FJ!!'s Neglected Personal Blog

Thick-ribbed whole grain baked "crisps" spread on aluminum foil in the oven pan, stacked many many small slices of mozarella, put under the broiler. Meanwhile quickly heat can of hormel vegetarian chilli, add pre-cooked pieces of chicken. Store half of mixture for tomorrow's lunch, pour the rest over the molten cheese on "crisps", back under broiler to heat up some more. Put both salsa and guacamole, at which Tesco makes a really credible and fresh attempt, and cottage cheese in ramekins, remove food from oven, transfer the whole mess by the aluminum foil to a plate, put on tray with ramekins to take to dinner table. Oh yes, I had nachos, after, like, 6 million years. And yes, with the way I eat salsa and guac, you'd never know I used cottage cheese instead of sour cream, I know myself. I can't even write down dessert. Now that's a good start of the weekend.

I am in a spate of dowloading classics to watch over BitTorrent. They come in in about an hour or two. Not eveyrthing is there, but the ones that are are seeded and hosted with great care over thick pipes. Brief Encounter -- man that guy was fresh and pushy -- Imitation Of Life (1953, Lana Turner version, no waffles), The Day The Earth Stood Still. This could be a fun habit, althought mininova tells me nobody is hosting either Mommy Dearest nor The Best Of Everything. Also, it's really weird to get to the end credit of a movie and not get Robert Osborne telling me some trivia. It's like the movie didn't finish properly. It's just not right, you know.

 By the way, I am taking suggestions for classic pulp 50s Sci-Fi. I am not sure I have seen them all.

You know, maybe 2000 was too early, but you'd think that then by 5768 we'd have our goddamn flying cars!

No, there won't be a spoiler cut here. Just glance overt his post or trust me to not ruin your fun if you haven't caught up yet to Sunday's Season Finale.

Battlestar Galactica (current TV version) [BSG] is the anti-Babylon 5 [B5]. While I had great interest in B5 when it first came out -- right up until the Telegothis thing and then I dropped out -- I can't stand to watch it in re-runs. Once I am no longer surprised by the twists and turns of the story, the actual lines of dialog that flatten every character into a caricature, coupled with the embarrassing incompetence at, or lack of desire to, actually work said lines into something worthy of being called a performance on the part of most of the actors, just becomes too painful to watch. Once I know you will flatten a planet three episodes from now there is no point in watching you say single-minded crap without a hint there's more to your character than a vessel for getting the morality play from point A to point A-and-a-half in this particular episode.

In contrast, the last couple of episodes of BSG have had atrocious sequences of situations, but god are the actors running with what they got. The best example is the character Lee Adama delivering a speech in a situation where the fact that he was delivering that speech was so insultingly absurd it almost seemed a dare from the production staff to turn the TV off and never watch the show again, if it wasn't for the fact that the actual lines and progression of the speech was so good, and Jamie Bamber was working so hard, down to the faint almost-crying croak in his voice, with such great results (as always) that turning off was impossible. The actors all have been doing riveting portrayals of actual people trying to stay sane in an impossible situation, or entities looking for order but being corrupted dealing with these messy emotions foisted on them by interacting with messy humans. I am buying who they are, something half the cast in B5 never did for me.

The Season Finale is doing a down-the-line BSG Season Finale, though:

Adama clan at each other's throats.
Laura's mysticism dialed up to 10.
Crippling environmental circumstances any space-faring nation should have encountered before.
Cylon revelations that time-wise make no sense unless divine intervention was involved.

It was all there. And if you couldn't predict the last minute the moment Lee went off to check out the sighting, you have just not been paying attention.

I hope all these ideas and coincidences start getting put into a coherent framework with some answers next season. I have it on second-hand personal account that Ron Moore is not that interested in a strict description of 'reality' as much as telling a great story; supposedly even he hasn't decided what the Six is in Balthar's head as long as the episodes stay good. He'd better start making up his mind fast; as Lost and Twin Peaks showed, there's only so much dicking around the audience can stand before they want some satisfying answers for their investment in the mystery.

Ok, so now that I ranted about science fiction television as if anyone cares, I might as well go all the way into LJ minutia: breakfast was a smoothie of a splash of OJ, a splash of cranberry juice, a splash of blueberry juice, a banana, frozen blueberries and frozen dark raspberries, and 40 grams of whey protein powder (natural flavor). Then I had a bowl of a combination of muesli and a flax-based cereal with milk, and a glass of water with my vitamins.

I did not cut myself today, not that I have that habit. But this is LJ after all, and if I am going all the way I thought I should mention that too.

Ok, it's Space:1999. I just remember flashes of it, half seen episodes, dubbedin various languages, many with my sister's hand over mye yes during the scary parts. And during the actual year 1999, the SciFi channel, which has rights to it, didn't even strip it. Geeez. So yes, I am finally filling in the blanks.

Watching boht seasons. Season 1 was a cold, cold, show. The art direction was absolutely minimalist, all about these stark interior and uniform whites against the black night and rock. Except for the models, made by a team fresh off Kubrick's 2001, the special effects were, well, not very special, as Beavis n Butt-Head would say, but then again, which TV show's effects were in those days? Terrible, static, cold stories. Season 2 has all kinds changes, many drastic, introducing color, more action, cutting and adding cast-members without explanation. An utter change, and it makes it more watchable.

But that's like saying <insert a metaphor here about something barely getting better>. The premisse is so awful that it is impossible as an educated adult to suspend disbelief enough, especially since there basically is no pay-off. Except the art direction. Looking for images I am fortunate to have found this link of someone who did their entire appartment in that decor, including tracking down the designer furniture used in the series. That way I can say that it's been done. I am free. DOn't need to recreate my fascination. It would be derivative.

The writing on Battlestar Galactica is slipping. I know this because I finally had time to catch up with the first three episodes of the Spring season. I had time, sitting in a train from Amsterdam to Maastricht (change in Sittard), two and half hours to, and back later at night. I sunk down into the chair, built for a people all my size, put on headphones and just watched the hours away. I have seen the landscape outside often enough. It's gray and rainy here anyway this month.

My eldest sister picked me up so I could spend time with her and her children, just doing stuff in and around their home in a small town in Belgium. We went to the stables where they are learning how to ride horseback. Got some nostalgia from when I learned as a tyke, in Colombia. I never got to riding saddle, the instructor had this thing of having the kids get a feel for horses by doing a year of vaulting first, but before I could graduate to proper riding, we moved continents. So yes, my eight-year-old self knows how jump on a trotting horse, how to stay on his back sitting on my knees, sitting without a saddle, turning to sit without a saddle facing backwards, standing upright (you can hold on to the mane for balance, they don't care), but I have no idea how to make a horse go forward when in a regular saddle holding regular reigns.

You never knew this about me, did you? I kind of forgot myself, and horseback riding just doesn't come up in conversation much in my life. I can vaguely remember I actually once did do proper horseback riding as an adult, but it must have been slow and short and on a really nice horse.

So my nephews, between 11 and 8, do know how to saddle up their horse (or pony, so cute), how to ride, do the little bouncing thing. My sister and I watched their lesson through the windows in the canteen, while we talked. No mishaps, no stalls, btw. We went home, I stayed for dinner, I showed them my phone, my laptop, we talked some. My eldest sister worked really hard to call me (Uncle) FJ, which wasn't easy for her. I can't help thinking someone must have talked to her. I do not think I expressed enough how much I appreciated it.

Ok, usually I don't think dream posts rank very high on the interesting scale, but this one I can write up to not be an introverted mess. And I am not making any of it up. It was an early morning dream, close to my standard time for waking up, which means my brain was starting to get ready for the day, a little more primed to remember, a little more ready to be active.

I was talking to a woman who looked like that nurse with the short hair on "The Flying Doctors", who was also later on "Farscape", telling her the standard story I tell all Aussies about how everyone in the Netherlands now think Down Under is one big wasteland of tiny villages with beautiful doctors in Cessnas, and we were laughing about it. I looked around the landscape we were travelling in -- gliding in something it felt, was I flying, was she? -- and I saw a strange animal float by, and away again until it was tiny. I said something, that I wanted to see it again, and it came back, closer, so I could make out what it was. A huge flying fish, floating in the breeze. I recently saw an anime with this image in it, which is probably why that neuron was firing, but, the thing is, is that fish, floating around in the air as if they are swimming, the boundary between the normal above-water world and their aquarium dissolved, is a dream image I ponder when I am awake. So I was triggered into lucidity.

"I am sorry, but I am dreaming, and I have to explore something else. Catch you later." And I flew away. Dream flying is a behavior I have pretty much mastered, I wake up often remembering having done it, in many situations, even if the dream was not lucid. It is alsmot second nature by now, and I am really overcoming my fear of flying very high. The physics of it are stable these days, I have focussed on it for a long time.

And I said I would fly into my future. I wanted to see what I chose to be in my future. And at that point I think I lost most lucidity. and just had a remaining nagging feeling this was not normal.

So what was my house like? It seems that in my future I live in some misformed version of the summer house we lived in for a year when we just moved back to the Netherlands and were looking for a real house. (I was nine.) My job seemed to be genetic designer, I was told by the inhabitants when I said I wasn't me but past-me, and I looked around and strange little pets were running around: fluffball puppies with bird beaks filled with row upon row of teeth, visible when they yawned, and odd yet cute remixed bunnies. I had also made for myself a really devoted, blond, green-eyed slave guy, more besotted than Wayoun on ST:DS9, and I remember wondering why the hell I did that. There's no joy in that conquest; of course he loves me, I made him to love me. Cute though, if way on the skinny side for me. I petted him, and he seemed confused by what I asked him about himself. Devoted, pretty, and dumb. I gave him a stick to play with and he liked being given something by me so he played. And who were these people I lived with? I went downstairs to my bedroom and found I also had some normal pets: two cats on my comforter. And four dogs underneath it, I found when I pulled the comforter away. Four.

I found out I fulfilled at least one sexual fantasy as the evidence both said hi to me, but those twin guys just didn't even look super handsome. I remember thinking that even in the future fantasies ended up not being perfect when you get to do them. In the future I live in a distorted brown-wood, faux-birch laminate-furniture appointed, extruded, depressingly bog-standard northern european holiday bungalow, in an extended friends group, with a slave, some fuckbuds, and enough pets to qualify me for closer scrutiny by the Department Of Health.

Then I went upstairs again, and I made fun with Farrah Fawcett about her doing a choking move on me that was to cliche for words so of course I got out of it. Then I got in a fight with Linda Evans, so I spilled wine on her silver silk shirt. I am not making any of that up.

I think my subconcious was telling me through random firings of neurons that in the future, I might still be really, really, homo gay.

Animation of nightfall on the speculated moon of a confirmed Jupiter-like planet in a system with three stars (HD 188753).

That's what you get when you follow a link provided by henare

Sci-Fi cons are weird: one moment you are meeting an out-of-town LJ friend, the next moment you are in a hotel room suite eating grapes and cream puffs watching masturbation videos to celebrate a wedding anniversary. And I didn't even attend the con in any sort of way.

Hi drewan!