THE ZOCALO TODAY – November 26, 2005

Just in case you didn't get your own announcement, here is an offer
you'll want to be aware of – especially with the holidays just
around the corner. The latest from Café Press!

BABYLON 5 SCRIPTS – NEW VOLUME AND COOL STUFF

Greetings!
ANNOUCEMENT #1
Babylon5Quotes.com

Shortly after the first volume of B5 scripts appeared, a number of
posts appeared on the moderated Babylon 5 newsgroup inquiring about
the possibility of producing Cool Stuff featuring quotations from
Babylon 5, especially with Christmas lurking just around the corner
with a bag of candy and a sock filled with quarters suitable for
whacking the heck out of unwary consumers. (Yes, we all have our own
ideas about Yuletide traditions, but isn't that what the season is
all about?)

In response to those inquiries, the Babylon 5 Scripts team sat down
with jms to come up with the most popular quotations from Babylon 5.
When we learned that there was an entire book awaiting publication
filled with such quotes, we took the aforementioned sock full of
quarters and whacked the bejeezus out of him until he agreed to
narrow down the field to 10 quotes.

We were able to get it down to thirteen. What can we say, the man
just over-writes everything.

With that, the Babylon 5 Scripts team -- now masquerading as the
Babylon 5 Quotes team, complete with trenchcoat and false mustache --
set to work like elves in Santa's workshop, laboring day and night,
until finally, bleary-eyed but happy, they looked up at their
finished work.

And lo, it was cool.

Really Nifty Stuff featuring Babylon 5 quotes are now available via
www.babylon5quotes.com

We're talking here steins and mugs with Ivanova's mantra...t-shirts
and caps announcing that in purple you are stunning, and warning
that when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the
enemy...greeting cards declaring that Faith Manages and reaffirming
that hope is all we have...baseball caps that tell everyone within
visual range that you are in the midst of fifteen things, all of
them annoying, and are therefore paying off karma at a vastly
accelerated rate...and reminding them that you can get more with a
kind word and a 2x4 than just a kind word.

Those are just some of the items that are now available, in addition
to one very important item, the quote most often referred to by
viewers and used on a breathtaking number of websites for churches
and wiccan groups, marriage vows, teachers and just general fans...
the Declaration of Principles by Citizen G'Kar. We've made only a
few items available with the Declaration of Principles (because to
be honest we couldn't imagine putting it on an apron, and a bib was
just philosophically wrong), because this one speech more than
almost anything else encompasses everything that is central to the
Babylon 5 storyline.

So while you're checking out volume 2, you may want to swing by the
quotes section and have a look around. We think you'll be pleased.

ANNOUCEMENT #2
Volume 2 Now Available and at a Special Discount

• A brand new 57 page, 15,000 word introduction and commentary
written exclusively for this volume! (That's two thousand words
longer than volume one.)

• 37 pages of memos describing for the first time the design of
B5's guns, links, and the alien sector...the creation of new regular
characters later omitted from the series (The Boss and The
Mysterious Mr. Jones).
In a special feature, the memos also include story development notes
and recently-rediscovered premises for such lost season one Babylon
5 episodes as The World Below, The Resurrectionist, The Commander's
Hour, In Their Image, Debt of Honor, Target Unknown and many, many
more!

• 8 pages of B&W photos of cast and crew taken by Straczynski,
drawn from his personal archives, seen here for the first time.

PLUS these scripts:
• And the Sky, Full of Stars
• Signs and Portents
• A Voice in the Wilderness (Part One)
• A Voice in the Wilderness (Part Two)
• Babylon Squared
• The Quality of Mercy

And the famous first-season finale...
• Chrysalis

In this extensive analysis, you will also --
DISCOVER what dumpster diving, living in a cult's religious commune,
and sixties coffeehouses had to do with the creation of both the Joe
Straczynski Memorial Mandala and the Babylon 5 five-year arc, a bit
of personal history jms has never shared before.

HEAR for yourself the consequences that followed when Claudia
Christian was left strapped into a Starfury during an earthquake.
UNRAVEL the truth behind Londo's hair once and for all...who is
REALLY to blame for this, why, and where it all started to go
completely out of control.

WITNESS the process that led to Morden's famous "What do you want?"
questions.

LEARN the secrets of production that kept Babylon on- course and on-
budget for five years, and turned the B5 cast and crew into one of
the tightest families in television.

FIND OUT what Warner Bros. said when it came time to reveal Londo
Mollari's...attributes...on camera, and even more horrifying, what
happened when the prop department had to actually build the darned
things.

UNDERSTAND how the Babylon 5 sets and costumes were designed, and
what made them different from nearly every other TV series.
LAUGH with hysterical dementia as you discover what happened the
night the network LOST the next episode of Babylon 5 and decided to
put it together themselves.

SEE with your own eyes the Amazing Snackie Bowl Incident that saved
the day while filming "And the Sky, Full of Stars"

SLOG THROUGH jms's over-wrought and breathtakingly inaccurate
observations on culture, history, Gandhi, warfare, sacrifice blahdee-
blahdee-blah he's SO into this stuff, but it helped shape the future
history of Babylon 5 so we had no choice but to include it. We
apologize profusely.

UNCOVER why and how the "fasten/zip" scene came to be written, and
the horrors that followed thereafter.

PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED when you learn who Zathras was modeled after
(you'll never guess this one!)

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Hidden plot details, revealed! Secrets of production, exposed!
Untold stories of the cast, unearthed! Centauri hairlines,
apologized for! High-priced writing advice, freely given! The June
Lockhart Rainbow Break, explained! And what the HECK is "The Hokey
Pokey" doing in Babylon 5?

Volume 2 is $39.99 But for exactly 7 days — from Saturday, November
26th through Friday December 2nd — we are putting it on sale at a
very special price: $29.99 That's 25% off. But you must order by the
deadline. And if you want to save even more....

ANNOUCEMENT #3
As a Reward for Reading This Far... Coupons for Announcements 1 & 2

And in the holiday spirit, we'd like to offer you an opening week
special. For the next 7 days, November 26th through December 2nd
ONLY, if you purchase $40 worth of stuff -- and that includes Volume
2 AT THE DISCOUNTED PRICE -- you can get $10 off your loot. But to
get this extra discount of $10 off of $40 or more you must put this
coupon code in the box at checkout: BABYLON10. No coupon code, no
extra $10 bucks off. This is an extra special coupon for Alert
subscribers only. Shhhh....

IF you plan on getting just Volume 2 we have a coupon for you too.
You can get an additional $5 off the DEBUT DISCOUNT for a total of
only $24.99 Yes, you read that correctly. Volume 2, a $39.99 book
for only $24.99 But only through December 2 and only if you put
BABYLON5 as your coupon code at checkout.

Be sure to go to http://www.babylon5scripts.com for all this
information and more. There are pictures of all the merchandise
available so you can see what you are getting. This will certainly
fill some stocking for people I know! Happy shopping.

Take care.
Sandy

Sandra Bruckner
Editor/Publisher
ISN News: The Zocalo Today
http://www.isnnews.net