Just a quick post to see out the year, since Catastrofuck and Kindergarden Cop have undoubtedly already collapsed into a fat American heaps having indulged in too much piss weak yank beer and failed attempts to get their dicks sucked by impressionable college students too inbred to locate Azerbaijan on a map. As for myself? Well, I’m soon off to Manchester to watch fireworks and get shitfaced, but y’know, in a dignified, British way.

I reckon this year’s been pretty shit actually. I walked 580 miles for charity, single-handed, along half the length of the country for charity, which was amazing, but terrifying and revelatory. But this left me broke and jobless as the world’s economic woes continued to kick plebs like myself into the gutter. So now I’m penniless, jobless, living in a tiny English town with my mum and dad and caring for elderly relatives striken with illness.

But now, there’s a chance for change. Today, an arbitrary date has been set, due to that calendar thing we invented our of desperate necessity to measure this pesky space-time continuum. So there’s hope for the future, right? Hell, there’s always hope in my book. Bring on 2012, lets see what she brings.

And while this post is mostly my attempt to bitch and moan about my existence, I know I’m pretty lucky. My life may not be perfect, but I have people who care about me. I have a roof over my head and enough food to eat and prospects for tomorrow. In the grand scheme of the universe, among the myriad lives of the people on this ball of water and dust, living and dead, I have it pretty good, all said and done. Life is struggle. This is how it’s supposed to be, because if everything was easy, nothing would be worth it.

Here’s a present and my justification for this random post of musings. Many people will recognise the name in the topic of this post. The Winds of Winter is author George RR Martin’s upcoming sixth volume of his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, recenlty adapted into badass HBO series A Game of Thrones.

The books are excellent, I highly recommend anyone into high fantasy, and reading in general. And the HBO series is pretty excellent as well. Martin has come under a lot of flak in the past for his glacial writing pace and you can understand why, especially when the last two books have taken him almost a decade to produce. But the man has a holiday present for us, an unreleased teaser chapter from the Winds of Winter. Behold as Theon Greyjoy, aka Reek, aka the Turncloak treats with Stannis Baratheon, rightful heir to the Iron throne and all round magnificent bastard!

Happy New Year Codexers, few though you are, may your 2012 be memorable.

[Winds of Winter]

31 Dec This entry was written by badbabbler and published on December 31, 2011 at 10:53 AM. It’s filed under Story Time, Uncategorized and tagged 2011, 2012, game of thrones, george rr martin, happy new year, pissin' and moanin', song of ice and fire, winds of winter. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.