Share Your World – 2016 Week 36

Posted on 16 September 2016 by SJPONeill

I sincerely hope you enjoy my questions for this week and find the questions interesting enough to play along. You don’t think a lot about these questions, unless of course it is FUN for you. Simply dream and just let loose, or you let your alter ego answer if you want. Have a fabulous week everyone!! With your answers, please remember we are in the Share Your World world which may not always match our reality.

If you were given a boat or yacht today, what would you name it? (You can always sell the yacht later)

I’m sorry but I’d be boring…it would be simply The Boat, not even anything wannabe-ish cool like Das Boote…I thought about this when Lotteries NZ used have the Big Wednesday draw that included a boat, rather a flash one, as part of the prize package. It always turned me off more than tempted me to buy a ticket…I mean, some guy just drops a boat off in front of your garage and drives off…what? Gee, thanks, all right..maybe I could put the chickens in it…then it would be The Coop: would that be better…?

…but my parents used to have a yacht…

Which of Snow White’s 7 dwarfs describes you best? (Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey) Plus what would the 8th dwarf’s name be?

The analysis here pretty much mirrors my take on each of the dwarf’s personal attributes – I’ve included the link just for those readers who have not yet explored the deeper darker recesses of my mind – and I would have to opt for Grumpy, the protective one who tends to act when he senses a need for action…doesn’t mean for one second that he’s right, just that he sees a need for action when his protective gene goes off…

An 8th dwarf..? Do I sense the subtle stench of sequelitis…? The 8th dwarf already has a name and it’s Snow White…clearly she’s assimilated into the dwarf hive and sees herself as part of it…blonde or otherwise, if the other dwarves called her anything behind her back it would probably be Ditzy…

Name a song or two which are included on the soundtrack to your life?

The Mummer’s Dance. I first heard this as an Erich Kunzel cover. I misread the CD cover and always thought that it was from the soundtrack of Prince of Eqypt until my younger daughter corrected me during one of our music nights a couple of years ago…Regardless, it has become of of those soundtrack tunes that is always running in the back of my mind ready to burst to the surface in unguarded moments…

Many years ago, TVNZ adapted Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want to Be With You as a promotion for TV2. The first version of this that I owned was on the Vonda Shepard soundtrack from Ally McBeal…hence the version above…

They always played it just before Babylon 5 screened and I came to associate that catchy tune with the B5 ethos and culture…the last best hope…do the right thing…sacrifice…dedicate…go the extra mile…fighting the good fight…II Timothy 4-7…and who personified those more than Susan Ivanova

…as above, Grumpy with the over-active protective gene…

…and this is what started it all, the original TV2 promo clip…

Complete this sentence: I like watching…

Amsterdam Nov 13-013.JPG …people…sitting outside with a good hot coffee, watching, wondering, imagining their back stories…why is that one hurrying? Why does that one appear happy, sad, flustered, angry…?

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful that I listed to my muse and committed to the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care course at Hillary Outdoors last week. I wasn’t sure at all that getting back into this world would be a good thing for me. Muse said it would be and that I should just do it…right again, Muse. like usual…

I enjoyed the pre-course study, getting in, exploring and researching. I loved the course – I’d already done some stuff with Henry and Budgie from Peak Safety before so no worries there but on any course, you’re never quite sure about the course itself until Day One. This course rocked…an eclectic group, for sure, but one that jelled really well, lots of laughs and good to train with…for me the mark of any course is whether I want to repeat it and I would do PHEC again tomorrow, even as a consolidation…

I was worried that my previous training might be out of date or too narrow: while some things have changed and some of the new technologies are sci-fi compared to what we used to have, a good ninety percent was still relevant after I dusted off a lot of cobwebs…so where to from here..? Not sure…I’m wondering whether the local Fire Brigade would be a good venue or whether there’d be more and better experience getting into the eventing circuit…? Lots of questions…

If only firies still had engines as cool as this…

I baked for the course and am also grateful that went down well; and this this time my orange cake worked, although my banana peel cake wasn’t as deep or as rich the the previous one – not sure if that is down to subbing out the butter with coconut oil, or maybe the peels were not as well pureed as last time..?

Looking forward to next week? I’ve ordered one of these:

…and expect it to be delivered Monday or Tuesday. I’m on a seven day roster next week but hope to get some simple experimentation underway on a couple of nights…just simple stuff to get the basic principles under my hat. Maybe I’ll start by just making my porridge with it each morning and it looks like it can operate as a super-slow cooker so maybe it’ll be time for another round of beets and rice..?

Babylon 5: Crusade

Posted on 17 November 2013 by SJPONeill

Domestic DVD acquisitions have been limited this year due to the reduced availability of disposable cash. I am a big fan of the original Babylon 5 series and recently rewatched the first four series – I am a bit cool on the final series as it lacks the overarching story arc of the previous series and many of the cooler characters and character interactions are missing. That, aside I did enjoy the five movies that accompanied the series before it declined into products like The Lost Tales and The Legend of the Rangers that only sought to quite blatantly milk the franchise for more profit.

Crusade has been available here for a number of years but retailing for $99.99 most of the time which is pretty steep for only 13 episodes, more so when the original B5 series usually go for only $29.99. I stopped in Te Kuiti on my way home from my trip to Germany to stretch my legs and grab a bite to eat. To pass the time while I refreshed myself, I went for a wander through the local Warehouse looking for any bargains, and found Crusade in the bargain bin for only $9.99 which was more to my liking and this formed the basis for my next week’s big screen entertainment.

Overall, I found Crusade rather pretentious – every aspect of the series seems to think very much that they it is part of an epic saga – and quite boring. The stories are uninspired and lack anything like the sense of drama or urgency that a. the original series developed so well and b. that you might expect would dominate a series based on the premise that all life on Earth will cease in less than five years. Instead many plot lines are more concerned with petty bureaucratic squabbles and only a few actually contribute to the main theme of the series which is to find a cure for the Drahk plague.

The characters are bland and two-dimensional with none of the interplay between the key characters of B5 e.g. Londo and G’Kar, Sheridan and De’enn, or between Garibaldi, Ivanova and everyone else. The only two characters of note are both guest roles: Edward Woodward as a maverick technomage in The Long Road, and Richard Biggs reprising his role as Dr Stephen Franklin in Each Night I Dream of Home. All the rest struggle to reach an average standard.

Although there are regular reference to ‘First Contact protocols’ what these are is never spelled out and they seem to be the plot device equivalent of the dilithium crystals from Star Trek – no one really knows what they do what they are handy to write stories around. If anything, Crusade takes more joy in breaching these protocols than upholding them – but only because it can, not to support the driving imperative of the central story-line. Episode 12, Visitors from Down the Street, has some potential for an interesting tale reversing the popular ‘they walk amongst us’ and ‘the truth is out there’ devices but is handling rather clumsily with an ininspired conclusion. Also, one has to wonder about a story’s sensitivity when a story in the premiere season already starts to rely on cute role transpositions when such are normally reserved for the ‘shark jumping’ stage of a series life cycle.

My verdict on Crusade is that diehard B5 followers (if which I guess I am one) will get something out of it if they can find it for the right (as low as possible) price but generally most will find it underwhelming. Personally, I got more out of re-watching the original Babylon 5 than I ever did from Crusade and it is probably a small mercy that it was canned when it was.

If there is anything in the future of Babylon 5 that we should be pinning our hopes on, it is that J. Michael Straczynski will release his George Lucas-like strangehold on the franchise and sell it off to Disney or some other group capable of realising its re-imagination potential…OK, just to Disney then…

PS. If you area B5 diehard, on Facebook and haven’t already, then sign up to follow Claudia Christian’s fan page…

My Little Life: Five Question Friday!! 3/22/13

Posted on 25 March 2013 by SJPONeill

My Little Life: Five Question Friday!! 3/22/13.

1. What advice would you give a newly married couple?

Starting out doesn’t have to be flash…

Save….save like you don’t know where you next paycheck is coming from…eschew (say ‘no’ to) flash new cars and household bling, turn away from offers of credit cards and cheap loans…get your house paid off and build a home…

2. Who does more laundry around your house?

Me…but, in all fairness, I currently work from home so have the best opportunity to load up the machine and hand each load out during the day – and to recover it just on the off chance it should actually rain here in the Raurimu Desert…

Not my turn today though…

I must say, though…really, I must, thjat this sounds very much like one of the domestic issues that will lead to a conversation that ends in the ‘statement’ “See…!!!!!” and/or “I told you so…!!!” Tread carefully on this one, guys…

3. What items, if any, do you prefer to buy organic or make yourself?

The writing on the eggs is their collection date…

As much as possible, we like to grow our own vegetables and now starting slowly on our own fruit…we have been growing our own herbs for years and even had lemons growing successfully until Mr Lemon Tree got caught out by nasty old Jack Frost…we’re self-sufficient for eggs including having enough surplus to trade for chicken feed…

The white things on the ground are summer hail stones…

4. What book/TV series would you recommend for a friend on bedrest?

All five seasons of Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica for TV series…two of the greats scifi sagas ever told…more so after Mrs Lucas’ little boy dropped the ball…

William Shatner’s three Trek trilogies: Odyssey, Mirror Universe and Totality…I like them over other Star Trek books because Shatner (or his ghost writers) gets into Kirk in an almost autobiographical manner…

The best of the nine by a good country mile…

5. So, they say it’s Spring now…what does your “spring” look like at this very moment?

Well, here on the upside-down part of the world from Mama M, it is still the worst drought in seven decades (does that sound better or worse than 70 years?). Although it is still relatively green here, we are rationing our water just in case in continues on for more than another few weeks…