February 3, 2014

  • Last of the Brunnen-G: Sci-fi's Favorite Zombie

    Permission granted to translate and reprint this article. Please link back to this original source, thanks. Screen grabs used in this article have been adapted from The Pic Bug and link back to their sources. This article contains spoilers. The Lexx series is now distributed internationally through U.S. based Echo Bridge Entertainment, which you can also follow on their distributor twitter and VOD twitter.

    He's been discombobulated, desanguinated, decapitated, and disenfranchised like no other and remains the most feared divine assassin in the two universes. Nothing has ever stopped him until Prince intervened with the gift of life in the very last episode of the four seasons of Lexx. Kai is the most prolific and oldest recorded zombie in science fiction history.

    It almost seems disrespectful to refer to Kai as a zombie. True he is animated after death, true he has no motivational will of his own after he regains his memories and even some of his conscience, true he even feels absolutely no remorse or regret for all the bad things he did in the name of His Shadow (here we can debate the conundrum of intellectually finding one's actions reprehensible without feeling any of the disgust or sadness), but it's also true that regaining his memories gave him back some of his dignity in a very sad, surreal kind of way that mocks the awareness of his continuing existence. Zombies generally don't get their memories back, much less have a self awareness of an individual identity.

    Two crucial components come together in Kai to create his unique zombie experience, the most vital being protoblood, and the other is his having been exposed to the memories that the Insect essence kept alive in one of the Divine Predecessors. Protoblood, produced by Insects, animates all dead flesh that it touches. Protoblood is simply a mechanism without a program, most likely an evolutionary Insect survival tool for long dormant spells, especially in between planets. The essence or life force that the Insects also produce provide the motivational programming and previous memories that can be passed from Insect to Insect, probably their greatest talent for success in their millennia of wars with and control over humans, especially as this most likely retains group cohesion in a sort of hive mentality over the great expanses of time and space. This is not explained in the Lexx series as the Insects have all been wiped out (so we think) before the story begins. Later we find out how damaging even just one Insect can still be.

    Kai is a different sort of zombie, though, created on purpose by bioviziers on the Cluster into the ultimate killing machine. Some parts of him are missing entirely and replaced with hardware apparently run by integrated software that isn't necessarily all dependent on a central hard drive location, such as his brain. Before Kai gets his memories back, he is a complex automaton programmed to assess pertinent events and execute immediate judgement. After he gets his memories back he seems able to block or override this internal programming, but when his personal memories become once again blocked by outside mechanism (as per Brizon, Mantrid, or essence) or cryopod sequence fail or even just breaking down, programming once again takes over and he becomes lethal to all around him.

    kaikill

    One could argue that this makes Kai a synthetic, a bio-robot like the other hybrid robots on the Cluster, but the key to Divine Assassins is that they are already dead. Their flesh is in no way living by normal standards, even with protoblood activating them. Kai does not need sleep or food. He doesn't need time off to regenerate like the Borg. He doesn't even run on a battery like 790. He horrifically exists in a state of corporeal nonbeing, aware because of the memories he regained, but unable to care. Even knowing right from wrong, even remembering that he once had strong opinions and desires, he can no longer act on those of his own volition. He is a spiritual and intellectual zombie, numbed and estranged from the world going on around him. Kai was created to be a useful tool accomplishing actions that he once found reprehensible and died fighting against. He never articulates how he feels about this, often stating that he cannot feel at all in a way that comes across as though he would like to feel disgust if he could, but the dead do not have likes, preferences, desires, and quite a long list often quoted by fans.

    With other zombie shows, the deepest fans can feel for the poor zombies is shocked sadness at former loved ones having to be gruesomely stopped from killing people. We are able to journey with Kai into the black abyss of corrupted flesh, from which there is no return. The Lexx series aggressively demonstrates a world of human genocide and perversion, and the dark depths society will descend into just to survive. According to the Lexx series, zombies, vampires, and much more in the way of genetic experimentation (possibly including Gigerotta the Wicked) all originated in the League of 20,000 Planets under the reign of His Divine Shadow. After His Shadow had Kai's body repurposed into an assassin, Kai became legendary among the Ostral-B heretics. Even though they had never known who the Brunnen-G people were, two thousand years after the last Brunnen-G was killed Thodin recognized Kai. Thodin and his army had likely seen other Divine Assassins in action and knew very well what they were capable of- this one was different. This one fit the description of the lost Brunnen-G race.

    Zev (and Xev, and many Lexx fans) want to see Kai brought back to life. We learn as the story progresses that even if he could be brought back to life somehow, his poor body has been so scraped out to make room for hardware that becoming alive again would necessarily be a miserable prospect. I like to venture further into the exploration that perhaps an alive body would feel even more like a trap than a zombie body, if it brought with it pain from everything Kai has been through. Just because protoblood automatically takes over at the molecular or cellular level and forces the tissues to bind back together once severed doesn't mean living cells wouldn't go through quite a shock if they could start operating again. Kai's body no longer heals or mends after it is broken or torn, but binds back into a cohesive machine. Without being able to study Insect physiology from our very narrow point of view, we must guess that protoblood basically made the Insects somewhat immortal until the Brunnen-G ancestors found a way to defeat them. Given that Kai can withstand very high power disruptions, perhaps protoblood has something to do with creating an electromagnetic barrier around conductive tissues. At any rate, if Kai could be drained of protoblood and reintegrate his former senses, he would probably feel very weak.

    As Lexx begins with Kai being the one to fulfill the prophecy, so it ends with Kai once again crashing his craft into the heart of danger in order to stop it. Kai's very end is poignant and ironic; after winning a game of chess against the Prince of death himself, he is granted life only to lose it again. After being a zombie assassin for six millennia, after having killed tens of thousands and more, after outlasting his people, both his ancestral planets, and even a universe, he finally finds rest.

    Kai is played by Michael McManus. If you would like to know more, the most complete site I know of for information is at michael-mcmanus.com. Here are quick links to interviews from 2006 (apologies, that podcast link is inaccessible without premium subscrition to scifitalk.com) 2007 and 2009, and there is an updated (2010) Kai biography at sadgeezer. Links within my article above go to articles at Lexx Wiki.

January 17, 2014

  • The Dark Zone and the Cycles of Time

    This post contains a LOT of spoilers. If you've not seen Lexx, go watch it *right now* and then come back here to sink your teeth into some cool stuff.

    For a Lexxellent experience, enjoy the soundtrack while you read. Pictures in this post click back to their sources.

     

    Kai: Welcome to the Dark Zone.

    Zev: The Dark Zone?

    Stan: We're IN the Dark Zone?

    Zev: So, what are we supposed to do now?

    Kai: Perhaps you should find yourselves a home.

    Stan: But the Dark Zone is full of depravity and evilness and darkness!

    Kai: My ancestors came from the Dark Zone. I was taught that although there are not many good planets, there are some. Perhaps you should find one.

    Zev: You mean we should find one. We are together in this.

    Kai: I'm dead. I have no future.

    Two universes coexist in the same place, in the same space, at the same time. The Light Universe is home to the League of 20,000 Planets, brought to Order by His Divine Shadow after the millennia-long Insect Wars. The Dark Zone is the ancestral home of the Brunnen-G, who defeated the Insects some time after migrating to the Light Universe to escape their dying sun.

    lexxsn

     

    The Lexx passes from the Light Universe to the Dark Zone and back a couple of times via a fractal core during its journeys. The story begins in the first season with the Light Universe and progresses with escape into the Dark Zone, and back to the Light Universe in search of protoblood, which keeps Kai animated. From there the Lexx travels across the Light Universe throughout season two until it is forced to withdraw back into the Dark Zone, where it stays throughout seasons three and four.

    The Dark Zone contains Brunnis, the ancestral home of the Brunnen-G, Fire and Water from season three, and Earth from season four. Key characters from the Dark Zone include Poet Man, Prince, MayPriest, and Vlad.

    The Light Universe contains the Cluster, which is His Shadow's ruling seat over the League of 20,000 Planets, the Ostral-B heretics, and a number of worlds and space vessels/establishments that the Lexx encounters. Key characters from the Light Universe include His Shadow, ThodinBog, Yottskry, and Brizon.

    Key characters who show up in both universes are Stanley TweedleKai, Zev Bellringer, Xev Bellringer, 790, Giggerota (Queen, Genevive), Lyekka, Mantrid, (Schlemmi) Fifi, (Laleen) Bunny, MossLomea, (Wozzard) Dr. Ernst Longbore, and the Time Prophet. (More information on reincarnated characters at Lexx Wiki.)

    “Time as you know had a beginning and time has an end and then time begins again. As we shall each live our lives again exactly as before, I have been gifted to see into the old cycles of time. Not very clearly mind you, but I have learned that in the future-past the Brunnen-G, the great victor in the war against the insect civilisation, shall be destroyed at the hand of His Shadow. But after His Shadow leaves the Cluster they will be destroyed at the hands of the Brunnen-G. This has happened before and it will happen again.” — The Time Prophet

    180

    Do you see the symbol on the Time Prophet's head covering? It represents the cycles of time, which are endless because they start over again, over and over and over. His Shadow asked a couple of his officers if they believed time truly went in a circle or in a straight line. There is no answer, of course. However, that spiral looks suspiciously like a Lorenz attractor so I'm going a step further. The Time Prophet admitted she couldn't see into the old cycles of time very clearly, which is odd considering she also says everything happens the same as before, and even more odd that she is able to be extremely precise and give Stanley Tweedle map room coordinates to Kai's memory sheet in the Memory Catacombs via another Brunnen-G's memory sheet from thousands of years before. This from a transcript of Super Nova-
    [The columns go down. The blades stop]
    [Stan wraps his stump and staggers through corridors, into a room full of plastic sheets. He puts his hand on a disc and sees a memory]

    GENERAL: And it is with great pride that I confer upon you, Krato, the medal of ultimate honour for defeating the insects at the battle of Wirin. All Brunnen G, all human race are forever in your debt

    [Stan staggers on. He touches another disc, and sees a hand, writing]

    BG: Days pass quickly now, and our sun continues to die. I fear that one day, Brunnis will do the same, and we will have to leave, go to -

    [Stan collapses, pulling a sheet down over his face. He sees a memory of the Time Prophet, speaking to an unseen man]

    TIME: Stanley Tweedle

    BG: Stanley Tweedle? Time Prophet, my name is not Stanley Tweedle. My name is, er -

    TIME: It matters not. By seeing into the future past, I know that 5000 years after your death, Stanley Tweedle will visit the Brunnen G memory catacombs. He will touch your memory

    BG: Ah, but my question was about the mineral deposits on Aureliun 4 -

    TIME: Forget about the mineral deposits! This is important. Stanley, you are the only one who can save Kai and Zev. You must go to section 83, row 249, plot 35. There you will find a stone cover. Lift it

    BG: But -

    TIME: Go now!

    [Stan gets up]

    STAN: Section 83, row 249, plot - 30?

    [He can't remember, so he goes back and touches the sheet again]

    TIME: 5!

    STAN: All right

    That was a pretty awesome bit of pinpoint prophecy, and adds more questions to the time philosophy. If she can see all times as 'now', then she has a remarkable and probably overwhelming gift. More interesting, she seems to be timeless herself, since we see her being accessed for advice also by Kai and His Shadow. There is no mention of how this happens or where she resides, but she seems to be outside of time itself. We don't know if people must enter a hypnotic or dream state to reach her and we have no clue if she's part of a religion, but we do find out in season four that Vlad kills her. Maybe... From the Lexx Wiki.

    • Vlad's older form is played by Anna Cameron, the same actress that played the Time Prophet. It is unknown if this is intended to suggest that Vlad may have been produced from the remains of the Time Prophet, in the same way that the assassin Kai was produced from the original Brunnen-G warrior.
    • Though Vlad is believed to have killed the time prophet, this could be interpreted as the time-prophet's death being used in the creation of Vlad.
    • Actually, Vlad herself states that she travelled to see the Time Prophet, who revealed to her that she would find Kai on Earth eventually. Vlad then states that she killed the Time Prophet.

    I find it extremely interesting that the Time Prophet focuses on such a narrow part of prophecy when so much other stuff happens, and you could argue that much of this becomes self fulfilling prophecy, and even make the leap to reading between the lines to see that these prophecies may have been subtly aimed at Zev, as though she were a kind of subtext catalyst, because she is Kai's motivator on several occasions since Kai cannot motivate himself, being undead without a will.

    Before I go deeper, let's do a quick review. There are several things that HAD to happen in order for all the rest to happen.

    Oddly, the very first thing that happens is Kai exposes his people to His Shadow's planet killer (we learn this in season two's Brigadoom), then throws himself right at His Shadow's feet in a kamikaze attempt to kill him. That right there creates the perfect feedback loop for becoming the last of the Brunnen-G in the prophecy. If the Time Prophet had never told him, would he have done this?

    The next big thing that went precisely perfectly wrong before the prophecy could be fulfilled was Stanley Tweedle slapping Thodin's bug bomb and causing it to become damaged. Because the bug bomb was damaged, it detonated the wrong cable and the cluster lizards were set free.

    Because the cluster lizards roamed freely, Zev's attendant robot during her sentencing was destroyed by a cluster lizard, which also accidentally knocked the lever that activated the lusticon she was strapped to. That resulted in not only killing the cluster lizard, but shoving some of its tissue into the lusticon just before it engaged, resulting in Zev's love slave transformation incorporating cluster lizard DNA into hers, effectively creating a hybrid. That made her strong enough to pull free of her straps. Then she shoved the robot head left over from the savaged attendant robot into the final phase of the lusticon's brainwashing program, accidentally creating a robot head that would obey her every command.

    Meanwhile, everything going wrong with software and equipment malfunctions meant that Thodin was inadvertently brought back to the sentencing chamber, where he freed his gang and a cannibal named Giggerota.

    After that the catalyst became a Zev/790 combo unlocking doors and fleeing through the judicial compound to the special projects area with Stanley Tweedle, where they met Thodin and his crew of Ostral-B heretics intent on stealing the Lexx.

    Because everything was going out of control, His Shadow activated Kai, last of the Brunnen-G who was bioengineered into an undead assassin, which was the final variable in an equation of everything going perfectly wrong.

    Chances are, Thodin would never have succeeded in stealing the Lexx even if his original plan had gone perfectly. Because everything went WRONG, the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes was swiped by a prisoner with a low grade security guard job, a love slave, a robot head, a cannibal, and a dead guy. None of them had a clue what they were doing and what was really going on. They had no plan to execute and no one to help them. They ultimately go on to fulfill the prophecy.

    Kai could have done none of this by himself, obviously.

    Onward. And back to the spiral symbol on the Time Prophet's hat. Headpiece. Whatever. This is a Lorenz attractor and if you want to know more you can click it to go to the wikipedia page it came from.

    A_Trajectory_Through_Phase_Space_in_a_Lorenz_Attractor

    Lexx fans have pretty big discussions about the Cycles of Time and everything beginning again and happening again. The following is a very well summarized look at the typical thoughts that pop into people's heads as they watch Lexx, from the Lexx Wiki.

    "What is not certain is how the interaction of the two universes affects the cycles of time as the Light Zone, after its Big Crunch, will presumably experience another Big Bang, resulting in a new universe. This could be considered to be a new cycle of time, but would not be a synchronised event with the Dark Zone, meaning events could not play out exactly as before. If the cycles of time are independent of the interactions of the two universes, then it is unclear when or how the cycles of time end and begin again.

    Another trail of thought is that the Light Zone cannot enter a big bang phase until the Dark Zone has collapsed. In such a case, both universes could theoretically begin at the same time, despite their endings being at different points in time."

    This is a real conundrum. Let me propose something different. Quantum chaos theory notes that something looping over and over will eventually go off course just because initial conditions aren't precisely met the same way at the beginning of each new loop. Because something is very slightly off, there is very slight change over many loops. Eventually something might change enough to be noticeable, but only if you skip across all the loops in between when you look at it. I think the Time Prophet's inability to see clearly into the cycles of time could plausibly be blamed on quantum chaos.

    Over a great deal of loops you wind up with a different pattern going on that might not look like the original loop at all (although in the Time Cycles philosophy there doesn't seem to be an original because time has been looping forever). I think this solves the next conundrum of the two universes getting out of synch. They may have originally looped together, but after all the big stuff that happens around the Lexx, this becomes impossible. If the loop synch becomes broken, can it even keep looping any more? What if the Cycles of Time could be broken into becoming a straight line that is no longer affected by all the loops that came before it? 

    Another thing that grabs my attention is His Shadow's obsession with Order. I'm sure the writers didn't intend this level of content analysis, but it would be very easy to plug bifurcation theory into the Cycles of Time and the time loops suddenly behaving very differently. Bifurcation theory notes that although a change might be very small, it could throw a dynamic system into a completely different trajectory or history of events. This is the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will. Or as Xev tells Prince in season three, the Lexx is not just a tiny grain of sand that will tip the balance in the war between Fire and Water, but a whole desert of sand.

    Case in point. Mantrid escapes his prison world and eventually collapses the Light Universe ~because~ the Lexx showed up in his life. If the Lexx had never traveled to Mantrid, the Light Universe would never have collapsed. That is the tiny change (very tiny in two whole universes) that completely tipped the Cycles of Time over from repeating, in my opinion. I don't think it's possible for them to repeat any more because there is no more reset back to the original starting point. This particular cycle of time that we are watching is the last of the repeating cycles. That's why THIS cycle of time is so important. These tiny little changes that added up over the cycles finally reach a climax level where just one more change breaks the ordered dynamic system down into chaos.

    His Shadow was obsessed with Order. Just saying. It's interesting that he created the very thing that brought about his demise. Actually, plans for the Lexx were stolen from the Ostral-B heretics to begin with, so whoever came up with the plans to bioengineer a weaponized space bug in the first place is the original grain of sand that would eventually foil the Cycles of Time. Because the only way out of the complete human genocide that His Shadow had planned was to tip the world upside down and break it apart. I'm sure they had no idea what was coming.

    If you've not seen Lexx or perhaps hadn't gotten to season four yet, or maybe just never thought about it that much, Earth is in the Dark Zone, in the same universe the Brunnen-G originated in many thousands of years before. If we do a little simple math, we can work our way backward and add up the 4000 years of stasis in the cryopods while the Lexx drifted, and the 5000 year gap where the Time Prophet spoke to the Brunnen-G citizen about Stan finding Kai in the Memory Catacombs, that is 9000 years. We also know Kai had been dead for 2000 years by the time they all met on the Lexx, and Brunnis 2 had been settled for awhile already before His Shadow blew it up, so Brunnis 2 was blown up 4000 + 2000 = 6000 years before Lexx arrived to Earth, and 3000 years before that Kai's people were still on Brunnis 1. Kai's people migrated from the Dark Zone to the Light Universe at least 7000 to 8000 years ago. Who knows how many times this had happened in the Cycles of Time before the Light Universe collapsed. I don't think Lexx was a part of the Cycles of Time for many, many loops. Incremental changes.

    If you don't like the quantum chaos theories flattening out the Cycles of Time, I have another plausible explanation for why the Time Prophet couldn't see very clearly into future past. According to holographic principal, what we think is the world around us is really a projection from a different dimensional location. Viewing future past events would be like looking into projected reflections. This can create an illusion of Cycles of Time when you see repeating reflections (this trick can be done with mirrors facing one another, or a camera taking a picture of you holding a picture of it in a mirror, you can really mangle your brain on this). Instead of events happening over and over exactly the same as before, as she says, they happen only once but are reflected to infinity, so it ~looks~ like time loops repeat themselves. In that case, the Cycles of Time are an illusion, but the Time Prophet still has the really cool gift of seeing all times as now.

    And if you don't like the Cycles of Time dissolving into illusion, just hold that thought, because I'm still working on a way that time looping could hold water in fiction fizzix. 

    I was probably still going more places with this, but it's gotten really long and I'm worn out. Time to move on.

     

December 13, 2013

  • Lexx fans video chat

    Originally posted on my Lexx hangout page on G+ at https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/110417780608225452135/110417780608225452135/posts

    Hi guys, getting a couple of hop ons so I know this is getting checked out from my links hither & yon. There are several places around the world where Lexx fans sorta still gather online, but they are scattered & the traffic is pretty scant. And no wonder, is Lexx even getting any air time? Netflix ran it here in the U.S. for a short while & then dropped it. At least it turns up at Target now, used to couldn't find it scavenging through gamer shops, much less regular retail.

    Lexx doesn't have fan representation in the form of podcasting or video chatting that I know of, possibly because most of the Lexx fans out there have never posted their real pictures or talked about their real lives. We all have our reasons, and I'm cool with that. But wouldn't it be neato if we could yap our little Lexx hearts out together in real time LIVE? And other fans could watch and interact LIVE if they wanted to via twitter hashtag or G+ chat or whatevs.

    I've got Lexx friends in several countries who have expressed interest in seeing this happen, whether or not they'll come out in the open is up to them. Being a fansite webmaster, I've been able to talk a little tech with other fansite owners/builders, but only in emails & forums. I would love to sit down with a few Lexx salvage fans who have become icons themselves about what it takes to maintain a fansite and produce content for fans to find.

    I'd also love to have fan chats, just yap about the shows, no particular agenda, just have fun talking about the show we love that no one else gets. To this day I run into fans across the internet who are so surprised there are other fans out there, they thought they were alone. I know where I live there is only one other Lexx fan that I'm aware of, but apparently there are more underground because some of the Lexx DVDs were never returned to the Springfield library and the fines are maxing out. Got a phone shot of the CoolCat screen displaying the status, ha. I was like YEAH we got Lexx fans here BOOYA!

    Anyway, I'm slowly picking up how we can make this happen. If you'd like a sample, here you go, I am in this video & these guys are asplainin The Walking Dead to me because up to this point I'd seen only one show, which was this latest cliffhanger. If we get together for Lexx chats it'll be like this, easy peasy G+ video hangout that we can stream to a youtube acct. If you're interested throw something at me & drag my attention over here, I'm usually up to my eyeballs in ten other things. I'm good with comments nowadays, if you want to leave feedback, if not, I understand. This is a tough fandom, but it's all good, & I think we can have fun with this.

November 6, 2013

  • But the dark zone is full of depravity and evilness and darkness

    Ok kids, time to start rocking Lexx again. I let this blog stall out last May for the impending Xanga relaunch, the server move finally started on September 1st, and after going through the shock of watching everything I ever built be demolecularized and very slowly and almost haphazardly reconstructed, I have finally (after 9 weeks into the relaunch) got limited widget service and a little more text editor control. I'm still missing the header and footer freedom I used to have and still can't run scripts, but I suspect they'll be coming back as well over the next month or two.

     photo posterlexx1.jpg

    HOWEVER. I can at least get the reader service and external site tracker back up. As discussed at stats for Lexx fans, and waving to the U.S. Airforce | Arch Heretic, site meter isn't even close to an accurate real time traffic count, plus I've lost tracker stats on it twice now, but it's still cool to have that cute little visitor graphic on the page.  I intended to allow the 'plus' perks on site meter to expire at the end of September but it still seems to be running, in a grace period, perhaps, but I've made it public so anyone can click it.

     photo ch3.jpg

    Before the relaunch started I saved a complete traffic inventory, some of my posts have over 10,000 direct hits. I have excellent spam filters, so those are real people coming in from searches, live twitter links, and pings from other people linking me. Returning visitors aren't generally counted much if they return a lot, the tracker programs look for new hits. Xanga's old internal tracking system was much better than site meter, hope they get that back up real soon. I'm very curious to see if it kept counting traffic during the relaunch or if I've just had to miss those stats completely.

     photo lx6403.jpg

    I've been alerted to mobile service not being back up yet, so my Xanga blogs are still impossible to read on other devices. Hopefully the feedburner can fix that problem for you. It has worked great in the past, you click on the "subscribe" button at the upper left of the page, and the posts arrive to you as soon as I publish them. This is a clip of feedburner stats. I may have lost all those subscribers during the relaunch, I'm very sorry about that, but it's very easy to hop back on board by clicking that button.

     photo feedburnerstatgf.jpg

    I know a few of my posts are a little hard to read now since the html got chewed up and spit back out. I'm slowly going through fixing things post by post, and it's been a little frustrating because sometimes after I fix something, another maintenance surge comes through and knocks it off kilter again. Xanga was the best blogging host I ever found in the last ten years, gave me so much creative freedom and even public staff support last autumn after Sandy hit and they kept the servers up on generators, so I'm riding this one out and keeping my faith that my Lexx blog will continue to be really fun well into the future. Thank you so much for checking it out, and stay Lexxy.

     photo supersparkly.jpg

     

September 4, 2013

  • Lexx 2.0- coughing through the dust cloud

    Well, isn't this fun. Lost my header, background is eating up the text no matter how I soften it depending on the text color, links generally seem to work HUZZAH, etc. Really not crazy about this text editor. I have so much more freedom on AOL email. That's a joke. But sadly, true.

    I've been putting off personal updates all summer because of this Xanga migration, but here goes. Life moves pretty fast. I'm eyeball deep in a publishing contract, a podcast show invitation, rebuilding blogs, looking into merchandise options (NOT Lexx, sorry), and I don't know whether I want to use a 'myriad' or 'plethora' to put with 'of other things'.

    If you've followed this blog over the last 12 months you know I'm also in and out of physical therapy and working very hard on improving my overall mobility and energy level. Despite my crazy summer, I'm still doing pretty fantastic. I thought I'd lose ground after two months of traveling, surgery and recovery, and helping with new babies, but I'm still holding at the gain I achieved, yay. Latest challenge now is doing all this without meds. I've reached the point of 'autoimmune reaction disorder' even to tylenol, which scarily looks anaphylactic, so I'm really winging it now.

    If you are interested in what I'm doing in real time you can follow me on twitter/PinkyGuerrero, and from there I link over every time I blurb on Pinky's Stuff at syfydesigns.com

August 26, 2013

  • Lexx- Season Two

    "I am the Lexx. I am the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes."

     
     
    Thanx to several events wildly rearranging my summer, my Lexx film review went on hold while I kept my little boat from tipping over. Between my first real vacation in years, the Xanga migration announcement, both my daughters popping new spawn, a surprise surgery, and even more surprising med withdrawals due to autoimmune reaction disorder, my head feels like it zinged around the galaxy a few too many times.
     
    Also thanx to regular Lexx watch parties gearing up through the summer, my mind has been steeped in season two Lexx for weeks. So I've decided in true Lexx fashion to bifurcate my film review. Lexx first aired on the Syfy channel out of order after it debuted in the US on Showtime. Many fans saw season two before they ever saw season one. As I get back on my track doing this film review, tongue in cheek acknowledgement goes out to Lexx viewing history in the US with my bifurcated film review. Season one will continue to link together, and season two will be a new series of linked posts.
     
    Mantrid -coming soon
     

     photo lexxopener2.jpg

     
    Go back to The Lexx
     

June 17, 2013

  • Print Your Own LEXX Magazine

    In one month Xanga is going to 'move' to WordPress. I'm crossing my fingers all my Lexx pages stay intact, but I could lose internal links and will definitely lose stats like lifetime view counts. Rumors abound and gossip flies-Is this it for Xanga? Will all our stuff disappear?

    Lexx fans have one month to grab souvenirs from this original GrandFortuna's League of 20,000 Planets. Xanga still currently provides an email service in the options just above comments beneath every public post. You are welcome to stash my stuff in your Lexx collections. I know it's not much, but this is a real thing and only the beginning of what I hope grows into the biggest film study in internet history. All you have to do is click on the Lexx Index box in the upper left corner of this site to get a complete list of links to everything Lexx I have done here. Click on the link titles to open each article, then scroll down to comments and look for the email button. Follow instructions from there, then print it out directly from your email. Compile the printouts in order and what you'll wind up with is a cute little Lexx magazine of your very own.

    This Lexx blog is a personal blog and nothing here makes me a dime or any other perks. I have created all this at my own expense (nearly $1000 by now) and I share freely. Anyone could be doing something like this, all I own is the actual word construction (intellectual property), the html I have assembled manually, and the paid storage. This is a film study for public use. I am not selling anything.

    Even if the move goes well, these original pages AS THEY ARE will be changed a little. If the move goes well, you won't even notice. But if something happens and you want to keep copies of how it looks RIGHT NOW, you can also screen snip and save as wallpapers before the move happens.

    8-6-13 All the accounts have been moved to the new servers, just waiting now on the final whatever they're doing with the WordPress thing, switching them on or something. Thanx to all the traffic that has been coming through religiously checking on this blog. Still have my plans for the Lexx movie review, this project will take several years, sorry it's on hold. Besides the Xanga migration I've gotten two new grandkids & a surgery, plus yesterday was my 20th anniversary. Also busy with the Snarkalecs and working on other pretty big projects. Lexx is my hobby. Since I'm yapping, may as well say I've been offered 'santuary' by 3 different people now, full hosting for my Lexx stuff, but I'm choosing to continue to pay for my own hobby. I don't own Lexx, but I do own the work I put into the review I'm doing. I'm grateful that people still care about Lexx enough to offer this huge gift of free hosting on autonomous domains, though. We'll see what happens. Thanx again for stopping by. cool 

     

June 13, 2013

May 21, 2013

  • Stargate Pie

     

    I've got a bit of a meringue obsession going this year, since I've had so many eggs coming in from the new hens. Organic eggs around here easily cost $6 a dozen, and at first I hoarded my eggs like gold, but after they piled up and took over the refrigerator last fall, I found lots of ways to play with them. We don't eat a lot of sweets in this house, but we do like chocolate pie. There is only one cup of sugar in the whole pie, and meringue is really good for protein, so why not? About once a month I have a little fun with it.
     
    This post isn't about chocolate pie itself, but in case it makes you hungry for one, here's the recipe I use. I just buy premade piecrust, cook and cool it ahead of time. The pie part is a very thick pudding, for which I use a stainless steel saucepan and a wooden spoon. It's quick and easy, but you can mess it up. I've thrown out puddings and started over a few times because I'm so easy to distract, but it's a cinch to start over.
     
    First thing you do after you bake the crust is separate your eggs, yolks into a small bowl, whites into a bigger bowl to use with a mixer. Be prepared to waste a few eggs if you're not very good at separating eggs, perhaps keep a third bowl nearby for scrambled eggs later. I like using my hands, and it's messy, so put paper towel down on the counter to set the shells on and hold the drippies at bay, scoops up so easy when you're done. Cream pie recipes call for different amounts of eggs, this one originally only called for 3, but I find it holds better with 5, and also bumps up the protein value in your pie. Try not to get any yolk in the whites bowl, and keep the yolk bowl as free of whites as possible. If a yolk breaks and everything goes wrong, that's what your third bowl is for if you can't bear to throw away eggs, you can use those later for breakfast.
     
    In your saucepan put 1 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup of flour, 4 T of cocoa, and 1/4 t salt, stir all that up till it looks sifted. Slowly stir in 1 cup of milk, doesn't have to be perfect, just make sure it's all wet and there aren't any big dry lumps lurking at the bottom. Turn the heat on medium. This bit is important. Don't go higher than medium (tempting if you feel impatient) because milk scalds so easily. Stir, keep stirring, keep the bottom from turning into a super thick sludge while the top stays runny. The key is to keep it all the same consistency while it cooks, keep the thickening up as homogenized as possible.
     
    It really doesn't take long for that to thicken up and start to 'glop' in a weird thick 'boil', at which point remove it from the heat and keep stirring for another 30 seconds till it settles down so it doesn't burn at the bottom. I'm right handed, so with a fork over my yolk bowl on my right and the spoon over the pudding pan on my left, I drizzle little bits of pudding into the yolks while I quickly whisk them with the fork. It's like walking and chewing gum at the same time, you get the hang of it. You have to keep the yolks moving so they don't have a chance to 'cook' and lump up like scrambled eggs. Heat denatures protein, breaks the molecular bonds and makes them change shape and get stiffer, so to keep the yolks more liquidy, keep them moving. All the chefs on the food channels will tell you this is tempering the yolks, and that only means bringing up the heat slowly so you can control their texture, so next time you hear that word, you'll know what it means. Whisk in several spoonfuls of the pudding till the yolks are all chocolaty looking, then pour the bowl of eggs into the pudding pan while stirring quickly with the wooden spoon. If you get egg lumps, either get them out or throw this all away and start over. Cream pie with scrambled egg lump texture is kinda gross.
     
    Put the pan back on the heat and keep stirring. The gloppy boil will happen a lot faster this time, and you don't want it happening very long at all, just make sure it gets good and hot for about a minute or so while you stir, then take it back off the heat and stir in a T of butter and a splash of vanilla. Pour it all into the baked pie crust and set aside.
     
    All this just to get to the meringue.  
     
    Meringue is very temperamental, especially if you live in an area that is the least bit humid, but so what, it's still fun to eat and pretty on a pie. They say meringue works best if the whites are room temperature to start, but I haven't found any difference. Most recipes call for 1/4 t of cream of tartar in the whites before you start mixing, some use a dash of vinegar, some don't use either, but if you want to delve into experimentation-  How to make the perfect meringue | Life and style | guardian.co.uk But back to having fun! I use cream of tartar, I think it's more reliable and doesn't make it taste funny. Also I splash in a little vanilla, yum! So 5 egg whites, 1/4 t cream of tarter, 1 t vanilla, and set your mixer on a pretty decent speed. You'll be standing there a few minutes, and it will seem like forever because you're not doing anything else, but it still goes fairly quickly. Since I've been playing with meringue so much, I also add food coloring gel at the start, this time I squirted a gob of blue gel in. For those of you who have never made meringue, the rest is in pictures so you'll know you're not epic failing if you don't get that pretty fluff right away. Most recipes don't mention the nerves you get wondering if you're doing it right when it doesn't look at all like a picture in a book.
     
    Starting out it looks kinda like jello, doesn't it? When you don't put food coloring in, you still get this pretty froth going, that that is what you watch, the froth. It changes as you go, and once you've done this a few times, you can get pretty good at gauging how far into the whipping process you are as the froth changes. Right here it's very liquidy. 

     
     It doesn't take long to look very bubbly, the way coke does when you first pour it into a glass over ice. As you work more air into the froth, the color will lighten up. 

     
    This has become almost pure foam, but will quickly fall apart and melt back into a more liquidy form if you stop and leave it alone. 

     
    Notice how we're getting 'waves' now that have the illusion of looking thicker. 

     
    And thicker. When the waves start holding their shape, you've almost reached the 'soft peak' stage. 

     
    Which looks like this, soft peaks that hold their shape when you stop. You'll see why they're called soft when you reach the stiff peak stage. At this point stop and get your sugar and then stir whipping it in a tablespoon at a time. You don't need to add extra sugar when you use a couple more whites.  

     
    The sugar helps the froth smooth out into a glossy fluff. Keep going for a bit. 

     
    These are stiff peaks. When your froth has finally turned into something that looks like marshmallow creme and holds a really good shape when you stop whipping, you've finally made meringue.  

     
    There are many things you can do with meringue, but this one is going onto a pie.
     
     
     
    I get so bored with the same old meringue, I started playing with shapes and colors this year. Maybe in a few months I can make something really super cool. But for now, I've got the basics down well enough to play with shaping waves. This seems to be turning into an activated Stargate portal.

     
    Bake your meringue in a preheated 350 degree oven for *about* 15 minutes, you really need to keep an eye on it because once it starts to brown, it can go black kinda fast, just like a marshmallow over a campfire.  

     
    Sometimes your meringue will 'weep' back into the pie. Not to fear. It's liquid sugar and doesn't spoil a thing. 

     

May 14, 2013

  • the coolest LEXX t-shirt in the world

     

    So many people talk about their bucket list. I really didn't pay attention until this last year, when the opportunity came up to ask myself- what would I like to do before I die? Even if I live another twenty years or more, those years could fly by pretty fast with all the continual distractions that demand our attention until that time is eaten out from under us, because the last twenty sure seem to have done that.
     
    Top of the list is a trip to Ireland, but my list was still only one item long. What do I *want*? Something really, really ~cool~.... I want something unique, something only I have in all the world. I want something meaningful only to me, something rare and precious that will inspire awe and envy in everyone who knows what that meaning is all about.
     
    The Lexx movies and tv series is a somewhat rare thing (especially in the U.S. until streaming tv picked it up) that has had significant impact on me personally, as I've written about at Why Lexx Is Personal. I really don't get very involved in fandoms any more, but I know there are plenty of other Lexx fans out there still creating their own Lexx art for love of the show and lack of other merchandise to be had. Why not make this a thing? MY thing. I'm not much of a collector between not having that kind of dough and literally giving the cool stuff I did have to other fans at one point, but that doesn't mean I can't find a way to help bring more Lexx into this world.
     
    Too many words already! Get to the point! Well, there's this cool airbrush stall at the mall, why not start there, right? You can click that to get to their website.
     

     
    I'd never commissioned artwork before, but they were cool and patient and let me hand them a cash down payment (I was pretty serious about pushing the project), and provided them links to screen grabs because they'd never seen Lexx, although they said Star Wars was a popular commission theme, along with Call of Duty, and several other fandom and gamer themes.
     
    I'm not an artist. At all. Ok, a very little. Basically, it was pure trust. I had no idea if what I would get would be caricatured (I've seen a lot of t-shirt work come out of comic cons) or stylized or a basic copy off a screen grab. I don't have the kind of brain that can envision art, so I just figured the more cash I handed them, the better it would look, and walked away with my fingers crossed, assuring them it was ok to take their time because, yes, other projects are lined up.
     
    Three months later.  I KNOW!!! *thud*
     

     
     
    And that was just the back. Here is the front.
     

     

    There were originally going to be two artists working on this, but Noel grabbed it and totally owned it. After I fell over, Noel told me a little about how he constructs t-shirt art. He started by spraying bleach on it to create a galaxy effect- star fields, nebulae, and lens flares, got some awesome highlight flares around the Lexx, which you can see in these closeups. The 'orange' spotting inside the shirt is bleedthrough from the bleach, which looks cool, too.

                                               

    After the bleaching is done comes laying the background with color fill, and then detailing the ship. I asked about how long it took to do just the Lexx itself on the front side, and Noel said 5-7 hours. I was tickled to see he'd worked the Cluster symbol in, and of course the first thing a true Lexx fan does is count the segments, and there were 7, just like in the show. He said 8 would have been easier, but stayed true to the screen grabs, and that right there made the t-shirt worth it for me.

    I was also very pleased to see that Noel had incorporated the original font. I don't think I had specified that level of detail. Lexx fans know how difficult that font is to find. Impossible, actually. I'm betting it's not a real font at all but a creation by a graphic artist specifically for the show. I doubt a whole alphabet exists for this font, unless a Lexx fan obsessed with fonts carried out the mission to completion.

    I was also really impressed with the level of detail on the Lexx that Noel could get onto a t-shirt.

            

    That curve in the tail is the shirt being wavy.

                         

    This t-shirt turned out to be a real piece of art, and even though Noel assures me will wash and wear well, I'm probably going to reserve it for very special occasions, like when I travel to cool places. Noel says he tricks out everything he wears, so it's probably safe to say he's got one of the most unique and collectible wardrobes on the planet.
     
    Noel McEwen is a freelance airbrush artist who does only strictly commissioned one-off projects. He can custom paint about anything, as you can see in his gallery on facebook, including motorcycles and helmets, instruments, denim and leather, and even town murals. Personally, if I ever get the kind of cash for this, I'd love to put Lexx on a car. I have always thought that would be the coolest thing a fan could do, and if that happens, it's gonna be Noel. Here are a few of my favorite projects from his gallery. These thumbnails will NOT click bigger here. If you want to see more, there are about 300 currently in his gallery at McEwen Airbrush.

              

                       

          photo jacket.jpg

    This is NOT an ad for Noel to sell Lexx art. This is me being nice and spreading the word because I was so stunned by how awesome this shirt is. If you think this is awesome and would like some work done (keeping in mind there is a wait period), you can message through facebook. You can also find other airbrush artists through Branson Airbrush, or in your local business pages. These are NOT bulk t-shirt sales, there is no more than one of anything they do because they don't reproduce their art for a production line, and expect the work to be fairly pricey because it's unique and high quality.
     
    Showing off again...  I have this and you don't, nyah nyah.  
     

      

     
    Don't know if you can see how much that says.  I offered it. It was definitely worth it.

     

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Laptop screencaps used in not for profit blog episode and character reviews and film study at grandfortuna.xanga.com and lexxperience.blogspot.com Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

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My first tracker was installed in 2004 and broke several times before moving to a new server, which lost a few months of stats, and then Xanga moved to new servers and I lost more stats for more months before the page came back up, so I've lost a total of about two years' worth of stats. The second was installed 2-22-14 and is considered very conservative by business owners who use analytics, which itself is very conservative, estimates being that roughly one third to one half of hits by real live people aren't even counted, most likely due to javascript discrepancies. Actual hits on several posts here are in the thousands now, and the Lexx Index in the ten thousands. I've got pingbacks turned off, so spam isn't counted at all within the Xanga internal tracker, and most direct post hits can be correlated to my real time linking activity on twitter and other social media. When I did Google Analytics beta testing I got to see how search engine performance compares to tracking. I believe live feed linking sources to various social medias are key to a future where search engines are more about performance than cataloging, which has been confirmed to me by coders who create bot algorithms as I was beta testing paper.li. I've fought hard through redundant age-old stacks to make my way to the google front lines again, so my Lexx work shows up faster on Chrome searches now. This has been a really interesting ride. At any rate, my point is, I can still go back 6 years on my original tracker and I can still see that in 2013 just before the last big blog server move, I was getting traffic like this (and since then, the tracker may have been abandoned, we can't tell). Click the thumbnail to see full size.

My original tracker also still lets me see the latest 500 visitors on a map. I once counted over 80 countries among the total visits. You guys are not alone. Click the map to see it better.

Besides Lexx, the most common search phrases that bring new visitors here are variations on 'huge spaceship'. The most seen post from a phrase search is How Big is the Lexx? My biggest Lexx referrer is Lexx Domain. Most of page views per person count comes from the Lexx tag on Tumblr. Visitors who stay the longest come through URLOpener and are pinged through the Google translator server in Mountain View, CA.

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