Ambrosia for my Mind

I finally, tonight, actually bothered to correct, or begin to correct an imbalance in my little world, one that has been bothering me for quite a while now. Since last March I have lived entirely without broadcast television, so that while I watch plenty of "TV" still, it is all from DVD's and VHS video, usually a specific series like Horatio Hornblower, Babylon 5, or Battlestar Galactica. I only regained adequate computer capabilities to use the Internet a few months ago. So, for the past year I have only had access to news through the occasional newspapers left out at work, or abandoned by previous customers at whatever restaurant I went to for lunch. Somehow I seem to have been at least reasonably well-informed relative to my now-former coworkers, but I wondered lately whether I would recognize such events as occur in the world of Battlestar Galactica if they were apening this week, as isolated and insulated from such events as I have been.

So tonight I have been reading the news. Not much new has happened, though the Swine Flu is an interesting story so far, remeniscent of the Bird Flu scare of previous years. I loved the story about the rescue of a ship's captain from pirates by the Navy SEALs; real life really is as interesting as a good Hornblower film. And all the continuing crap about North Korea and nukes still makes me wonder where this mess will end, an insane ruler with nuclear capabilities and a bunch of civilized countries wary of moving too fast for fear that they will set up a still worse situation. Will he keep to 'tests' and is that really our concern? Isn't it nice that at least if he only has enough plutonium for 1.5 bombs, and is going to use it for a test, he is at least not using it in an directly aggressive action against a neighbor? Intercontinental missles bother me more, but I think we don't have the whole story. I want to know who would side against us if we sent a strike team in and took out the insane leader said to be the 'reasoning' behind all this, and what the actual threats are to us based on what he and his allies can bring to bear against us. And, no, of course I don't buy that China is not arming itself, in part at least towards pressuring Taiwan to rejoin China. That makes no sense, knowing China's earlier position with respect to this issue.

Apparently being more or less away from the news for a year has not put me to far out of the loop, at least by the standards of public news channels, but it will be interesting to see what information is available to fill in the gaps when I am again in the vicinity of a college library system. Battlestar Galactica is an easier story to follow, and all the important information is right there in logical order to allow viewers to easily see all the connections and piece together each story, while the real versions of these stories remain in isolated bits, not all published at once, not all recognized as part of the same story, and not all easy to understand on their own, let alone in the big picture. We don't have a roadmap to tell us to go search for Earth, with a dying leader to guide us, and, oh, by the way, the bad guys are called Cylons, and they can be identified on sight or by bloodwork, and you are free to kill them at will. Our bad guys are relative. The Somali pirates may be becoming a distinct exception, as true bad guys on the same order as corrupt mob bosses and vicious dictators, but most of our conflicts have so many sides that just one conflict could present most of the major story patterns we enjoy in the course of a season of television.

And in the real world, unfortunately, Jamie Bamber is married with kids, so he is no more accessible to me than he would be if I was in the world of Battlestar Galactica. I am sure if I give the universe a chance, I will find men, or a man anyway, who I would consider more attractive than Jamie Bamber, but as of tonight he still stands as my number one most desireable man on this planet, displacing all previous contendors. So, yes, now that I have read all the world news I could find for tonight, tomorrow I will be back to watching BSG, and the lovely Lee Adama.

What's in a name?

Over the past few weeks my sister has introduced me to an old TV series and an even older one, and several actors, namely Battlestar Galactica, Horatio Hornblower, and the actors Ioan Gruffudd, Jamie Bamber, and Paul McGann. Paul McGann is 49 years old, and knowing that, I cannot quite convince my brain to let me check him out, though I must admit he is pretty enough if I were older. Ioan and Jamie, on the other hand, are both withing 5 years or so of my age, and very pretty, though both married. Jamie has 3 daughters, and Ioan is expecting his first child sometime this year. No, btw, I am not obsessed, merely catching up. These guys have all been around long enough that their true fans know plenty more than any Wikipedia site could convey, and had I been at home with my sisters a bit longer in Pueblo I would surely have seen all the Horatio Hornblower series on A&E as it aired, not on DVD years later. Battlestar Galactica is another matter, however. I loved the original series, and I still am resistant to the new Starbuck character. The old Starbuck and Apollo were great, and I had no real desire to see the new series from the bits and pieces I picked up hanging around my sisters. Even now, I am not so into it as I might be if I could forget the tenuous connection between this series and the old one. I am watching this series finally, now, because of Mr. Bamber, easily the most attractive man I have seen on a television lately. Ioan Gruffudd is alright, and grows into his character nicely in the later Hornblower episodes, but after Bamber's character [Archie Kennedy] died I was not nearly as enthusiastic about the rest of the series. Ok, so the difference is not particularly significant, since this was such a great show, but it is still there. Jamie Bamber is great as Archie, and great as Lee Adama, too, though when I see him in Battlestar Galactica he is still the guy who played Archie in my mind so far. I can't call him "Jamie" very easily, though. And I happened across a Jamie Bamber fan site tonight that was making me rather uncomfortable, because it tends to refer to him simply as "Jamie." I have always disliked my name for myself, and while I have given up for the present trying to adopt a different one, I tried several times in the past to get people to call me something else, usually James, for lack of a better idea. I loved foreign language classes pre-college, as they always made you take a different name for the class. [I have gone by Anne-Marie, Silvia, Katja, Tunsnelda/Tunsi, and Marcel, all quite happily.] Still, I respond to "Jamie" and seeing 'my' name plastered all over a site like that, I am quite sure that I would never want to be so famous as to be the object of such obessive devotion. The man is gorgeous, but he is still a complete stranger. I won't protest if he wants to be photographed naked for PETA, but I doubt you will ever catch me trying to get an autograph from any of these men.

But, thanks to Ioan, I am starting to learn a bit of Welsh. I love his natural accent, and there is no chance I will be able to adopt a Welsh accent without a much better understanding of the Welsh language itself.