Oh god, I have been hearing about this show _EVERYWHERE_ so I finally decided to go over to my friends house and check it out... I don't have Cable you see, I figure I spend less than 40 waking hours or so outside work every week and I try not to spend it glued to TV. So I went to this friends house and he put it on the internet, which apparently you can do now with HBO if you have cable. I think that's great. I brought over a bottle of Lagavulin 12 year old scotch and the last of the white wine we didn't give away(more on that later, I hope), and didn't wind up touching either, actually I also barely ate or spoke for 7 hours. That show is incredible. What I love most about "Game of Thrones" is ironically exactly what I hated about "Master and Commander: the other side of the world", In that it drops you in what seems to be the middle of the damned story, and just expects you to piece together and make some kind of sense of WTF is going on. Its like a literal brain game, the characters are original, and the ones you think you should hate become rather quickly some of the most endearing.

If you aren't watching this show, you aught to start, IMHO.