movie BackgammonMasters brought this character to in a well-designed and cleverly scripted effort to illustrate to a wide audience the appeal of backgammon as a skill game truly loved and played by all people, from all walks of life from around the world. Jean Claude is BackgammonMasters' pioneering mascot who is setting a new standard in online game entertainment. Viewers win prizes for trivia questions after viewing, and are offered rewards for suggestion any script ideas used. Clips can be easily forwarded to friends who will create the viral marketing buzz that only a character like Jean-Claude is capable of generating. "BackgammonMasters creates a new dimension in online backgammon branding in their 5 part interactive animation series titled 'Life According to Jean-Claude'." In the series we are exposed to a hilarious explanation and comparison by Jean-Claude of how to succeed at everything from playing backgammon to chopping onions, to fulfilling ones dreams and make important life choices. In the opening clip we, find Jean-Claude, a tiger, humoristic, mafia type, dressed in 70's clothes (bell-bottoms and cream-colored shoes, a button-up shirt with a dice print and a large dollar sign chain around his neck) sitting in his trailer in the used junk car lot he manages. No, he doesn't feel pathetic or sad amidst the junk, on the contrary. He is full of street smarts obtained during his many years in the University of Life. BackgammonMasters has maintained a high profile in the news lately not only because of Jean-Claude, they also recently launched a 3-in-1 game lobby offering games such as Backgammon, Poker and Perudo (Liar's Dice), all in one download. To get a sneak peak at the animations go to: http://www.backgammonmasters.com/jc.html To download the BackgammonMasters 3-in-1 free software go to: www.backgammonmasters.com Report by Gammonish.com - online backgammon resource for news and information. To learn more about the backgammon game and online backgammon rules visit http://www.gammonish.com.

I still miss my MBTV

So it seems that TWoP has been bought out by Bravo.

Well, huh. I'm not sure what to think about this, or what to expect. I've mostly made my peace with TWoP (although I still avoid the forums), but I guess I still have enough bitter resentment residue from forum run-ins to find their massive success slightly irritating, even as I'm happy for Sars. Mostly, I'm wondering if this will change the site much, and make the insufferable parts even more insufferable, or if the corporatization will temper the a-holery that sometimes goes on over there... or if it will just make it worse.

Whatever happens, should be interesting.

This link's for me

Because I don't really want to bookmark it, and because I think some of you regular folks might be interested in this: Jane Espenson blogs ideas for short comedy pieces for aspiring TV writers to add to their portfolios. I'm not really an aspiring TV writer, but I still think her list contains some great prompts for writing exercises. I've got my eye on "menu turns into lunch lady rant," but I'm still trying to figure out how to keep from tying it to "Earshot" and making fanfic out of it.

Making it even easier to be pointlessly entertained.

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It's not that hard to come by entertaining, funny video clips on the web these days. There are so many out there, in fact, that the hard part is filtering through all of the dreck to find them. CoolVideoClips.com takes the work out of it by hosting clips of the web's best without making you surf through endless pet, baby and vacation videos to find them. Of course, if you enjoy pet, baby and/or vacation videos, then you're on your own.

Horny toad cam!

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PowerDirectory.net is a new web directory designed with webmasters in mind. More than just a search database, it also offers free software downloads for developers, including a password saver and a popularity tracker. They also have several free marketing e-books available.

Of course, if you're bored, you could just surf through their webcam links. They have a huge directory of webcams located all over the world. Take a spring break to Tahiti from your cubicle via a travel agency's web cam, or be a voyeur and spy on the goings on in the BBC London studios. Or distract yourself by watching the live animal cams at the National Zoo in Washington, DC. If those don't interest you, you'll find plenty more choices where those came from. Like a horny toad cam! Seriously, who can resist a horny toad cam?

And it doesn't even have any Howie Mandel!

Ad alert!

I just won $108,000 playing Deal or No Deal! Okay, they were imaginary dollars on a web-based version of the game. But it was still fun to beat the banker and win. I'm playing the game at Winzy, where I could sign up to be eligible to win prizes every time I use their search engine—and it's totally free. Sounds like a deal.