In Which We Try To Penetrate The Mystery That Is Me

Love Is The Death Of Beauty

by DICK CHENEY

We look at death from the selfish side, like, "That guy died. Oh, it's so sad." Why is it sad? He's away from all of this bad stuff that's here on Earth. I mean, at the worst, he's just somewhere quiet, no nothing. At best, he's an angel... or he's a spirit somewhere. What is so bad about that?

- Tupac Shakur

Apparently my last Game of Thrones essai was more confusing than I intended. I received several volumes of e-mails this week, the vast majority of which were dick pics. It should have been no surprise that the active and engaged members of my audience are all shaped like question marks, although one did recall the trunk of an elephant, and it was accompanied by letter signed "Deleuze and Guattari."

there is nothing worse in life than an art semiotics major with a big D

Such is the burden of the most talented Game of Thrones recapper since Alan Sepinwall was fired from the New Jersey Star-Ledger for reviewing The Real Housewives of Atlanta in blackface. Alan's review of last night's Game of Thrones contained the sentence, "Wow." written on one line, which is third most boring writer's crutch available to internet scribes after "Read the whole thing" and "My name is Joan Walsh."

Why do I recap Game of Thrones in my inimitable style while Alan Sepinwall insists on running retro-reviews of Deadwood because he's being blackmailed by Ian McShane? Why isn't my favorite website for women started by my favorite bloggeur called Aloha Giggles or Au Revoir Giggles? Why does my sun and stars insist on concluding every evening by watching three episodes of The Closer and then expressing her queries as to why Kyra Sedgwick would marry Kevin Bacon? It's because only I can answer the hard questions.

Where can I find a replica of Jon Snow's sword, Longclaw? Please ensure that my copy of Longclaw is accompanied by a signed certificate bearing the signature of George R.R. Martin.

Look no further! The sword that should have been wielded by Sir Jorah Mormont in his ancestral home of Bear Island can now be yours! Longclaw is available for a cool $240, and for an extra $20, I'll send you a podcast of myself saying, "Are you Lord Stark's bastard?" in an arch tone approximately 240 times. For an extra $20,000, I'll dress up like Ygritte and let you splash horse blood on my face.

Hypothetically, if I were to decide to use Longclaw to avenge myself on someone, who would suit the job?

Jon Snow's trademark blade can only be used to decapitate the woman who absorbed your virginity or to stoke a fire on which you plan to sacrifice a Democratic member of the House of Representatives. When you use Longclaw, it is best to whisper, You know nothing, Jon Snow, just in case anyone is listening. The cops, for example: they'll immediately assume you're just playacting scenes from Beyond the Wall and vacate the premises.

What illness did Khal Drogo come down with? Did his wife get too hot or something?

Khal Drogo was the recipient of a double diagnosis of social anxiety and esophageal cancer. I had a blind date named Horselord once. The real origin of Khal Drogo's sickness is obviously the slaying of true inheritor of the Iron Throne, Viserys Targaryen. Spiritual malaise follows. Since there is no magic in Game of Thrones, this will have to do.

Have you noticed anything different about Daeny lately? She's really commanding the hell out of Khal Drogo's raiding party.

The newly pregnant Daenerys Targaryen now looks like something of a Horselord. A similar facial resemblance brought a premature end to the career of Carly Simon. JK, the young Khaleesi looks better than ever in the thrall of her pregnancy, and her facial expressions have become something to behold. As that Yao witch spilled horse blood all over her beloved in an attempt to save Jason Momoa, her facial countenance was a perfect primastic mix of horror, revulsion, hope and honor.

How much would a medicinal horse cost in today's dollars?

Ask a horselord.

Does a facial count if it's blood from a medicinal horse?

No.

What about if the horse had a feminine name?

Khal Drogo's horse was not named Dandelion as has been rumored for eons.

uh, guys, who's coming on me?

How do you know the name of Khal Drogo's horse?

The same way I know Joan Walsh lacks first order brain function: (1) It's fucking obvious and (2) The Wall Street Journal. Only someone that mentally ill could actually believe the Congressman's claim his account was hacked. Don't get me started on the John Edwards adviser who wrote, "Weiner has an outstanding record supporting sexual rights of others, with 100% ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and has a strong record of support for gay rights." You think associating the cause of gay rights with this adulterer is a good idea?

Wow. ® Alan Sepinwall 2011

bring a horse with a more recently update twitter account and do it NOWWhy do the creators of Game of Thrones insist on showing 40 minutes of intense conversation about the White Walkers, but they refuse to display images of little person sex or the raiding party that captured Jaime Lannister? Don't they know that action is the soul of drama?

You know the financial guys on a particular television series are the ones with the brass balls when Game of Thrones doesn't show you the abduction of Jaime Lannister. As for the casting of Tyrion's Shae, I was still holding out a vain hope that Matthew Broderick would play someone in this drama. Since the only remaining option is Stannis Baratheon, we would seem to be at an impasse.

Is Samwell Tarly a spy, and if so, who is he working for?

Four books into A Song of Ice and Fire, much still remains unknown about one Samwell Tarly. Given that fact that George R.R. Martin resembles Samwell more than any other character outside of perhaps the long-deceased Balerion the Dread, we can suspect some special agency in his movements. I'm not a great person to ask this question, though, I have made my entire career in politics on the idea that everyone is working for someone else.

What are some party games that you enjoy after a few Heinekens with the brunette January Jones and her trained robot, Bronn the Bold?

You mean besides Black Swan: The Party Game? People stopped wanting to play Truth or Dare with me somewhere around the turn of the century, after I told over 400 people something Grover Norquist whispered into my ear about the estate tax on a dare. The Cheney family used to get together to play Truth or Dare, but so many people would come out of the closet during a typical game that it started making more sense to force people to admit they were straight. As for Bronn and Shae's cute game with their master: never Power Hour with the people you work with.

Did you escape combat in Vietnam much the same way that Tyrion escaped the sights, sounds, and smells of war near the Twins?

If your point was to remind me of my draft dodging, consider it a win. I spent most of Vietnam living it up - after all, I knew the next four decades of my life would elapse without my hair.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording and is regarded by some experts as Alan Sepinwall's baldest enemy. You can find last week's Game of Thrones recap here.

"Shadow, Follow Me" - Centro-matic (mp3)

"If They Talk You Down" - Centro-matic (mp3)

"Sordid States" - Centro-matic (mp3)

The new album from Will Johnson's Centro-matic is called Candidate Waltz, and it comes out from Undertow Music on June 21. You can pre-order it here.

In Which The Beetles Will Feed On Your Eyes

Don't Let Me Down

by DICK CHENEY

Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this?

- Winston Churchill

There is nothing like the throes of war. When I first heard about the attacks on our country almost ten years ago, I made love to my wife, as I recalled last week. But that is not everything I did. I also told the secret service to get the president into a limousine and load it up with more alcohol than Katy Perry demands backstage at her concerts. (She hates carnations almost as much as I do.) When President Bush found me curled up in a fetal position inside the vehicle, smelling of Pop Tarts and gin, the first thing he said was, "You're pissing me off." Then he smiled and sucked grain alcohol from my belly-button.

HBO recently greenlit a BBC co-production of a World War I drama where the protagonist will be played by one Benedict Cumberbatch. (Scrootenjew Meeperschmidt wasn't available.) If this miniseries also ends up starring Rebecca Hall, I suggest we send the Storm Crows to ravage the BBC offices and demand satisfaction. The British always have funny ideas about war, they always think it's about falling in love like in The English Patient. They're like, "awesome war guys, let's go have consensual sex with the local populace." No. War is more about falling out of love with life and embracing death.

My first White House was Gerald Ford's and whenever we were addressing an overseas conflict he demanded we slip our dicks out into the open air. Don't get me started on my years with President Ford, controlling him was like trying to swordfight with yellow straw. The day we lost to Jimmy Carter I murdered a Canadian black bear. Sure, things went bad, but the below photograph depicts my first Oval Office orgasm.

I can only compare those initial moments of war, the look on the face of your adversary as he considers the prospect of his own demise, to waiting in a doctor's office with the best magazines in the world. Since the only good magazine left in the world is National Geographic and I never see that at my grandkids' pediatrician, it's better to imagine peeling open a shopping catalogue and discovering that anything can be purchased. During the initial phases of the first Gulf War, I demanded a lightsaber one morning and I had it by the afternoon. Carved in a grip of human bone were the words "Dick Maul."

We tore down statues in Iraq because it made a good image for television. I have no idea why Khal Drogo does it when he enslaves entire towns, killing and raping women and children. He already proved his point. There have been great men who enjoy war as much as Khal Drogo seems to, but there is no one who has ever enjoyed saying the word stallion as much as he does. From the looks of it, the populace Drogo enslaves is also quite religious, and their gods resemble the Old Gods of Westeros, perhaps some starfaring race that colonized the planet.

About his experience managing war, Churchill wrote "I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it." Every delusional warrior demands an adversary as mighty as he imagines himself. Ned Stark may not have the same affection for war as the Lannisters did during Robert's Rebellion, but you can't blame Cersei Lannister for not tying up her loose ends.

Even thousands of pages after the first visit from the King that opens A Game of Thrones, I am not entirely sure why Robert Baratheon goes to visit Winterfell. He had never done it before; he does not recognize the children of his best friend, and he can't look into the face of his friend's wife, who resembled the woman he lost.

The death of Jon Arryn must have guided his actions to some extent, but it is impossible to believe that King Robert lived his entire life siring bastards of brown hair and it never occurred to him to find it strange that none of his children by Cersei Lannister shared that characteristic. If Robert wanted a man loyal to him running the empire, he had better candidates in King's Landing. It seems more likely to me now, given my encyclopedic knowledge of warcraft, that he went to Winterfell to start the war he felt was coming.

The Lannisters hate the North. They hated it during that long overdue visit. They hated it so much they did not bother to be sure of Bran's death before they left. The very chill of winter must have upset them greatly.

Last night we got the first of many chapters in the relationship between Tyrion and his father, and it restored me from the anger I felt during last week's dwarfless episode. There is always a halfman in the middle of a war. He survives longer than his brethren because killing him would be an act of cruelty rather than an act of war. In order to accentuate his weakness, Tyrion uses the full thrust of his vocabulary and diminishes his true capabilities whenever possible, reminding me of how I ensured George W. Bush would be elected by a majority of Americans twice.

The problem with centering a television show around the excitement of war, is that real war is too confusing and complex to portray as anything except riotious, hilarious murder. For over three decades, that fraud Roger Ebert would begin every single review of a Vietnam movie by meaningfully citing Francois Truffaut's maxim that you can't make an anti-war movie because films about that subject make war seem like fantastic fun. He would just reuse this opening whenever a Vietnam movie came out, it started to get kind of weird after awhile, like he had just forgotten and we were supposed to pretend we didn't notice.

As in my own case, Truffaut's early years in the French armed forces consisted of him trying to escape his service. Unlike Jon Snow, the reason for escape from his enlistment was not because he wanted to go off and serve in a different war. He had experienced the first excitement of fighting, but once that passed, he realized that nothing else about the experience would be so great.

The first part of anything is the only part worth holding onto. The first time you ask Francis Fukuyama to lie for the sake of his country is the best time. The first minutes of eating a Frosty is a decadent pleasure, the rest recycles past guilt and shame with each wet bite. The first time keying David Frum's Oldsmobile and telling him you saw Puerto Ricans do it is the only time that matters. A chess move only counts with a victim.

I can't even feel bad for Sansa Stark. Arya, at least, is abandoned to the King's Highway. Ned Stark rots in a dungeon. Syrio Forel never dies. Renley Baratheon forces another guy to shave his chest with butter. Robert Baratheon hunts a boar, somewhere. Sansa is held up as an ideal in a time without any, and to watch her naivete fade stirs a warm excretion in my heart. She will never be higher than before she is forced to fall. 

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find last week's Game of Thrones recap here.

"Dead Or In Serious Trouble" - Kaiser Chiefs (mp3)

"Heard It Break" - Kaiser Chiefs (mp3)

"I Dare You" - Kaiser Chiefs (mp3)

In Which Game Of Thrones Reigns From A Horse

Rescind The Look Marring Your Daughter's Face

by DICK CHENEY

When I was young, not much older than most of the readers of this website were when they first exposed themselves to illicit drugs and questionable blogposts, I decided to write my own autobiography. Last week I revealed the back-of-the-book blurbs I could not include, and criticized The Atlantic repeatedly.

The response was simply overwhelming. I didn't realize how bored people were by The Atlantic, and I certainly didn't realize how defensive they were about the man currently slipping inside Leslie Knope after a long day at City Hall. I deeply regret the jokes I made about Adam Scott, 38, although to be completely frank, I was persuaded to avoid including my photoshops of Kermit the Frog superimposed over his face because it was felt it would make too many children confused about why a green amphibian was tongue-kissing Amy Poehler.

In order to square things with my fanbase (what are we politicians without our faaaaaaans?), I offer a special treat today. What follows is an exclusive excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, In Ma Time:

with my younger brother in 1952

When I was born, I was already five years old and I loved fishing. (I also loved crossbreeding animals. Did you know that when you mix a monkey and a cat, it's called a grinnet?) I would take my little brother, who I had nicknamed Scorpion, and make him kill animals in front of me. After he did, I would nod very seriously and ask him if he had thought of invading Iraq lately, familiarizing myself Ender's Game-style with a process I would repeat twice more in later daze.

I didn't really like school. I spent most of my time in class drawing cartoons of dragon orgasms and planting bags of oregano in girls' lockers to let them know I liked them. One particular young woman showed up at my locker with the bag of oregano I had placed there, and demanded to know if it was I who had done the deed. I told her it was one of my friends, and she went over to his locker, and cut her initials in his arm with a knife. I was so turned on that roughly eight years later I asked her to be my wife.

even back then, we were 86% percent sure that helmets were for pussies

My wedding to Lynne was a glorious affair, highlighted by when the priest asked me if I consented to whatever rigamarole he was putting forth, and I said, "Already did" and mimed penetration. This got a huge laugh among my frat brothers, and also from Lynne's slightly disturbed mother. But the truth was - I hadn't. Occasionally Lynne would permit me to softly violate her with my pinkie, but usually she was tired after the third orgasm and the ensuing sight of my penis only amused her.

In the past, I had met girls I liked, but when I asked them if the government had a right to tax the rich, they answered either that they supposed so, or that they didn't care. My response to either answer was to bellow "Krugman spawn!!" and ask them to undergo a Friedrich Hayek reeducation course in the Pyreenes if they wanted to continue to associate with me. Most, if not all, of these girls resembled a more hickish Faith Hill.

August 29th, 1964: my wedding day

That night the honeymoon began. Lynne placed her hand on my own and whispered in my ear, "I'm all yours, big boy. Just be sure not to use a condom, or criticize the estate tax, even in jest, or our daughter will come out gay." Unfortunately, I had anticipated trouble placing the rubber on my soda can penis and so had already applied several layers of protection. When I placed the sweating phallus inside my new wife, she said, "Jesus, Dick, that feels like a hot dog in saran wrap." After that one mishap, we had unprotected sex continuously for the next 64 years, even on 9/11:

a chair "conveniently" blocks my porcelain hammer in this photo from that fateful day

Game of Thrones' Ned Stark reminds me a lot of Al Gore, although he is missing many of Al's finest qualities: the willingness to back down from a fight, the hepatitis, the blonde tips in his hair, the lisp. Al does match up when it comes to rampant paranoia about the weather, though; "Winter is coming" is dangerously close to a bumper sticker on Al's family Volvo, or a tattoo Tipper features above her lady parts. In this last episode, Neddard was so dreadfully stupid that he didn't even talk to his daughters during the entire hour, even after the King died. At the very least you could say hi or give a heads up to Sansa that you're about to out her betrothed as a product of incest.

The incest "mystery" was the silliest part of Game of Thrones. It was like a writing prompt to get GRRM started on other, more important matters. Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss proved they understood the novels by revealing all as soon as possible. The television adaptation has judiciously ignored this "mystery", and in fact many of the secrets of Game of Thrones have already been come out earlier than they did in the novels, including a bizarre glossing over of Robert's death. What exactly was the point of not showing him gored by a boar, it cost too much money? I haven't seen a direwolf since episode six.

Actually, Jon Snow's direwolf, Ghost, did put in an appearance, with a human arm in his hand. Ooh, scary. Bring me some balls, you albino wolf, or bring me nothing. JK Ghost, you were a "good boy", but you also took up Robert Baratheon's waning screentime to hype a storyline that won't be paid off until 2019. We get the picture: there are some mean happenings north of the Wall, and the completely awesome Mance Rayder seems to be at the center of many of them. Each episode I keep hoping Samwell Tarly will be played by Matthew Broderick, but my dreams never come fully true unless I exert my Powers. In this photo, for example, you can see me giving Ronald Reagan Alzheimer's through the telepathic charge emitted from my huge brain:

on the reags

I'm not really sure how you do a Game of Thrones episode with no Tyrion, Bran, Robb, Sansa, Arya or Catelyn. Theon Greyjoy needed yet another nonsensical scene? This is beginning to approach the mystery of Jane Krakowski's continuing screentime in 30 Rock. Actually, that's not much of a mystery, Tina Fey just takes out her hatred of blondes on the character and her disgust with black people out on Tracy Morgan.

The five most useless characters on television are Theon Greyjoy, Dog the Bounty Hunter, the kid on Two and a Half Men once he passed puberty, David Spade, and Meredith Grey. An honorable mention of course goes to Don Draper's new wife Megan, whose teeth revolt every part of my being. If I have to hear Jon Hamm's voiceover in another car commercial, I will run him down like I did Paul Ryan's presidential bid.

If the audience clicks with a character, they will watch him or her do anything. There was one episode of I Love Lucy where Ricky grew a moustache and in order to compete with him Lucy pasted on a white beard. And it was five times better than The Hangover Part II, trust me. I had to watch the former in order to forget the latter. The one thing we don't want our characters to be is stupid, and there is nothing the least bit silly about pretending you have a solid white beard. There is, however, something completely retarded about trusting the guy who was in love with your ginger wife.

The only thing more unsurprising than The Hangover Part II was the fact that the sole surviving Targaryen has fallen in love with her rapist. (She tumbls about him a lot and calls him "the hubby" or "Oggo Drogo.") I would be mad if I did not know where this storyline was going. The Daenarys chapters of Game of Thrones were collected into a novella called Blood of the Dragon, and it won the 1997 Hugo for that form. "English" "actress" Emilia Clarke is getting a little hammy with her performance of the Khaleesi, and her longing looks towards her persecutor are becoming a little grating.

The last refuge of the epic fantasy is a sudden breath of realism. I suggest they strand Ms. Clarke somewhere in Pakistan and tell her to find her way back across the black seas. Some enterprising music executive did the same thing to Ke$ha and look how well that worked out for her.

Dick Cheney is perhaps the most senior of all This Recording contributors. He is a writer living on the banks of Hades. You can find his last Game of Thrones recapitulation here.

"Return to Innocence" - Enigma (mp3)

"Animal" - Ke$ha (mp3)

"A Song For You/I Can't Make You Love Me" - Bon Iver (mp3)