Author: The Hinoeuma
Movie Monday: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 2012

Ten years ago, today, the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey premiered in Wellington, New Zealand (its very first premiere before wide release). Directed by Peter Jackson, the screenplay was written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo del Toro & Jackson. J.R.R. Tolkien, of course, is the original writing master. The cast list is extensive (lots of dwarves). Main characters are Young Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), Old Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm), Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), Saruman the White (Christopher Lee), Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), Gollum (Andy Serkis) and Smaug the Dragon (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Bilbo Baggins is swept into a quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakenshield. Their journey will take them into the wild, through treacherous lands, swarming with Goblins, Orcs, deadly Wargs, giant spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers. Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain, first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever…Gollum. Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths of guile and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum’s “precious” ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities…a simple gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-Earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.
IMDb Storyline
Trivia Bits:
♦ Asked how many wizards there are, Gandalf says there are five, naming Saruman, Radagast and himself, then saying [that] he can’t remember the names of the other two, merely saying, “the two blues.” Their names, Alatar and Pallando, appear in the book Unfinished Tales, a collection of J.R.R. Tolkien ideas, and half-manuscripts, edited into book form by his son Christopher Tolkien. The filmmakers didn’t have rights to use material from that book, so the two blue wizards remain unnamed in this movie.
♦ The production team returned to the same shooting location for Hobbiton as they used in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The land is part of a farm, which the owners allowed to be transformed into the Hobbiton set by The Lord of the Rings production crew in the late 1990s. After filming wrapped on the first trilogy, the farm’s owners turned the land into a Tolkien tourism spot, offering guided tours of the Hobbiton set. With the crew from The Hobbit trilogy making improvements and additions to the aging Hobbiton set, the farm owners were happy to temporarily close down their tourism business, so filming could take place there again.
♦ Sir Ian Holm and Sir Christopher Lee filmed their scenes at London’s Pinewood Studios because health concerns left them uncomfortable with flying to New Zealand.
Four years ago, when I started blogging, again, I covered the second movie. ~Vic
Announcement Trailer
Official Trailer Two
VOTD: Purring Baby
This was originally posted on June 5. I uploaded the video to WordPress, only to have it malfunction in the Reader…another victim of the “Pro Plan”. This is another video that is stuck as an echo in the Reader (browser) and I can’t get it out. ~Vic
Video of the Day
Thanksgiving 2022
I won’t be cooking a traditional turkey this year. I am going for a pork loin, just to be different. I will have a small gathering. Peace, love and hugs to everyone. May we all gather in joy. ~Vic


POTD: Yard Art
I guess it is yard art. It’s not close to the road for pick-up. And, why a pumpkin is underneath a chair in February…I don’t know. ~Vic

02-12-2022
Picture of the Day
Flashback Friday: St. Elizabeth’s Flood 1421

Circa 1490 to 1495
Collection: Amsterdam Museum
Source: Museum Site
Six hundred & one year, ago, today…
The St. Elizabeth’s flood of 1421 was a flooding of the Grote Hollandse Waard, an area in what is now the Netherlands. It takes its name from the feast day of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary which was formerly [November 19th]. It ranks 20th on the list of worst floods in history. During the night of [November 18th-19th] 1421, a heavy storm near the North Sea coast caused the dikes to break in a number of places and the lower-lying polder land was flooded. A number of villages were swallowed by the flood and were lost, causing between 2,000 and 10,000 casualties. The dike breaks and floods caused widespread devastation in Zeeland and Holland.
This flood separated the cities of Geertruidenberg and Dordrecht, which had previously fought against each other during the Hook and Cod (civil) wars. Most of the land remains flooded even since that day.
Most of the area remained flooded for several decades. Reclaimed parts are the island of Dordrecht, the Hoeksche Waard island and north-western North Brabant. Most of the Biesbosch area has been flooded since.
The cause of the flood was a powerful extratropical cyclone. Water from the storm in the North Sea surged up the rivers causing the dikes to overflow and break through. The flood reached a large sea arm between south Holland and Zeeland, destroying the Grote Hollandse Waard.
Wikipedia
I tried to find a video about this but, all I got was a creepy AI voice reading what I posted, above. As an interesting addendum, there was a St. Elizabeth’s flood of 1404, on or about November 19, also, affecting Holland, Zeeland and Flanders. History Calendar on Twitter posted about it, too. ~Vic
Additional:
♦ Zuiderzee Floods (Britannica/November 11, 2022)
♦ Elizabeth and the Flood (Codart/May 8, 2022)
♦ Katje the Windmill Cat (Atozmom’s BSF Blog/March 1, 2014)
VOTD: Sgt. Kitten Takes Point
This was originally posted on June 9. I uploaded the video to WordPress, only to have it malfunction in the Reader. The “Pro Plan” was a complete disaster, which is why it isn’t available, anymore. The server migration that was being done for the stupid plan made crazy echoes of uploaded videos, as all the previously listed links in posts were broken. I have several posts with videos, stuck in my Reader, that won’t play and, even after I delete the post, the echo of the post remains in my Reader feed. Way to go, Happiness Engineers! ~Vic
Video of the Day
POTD: Staghorn Fern
This is a crazy looking thing. A pilot’s wife has a plant & animal sanctuary behind her house, two blocks west. A platycerium bifurcatum, it is also called an Elkhorn Fern. ~Vic

Picture of the Day
Chris Thomas: Balls of Light or Orbs
A PDF Essay From: The Chris Thomas Files

We have all seen the many thousands of photographs which show the image of a Ball of Light in the finished photograph which were not necessarily visible to the naked eye. There have been numerous interpretations placed upon these BOLs but, what are they in reality?
Most people assume that these are a new phenomenon whereas, there is in fact a written history of sightings going back several hundred years. In the past, these were not called Balls of Light or Orbs but, “swamp lights”, “will o’ the wisp” and “Jack-O-Lanterns”, as well as many other names in local dialects. To understand what this phenomenon is, we need to look at the nature of the Universe, how it is constructed and how it functions.
The Nature of Our Universe
Ever since Sir Isaac Newton had an apple land on his head (figuratively speaking) 400 years ago, science has believed in gravity. It is only in very recent years that they have begun to question the role that gravity plays and even to question whether that gravity exists at all. Certainly, Double Dark Theory (Dark Matter and Dark Energy) presents considerably more questions than it answers with most cosmologists, now, believing that this theory has no validity at all.
As DDT is becoming increasingly rejected, more and more cosmologists are looking towards Black Holes as a way of explaining how the universe holds itself together. However, even with Black Hole Theory, it remains impossible to answer many of the questions. Fortunately, in recent years, some of the more aware scientists are beginning to realise that what holds the universe together is a form of electro-magnetic energy. If it is assumed that electro-magnetic energy holds the universe together, all of the unanswered questions that cosmologists fight over suddenly become answered.
In addition to the workings of the universe, electro-magnetic frequencies also seem to play a major role in life on Earth, especially when it is applied to humans and animals. But, there is another way of looking at electro-magnetic frequencies and that is, instead of electro-magnetic, substitute the word conscious-ness. There is a great deal of debate, in scientific circles, about how large an organism needs to be before it develops consciousness as well as where consciousness is located within the body. The current thinking is that consciousness is located in a region of the brain known as the amygdala. This is a region at the base of the brain and attached to the brain-stem. It would be fair to say that looking at the amygdala to see consciousness is akin to looking at Liverpool hoping to see Britain. The reality is that the scientific view is from the wrong direction.
If we look to more “traditional” sources of knowledge and, particularly the Akashic, what we find is a very different view of reality to that which scientists are currently exploring. Instead of the body becoming large enough for consciousness to develop, it is the consciousness that builds the body. In other words, life begins with consciousness and all else follows. It is the same with our Universe. Our Universe began with a consciousness, a “Universal Soul” and, everything that exists in our Universe is also a soul, or a consciousness. When scientists talk about measuring electro-magnetic frequencies, what they are actually talking about is measuring soul energy.

Gravity does not exist. What holds the Universe together, what holds humans on the Earth and what makes apples fall to the ground, is soul energy, consciousness energy. Everything that exists anywhere is a soul, a consciousness and, it is the interactions between souls which holds everything together and makes everything happen. Without consciousness, soul, nothing would exist and no events would occur.
Our Universe exists because it was Created to exist. A soul, a consciousness, exists who decided to explore the potential It contains within Itself. This Creationery-source asked Itself a question…a question along the lines of “What would happen If…?” In order to answer It’s question, this Source brought our Universe into being and peopled it with other, lesser forms of consciousness that could explore the answer to the Question on the Creator’s behalf. In this way, the Universal “envelope” is a consciousness, each galaxy is a consciousness, each solar system is a consciousness and each star is a consciousness.
In addition, we have free-moving and free-acting souls who can explore the Answers on the Creator’s behalf. These free-moving and free-acting souls take on two forms. The first do not have any physical form or physical density and the Akashic calls them the non-physical races. These souls were Created about 100 million years ago. The second have a physical form and a physical density but, are comprised of energies that fall outside of human perceptions. The Akashic calls these the semi-physical races and they were Created about 30 million years ago.
Both of these groups of races, the non-physical and the semi-physical, started their existence on a home planet but, over the millennia, have spread out throughout our Universe. But, there was another stage of development that was universally decided upon about 60 million years ago and this new development lead directly to the creation of our solar system. For many reasons (see Synthesis), once a suitable body form had been developed on Earth, those souls who came to live here are primarily made up of the non-physical races. In other words, 99.9 percent of the souls who are in human form on Earth are souls who originated with the non-physical races. The other 0.001 percent of the human population is made up of souls who originate from the semi-physical races. There are very many reasons for this division of human souls, which are outside of the scope of this essay but, see the author’s books on the subject.

The Development of Our Solar System
As with all free-moving and free-acting life throughout our Universe, a “home planet” was needed in order for human life to exist, a place where this new “experiment” in a fully physical life-form could inhabit. Throughout our Universe, many billions of solar systems exist. Usually, the solar system is comprised of one soul. This solar system soul is, normally, the solar system sun, or suns, if it is a binary system. All of the planets within this type of solar system are created by the solar system consciousness as well as all of the forms of life that exist on those planets (except for situations where the solar system supports either the non-physical or semi-physical races; in these instances, the souls of the “higher life-forms” are brought into being by the Creator).
With our solar system, the arrangement is quite different. Our solar system is unique. That means what it says. No other solar system is comparable to the one we inhabit. The reason for this is that the sun and each of the planets, in our solar system, are individual consciousnesses in their own right. This collection of souls, who were capable of building planets, was decided upon in order to maximise the potential for bringing “physical” beings to life. Originally, all of the planets in our solar system were inhabited by a huge diversity of life-forms, the likes of which do not exist anywhere else within our Universe. However, about 3.8 million years ago, a solar system-wide disaster occurred and virtually all life was wiped out except for our planet, Earth. The reasons for this solar system-wide disaster fall outside of the scope of this essay but, see The Universal Soul.
To continue reading (it’s six pages), download the PDF version HERE.
[Note: This PDF was originally posted on The Spirit Guides UK website on August 19, 2011.]
VOTD: Electric Scooter
I wouldn’t have one of these things, nor will I ever have an electric car. Just ask Florida about all the electric cars that are catching fire after Hurricane Ian. Those batteries are corroding and causing all manner of problems. Teslas like to run into things, blow up and burn for four days. No, thank you. I feel sorry for this guy. ~Vic
Addendum/Caveat: Screw Tube has determined that this video needs to be age restricted. I apologize if you have to sign in to see it.
Video of the Day
POTD: Tri-Color Leaf
This is either a Sweetgum leaf or some kind of Maple leaf. Pl@ntNet is not being very helpful, today. ~Vic

Picture of the Day
Halloween 2022
For the first time in many years, I am not carving a pumpkin. I am decorating, though. Happy Halloween, everyone! ~Vic

10-29-2022

10-29-2022
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10-29-2022
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10-31-2022
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10-31-2022
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10-31-2022
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10-31-2022



