Lost (here there be spoilers)

I am really into the show Lost.  I think its wonderful to have a show around that is this well-written and one that creates a mysterious and convoluted universe and then assumes you are intelligent enough to roll with it, and in turn doesn't insult that intelligence by ignoring rules and precedents that it set even way back in the first season.  (yes I'm looking directly at you, Heroes...may you rot forever with Ali Larter's giant teeth)

For those of you still watching the show you know that its the last season and that answers are coming.  We've actually been told that answers will be in an episode, except when that episode is over (Sundown) you were left wondering if maybe those were the "answers", then perhaps we've been asking the wrong questions.  Well I believe I was, and I think I've got some stuff figured out.

I would normally post this in the Lost thread on the boards but this is going to be long and those spoiler tag things never work right.  Ok, here go:

At the beginning of The Incident we see 2 men on a beach.  One is wearing a white shirt, one is wearing a black shirt.  Both are wearing gray pants.  The man in black ultimately asks the man in white if he has any idea how much he wants to kill him.  The man in white answers that he does.  The man in black tells him that some day he will find a loophole.

Hm.  Odd, why wouldn't he just kill the man in white outright?

Towards the end of season 4 we run into Michael on the freighter.  In Michael's flashback we learn (through Tom, the Other) that Michael could not kill himself no matter what.  Why not?  The island wouldn't let him...even though he was off the island.

In season 5 we saw Locke (the real one) attempt to kill himself only to be saved by Ben.  Of course then Ben (being Ben) killed Locke himself a few minutes later.  But Locke could not kill himself either. 

This past episode we saw Richard and Jack play chicken with dynamite.  Richard asked Jack to light the fuse because...Richard was not able to kill himself, he needed someone else to do it.  Jack lit the fuse and the stayed there knowing full well that the dynamite would not go off since he was the one who lit it and he was staying with it.

Dogen told Sayid that inside everyone there is a scale that goes between light and dark.  Black and white.  Big theme in this show.  Fake Locke took the white stone off the scale in the candidate's cave and threw it away.

The man in the black shirt could not kill the man in the white shirt, because they are both the same person.  They are both Jacob.  Each man represents an aspect of Jacob, the light side and the dark side.  The man in black needed a loophole to kill the man in white.  He tricked Ben into doing it.  Thus he did not kill himself, he had someone else do it.

So what is going on with the flash sideways stories?  I think what we are seeing is the scale inside each of those people.  They are struggling against their biggest obstacles in life, their demons if you will, and the outcome decides the side they are on.  Let's look at what we've seen:

Ben: allowed Alex to be killed in reality to keep his power, which he then found out he never really had anyway.  In the alternate universe (AU) he put Alex first.  He found redemption at the end in reality.  Also note how Locke in the AU tried to push Ben to make a play for power while the Locke in reality tried to push Ben to make a play for power on the island by killing Ilana and becoming the ruler of the island.  Ben is now White.

Sayid has spent 5+ seasons claiming he is "not that man anymore", and yet he is able to whip out the Chuck Norris on a moments notice.  In the AU Sayid had the chance to not kill Keamy and still make things right for his brother.  He chose to kill Keamy.  In the island reality Sayid killed Dogen even though he could have just left the temple.  Sayid is now black.

Jack had father issues and never believed himself to be capable of being a good father himself.  In the AU Jack had a strained relationship with a teen son.  He was in a position where he could have given up on his relationship with the boy, alienated him forever.  But instead Jack came through and repaired that relationship.  He had it in him all along, he just had to face his own failings in his relationship with his dad to do it.  Jack is now white.  And interestingly enough, the man of science is now very much the man of faith.

Ok, those are (to me anyway) 3 clear-cut instances.  Now the murky stuff, and I will offer at least something resembling an explanation.  In short, I haven't really figured these parts out yet:

Claire and Kate.  In the island reality Claire is "claimed/infected".  She was going to give her baby up for adoption to a couple in LA but wound up on the island.  Aaron was her son and yet she was able to just walk away from him seemingly at the guidance of her (and Jack's) father, which we are pretty sure was the man in black taking his form.  So in reality she was unable to face up to parenthood.  In the AU she had them postpone her labor even though at first it seemed she would lose the baby if she didn't deliver right away. She said she wasn't ready.  Plus she helped Kate.  Claire is black.  I think.

Kate has never been able to stay in one place.  I don't think the fact she killed someone is relevant, I think the fact that she believes she didn't do anything wrong by doing so is.  So she is constantly on the run and not willing to accept responsibility for her actions.  In the AU she was unwilling to accept responsibility for her actions and bolted from the marshall.  She ultimately returned Claire's things but in the meantime dragged Claire to the dark side as Claire covered for her with the police.  Kate is black.  I think.

And now the big one (to me)...John Locke.  Locke is dead, so why do we get an AU for him?  Thats whats been bugging me.  I am guessing that we were simply shown that John Locke, the man of faith, is no more.  He doesn't believe in miracles, he doesn't believe in destiny in the AU.  He has accepted his handicap and is moving on.  Sorry, thats the best I can come up with for him.

Ok, so what we are seeing in these flash sideways segments is the recruiting procedure on the present-day (well, 2007) island.  We've been told a number of times that fake Locke is "recruiting".  If I am correct...and that is a big IF with this show...then I am really curious to see Sawyer's AU.

I mentioned in the thread on the board that I think Sawyer's whole life has been a long con on himself.  He's been trying to convince himself that he is not a good person when he actually is.  He went willingly with Locke on the island even though he knew that wasn't really Locke and even though Richard came by to warn him.  Remember the boy who told Fake Locke that he couldn't kill Sawyer because those were the rules?  I'm guessing that since Sawyer is a candidate to replace Jacob...who is really Fake Locke, remember...then Jacob is not allowed to kill his potential replacements, even though he may be able to.  He gives them choices, puts thoughts into their heads, and lets them do the rest.

I think we will know for sure once we see Sawyer's AU. 

And now this brings us to Jin.  All we saw of  him was when he was at the airport and still being a douche to Sun and also trying to sneak undeclared money past customs.  And then we saw him in Sayid's segment beaten and bound at Keamy's place.  I'm guessing Jin is going to be black.  I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that Jin and Sun will NOT reunite.  They are done because I think Sun will be white.

So there you have it.  What any of this means beyond what I came up with I don't know.  Well I have an idea but its kind of abstract and this blog is long enough anyway.  And of course I am very possibly wrong and just wasted a lot of time coming up with this, but thats ok...this is a fun show.  And I also know that no matter how clever I think I am, someone probably posted all of this on the Lost wiki a month ago lol.  But thats ok too, because like I said...I'm enjoying this.

Posted by pp2 @ 6:19 am EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

Bear down!

Normally I won't post a 2nd blog with one of my icons still showing, but this little find warrants an immediate blog.  While out grocery shopping today at my local Meijer I browsed the dvd section and came upon this little gem:

Ok, now I have been searching for a copy of Super Bowl 20 for literally 2 decades and have come up blank.  A guy I work with said he had the SB and both prior playoff games on tape and he could convert them to dvd for me, but upon searching for them he discovered them to be lost.  I really want to show my kid these games because lets face it...especially with the current product the Bears have put on the field (even in their fluke SB run 3 years ago) this sort of thing is something to behold.

So I come across this and see its in an NFL dvd series titled "Greatest Games Series".  Unfortunately there was no info on the box at all regarding what games were featured, aside from the promise of "12 classic games".  The back of the case promised that these were 12 network broadcasts in their entirety but again...no mention of what you were getting.  So I coerced the guy at Meijer into unwrapping the package to look at the cases themselves.  Two words for ya:

YEAH BABY!

Ok, from the regular season you get:

Week 1: vs Tampa

Week 3: @ Minnesota (McMahon off the bench for 3 TDs)

Week 4: vs Washington (I was at this game...woot!)

Week 5: @ Tampa (if memory serves, some sweet Payton runs)

Week 6: @ SF (eat it, Montana)

Week 7: vs GB (Fridge scores his first TD, George Cumby goes missing)

Week 11: @ Dallas (44-0 beating)

Week 13: @ Miami (erm...lets not talk about this one, mmkay?)

Week 16: @ Detroit (Marshall kills Hipple...film at 11)

Thats 9 from the regular season, and then you get both playoff games (Giants and Rams) and then the Super Bowl!

I have only watched the Washington game so far, but it was cool.  As advertised it was the original network broadcast.  Its not restored or enhanced, it just is what it is minus commercials.  Its like if you had videotaped the game yourself back in the day and were watching it again.  The game I watched at least had menu options to skip between quarters, so I assume all of the discs are like this.

So there you have it.  This is major for all the Bears fans out there, a chance to relive not only some great moments out there but to see the greatness on the other teams back in the day and to also see some great coaches in action.  Just a word of warning though: Best Buy has this listed at $100.  I bought it at Meijer for $55, and you might even find it cheaper if you look around a bit.  But whatever you do, go get this now!

Posted by pp2 @ 5:46 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

So I bought an iphone...

Yeah, go figure...me of all people.  I figure I won't have the company cell to abuse forever so I wanted to just go ahead and get my own cell.  My one buddy at work has one and he really likes it.  I've checked it out a few times and it seemed cool, so I broke down and bought the 3Gs phone.  I went with AT&T service, since by all accounts from people I talked to their service is the best, or at least the people I talked to had the best experiences with them. 

So anyway the phone itself is pretty cool, except for a few things.  First, the compass feature.  I don't know if I'm sitting on a pocket of electromagnetic energy or what (gratuitous Lost reference heh) but the compass on it does not register north correctly.  Its not even "slightly" off.  Its a good 23 degrees off lol.  Not a big deal of course since I don't care about that app, but still a little disconcerting that an app doesn't work to that extent.

Secondly, the GPS feature on it (where it asks you to use your location) is off by a block or so to the NE.  I think I was able to manually override it but still...why was it off that much?  I also wonder if that has anything to do with the compass being off. 

Now as far as the other apps go, its been kind of neat so far.  I found some free apps that I will actually use, like Google, facebook (shaddup!), Best Buy, IGN games, Fandango, etc.  What else is out there thats good?  I don't mind paying a bit for a good app.  I don't really want games or anything, but more functional stuff would be cool.

I've been thinking about getting the ring tone editor, except I don't have any tunes on my phone.  My computer is still down (work-issued laptop for surfing...hey, the IT guy said everyone does it) so I don't have the ability to download programs or my music to the laptop.  I'm guessing that if I tried to import some songs that were acquired via...less scrupulous...means the phone would reject them.  Yeah...thanks a lot for that, Lars.  Looks like I may have to break down and buy stuff from the itunes store.  Bleh.

The phone aspect of it is good so far.  Which is good, because thats actually the reason I bought it heh.  I went through my directory on the work cell and pulled the numbers from that that I will need.  I spent a bit of time yesterday calling and leaving messages...sober dialing ftw!  I still have a few more calls to make...MJ, you're next up on the list!

Battery life is pretty good too.  I managed to run it pretty much all the way down yesterday, that took over 4 hours to do.  The guy at the store told me if I just talked it would be 4 hours of battery life, so considering the time on it was spent not just talking but watching videos, reading stuff online, etc, I'm pretty happy with that.  I also bought a blu-tooth headset since I'm still kind of unclear on which towns around here will ticket you for cell phone use while driving.  Not taking any chances heh.

So if anyone has any cool app suggestions I'm all ears.  Drop them in the comments section or PM me, either works.

Posted by pp2 @ 7:17 am EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments

The announcement

 

More details available at www.ironmaiden.com, including cities and dates.  The article also mentions Maiden's newest album to be released at the end of the summer, "The Final Frontier". 

Now call me a pessimist, but when a group's members are in their mid-50s (with the drummer pushing 60) and after 30 years of recording their next album has the word "Final" in its title...I'd say its a good idea to see them live when you have the chance.

Posted by pp2 @ 7:59 am EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Watch this space!

A mystery announcement coming soon!  From www.ironmaiden.com :

Posted by pp2 @ 5:02 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments