LOST: I need you to tell me what year you think it is...

Sayid and Desmond on the chopper! Does Faraday's cheat sheet read 30.5 degrees? 305 degrees? Whatever it is, I'm sure it's the same bearing that Ben gave to Michael and Walt when they took left the Island, eh?

The Sayid to Frank discussion in the chopper felt kinda Luke and Han Solo in the Falcon in Episode 4. =)

Desmond! Time jumping again! This time to his time in the army, after dumping Penny (leaving her at the altar?), and a couple years after his earlier time jump, and before getting out of... prison? and running into Libby and getting his boat and racing and getting washed up on the Island.

In the past he sees the present as a dream he had. And when he snaps back to the present, on board the chopper and then the freighter, it seems like his PAST self persists. That's kind of annoying. Or is it that his two consciousnesses have *swapped?* His past self is walking around in his current body, lost, and his current self is walking around in his past body, in the army.

Daniel: Maybe we should just, just tell them...
Charlotte (that ginger nut bitch): Dan, let's not confuse anyone...

Daniel: Your perception of how long your friends have been gone, it's not necessarily how long they've actually been gone...

Daniel: As long as Frank flew on the bearings I gave him, if he stayed on it, they'll be fine...
Jack: And if they don't?
Daniel: Then, there might be side effects...

Yay! Some fecked up time distortion! Rather Narnia-esque, no? Although, the effect/differences are even more subjective than Lewis's portrayal. Instead of time passing at a different rate in the two different worlds, there is the bonus possibility, aka side effects, of having your consciousness ping-ponged back and forth across time.

Hrmm... doesn't look like it's a SWAPPING of consciousness, rather, when he's not actively experiencing time in a body, past or present, that body seems to pass out or zone out.

Two of the freighter boys are Kayme (Camie?) and Omar. Is one of them Ben's man on the boat?

Finally! Fisher Stevens! Now, where the F is Zoe Bell?!

McKowsky: It's happening to you, too, isn't it?

Daniel: We don't know why, but for some reason, some people can get a little... confused...
Jack: Is this amnesia...?
Daniel: No, this is not amnesia...

Speaking from firsthand experience?

McKowsky: It's happening to him, too, Ray! ... Nothing can stop it, Ray!

Dr. Ray. Don't like him much.

Daniel: I need you to tell me what year you think it is...
Desmond: What do you mean, what year? It's 1996!

Daniel tells Desmond to set his device to 2.342, oscillating at 11hz. Kinda Doc Brown and McFly, no? =)

Daniel: If the numbers don't convince me then i need you to tell me that you know about Eloise.

Desmond: I think I've just been to the future...

Daniel: This is where I do the things that Oxford frowns upon...

Daniel: What this will do, is unstick Eloise in time, just like you.

Not the coolest looking time unsticking machine I've ever seen. Pretty awesome that Daniel doesn't protect his brain from the radiation, tho. Also, could be pretty convenient. This, coupled with travelling to the Island, is likely the cause of his screwy memory problems/abilities (demonstrated when he was playing the memory game w Charlotte using playing cards). Having a spotty and unreliable memory allows for him to NOT remember meeting Desmond in the past.

His encounter with Desmond might also result in his emotional response to the news of Oceanic 815's wreckage being discovered. We don't see Desmond tell Daniel about everything, but he could have, during commercial break.

McKowsky: Desmond? You're Desmond?
Desmond: Do you know me?
McKowsky: I'm George McKowsky. I'm the communications officer.

The freighter was picking up Penny's messages/broadcasts, but not responding.

Meanwhile, at Oxford, 1996...

Daniel: You went catatonic right in the middle of a sentence...

Okay, so when time jumping, the body you leave goes catatonic. I don't know that I love that, but whatev.

Whoa, Eloise is dead. From some kind of brain trauma. Daniel explains it as some kind of overload or short circuit, her consciousness not being able to tell when she is, distinguishing between the two or more times she's being bumped into.

Okay, Desmond was out 75 minutes according to Daniel. Daniel zapped Eloise and had her run the maze, successfully, a full 60 minutes before he was going to teach her the maze. Was there enough time in there for Daniel to teach Eloise how to run the maze before Eloise died?

Feckin time travel.

Daniel: Who are you calling?
Desmond: I'm calling my bloody constant.

How bloody romantic is that? =) Not that I give a crap about such things, but this should've been the episode that aired on Black Thursday!

Meanwhile, on the freighter, 2004...

McKowsky: Two days ago somebody sabotaged all the equipment.

Ben's man on the boat's been busy! Is Ben able to communicate w him? One of his Other lieutenants? Or is he just following some well thought out orders?

McKowsky: Looks like you guys have a friends on this boat.

Maybe Dr. Ray?

Meanwhile, at some hoity toity auction, 1996...

A painting of the Black Rock! On the block is the only known surviving artifact of the ship and its final journey, the journal of the first mate! Part of the estate of Torvald Hanso, and gee, I wonder who might be bidding on it... Pops Widmore, of course. Bidder 755.

Desmond gets his "word" with Widmore, and Pops actually gives him Penny's new address, but not before explaining...

Widmore: It's not me who hates you.

Who is it, really, who hates Desmond?

Desmond confronts Penny at her new place, begging for a phone number to his anchor in the future, Christmas Eve, 2004...

Desmond: If there's any part of you that still believes in us... Please, just give me your number.
Penny: 79460893...

Meanwhile, on the freighter, 2004...

Desmond calls Penny. Penny answers! There are quick bursts of information from both sides, but nothing that really gets Desmond any more found. As the battery dies, they talk over each other, declaring their love and their commitment to finding one another no matter what. Wow. That gave me some goose bumps/shivers/a stupid grin. =)

I really wouldn't be unhappy if this whole thing could ultimately be boiled down to being about Desmond.

Back on the Island, in Daniel's journal...

If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.

This was a very fun episode.

I'm annoyed by how the writers' approach to time travel is still pretty ambiguous. When Desmond calls Penny, there's no direct acknowledgement of Desmond's visit in 1996 to get Penny's phone number. Daniel doesn't recognize Desmond when he meets him on the Island, and when he directs Desmond to take the train to Oxford, he doesn't say that it's because it's already happened that way. I want to believe that Daniel's idea that "you can't change the future," is the rule. That makes things rigid, but it also makes things interesting. Basically, if anyone travels thru time and messes with something, he was always MEANT to travel thru time and mess with something. The 12 MONKEYS version of time travel. As opposed to the BACK TO THE FUTURE, history changing model of time travel.

One of Desmond's Hatch jump allowed him to encounter Charlie years before he meets him on the Island. True, it was a possibly forgettable run-in on a street corner. Although... Was that the same day that was one of Charlie's best five memories? When he chased away that mugger and the woman called him a "hero?"

Another Hatch jump allowed him to catch up with a physicist friend of his in the past and explain his experience as well as describe his being shipwrecked on the Island with the Oceanic survivors. This physicist then must've spent some chunk of the 1990s up to 2004 walking around with memories of this discussion in his head. I want to believe that he would have found his way to Penny to help with her search for Desmond. Perhaps he was eliminated before that could happen?

Hey, let's not forget the Watcher-lady that Desmond encounters during a Hatch jump as well. She's apparently gifted with an ESP that allows her to see the threads of fate, how things are meant to happen. Perhaps Daniel and his physics is only partly right. The big broad strokes of the future can't be changed, but the details of how they happen might be. Desmond's repeated saving of Charlie sort of demonstrates that. Although, really, wasn't everything he did to save him all a means to the final end that Charlie meets?

In his "side effect" jumps this episode, Desmond interacts with Penny in 1996 in a somewhat manic way. When Desmond reaches her on the phone eight years later, she doesn't make any explicit mention of it. Penny's faulty memory? Strategic/ambiguous dialogue writing?

Also, Desmond offers 1996 Daniel some very important info to convince him of his "I've been to the future" story, the settings that make his machine work. But on the Island, and even when he directs Desmond to find him at Oxford, Daniel doesn't seem to remember Desmond from that encounter. In Daniel's case, however, he may have damaged his memory with a combination of exposure to his consciousness time travelling device and the passage from the outside world to the Island. At the same time it may be The Universe working to keep itself as consistent as possible, enabling for time loops to be closed, and causing memory lapses or blocks in an effort to avoid f'd up paradoxes.

Feckin time travel.

Keep on keepin on~

LOST: Xanadu or Satan's Doom?

Okay. Just gotta get this out of the way...

Woo-OW! XANADU!

*deep breath*

Moving on...

Locke wakes up and does breakfast. Kinda reminiscent of Desmond in the Hatch and Juliet in the Village.

Locke: These are the last two eggs.

What does that mean? Eggs that need to be broken to make an omelette? Eggs that can be, or have been, fertilized to grow and be born as babies? Eggs, as in... siblings?

Locke pulls down VALIS from Ben's bookshelf as breakfast reading. Philip K. Dick. I don't think I've read that one, but I think it's one of the paranoid autobiographical ones (altho, which ones aren't, right?). Dick's stuff is often focused on a MATRIX like false surface of a world covering up a sinister, controlling, structure, or machinery that ultimately directs everything and everyone. Will hafta check my shelves for it and give it a read soon.

Locke: You might catch something you missed the second time around.

The writers just love being all meta and clever, no?

I wonder who makes Dharma's coffee mugs. The same company that made the ones in the police department in USUAL SUSPECTS?

* CRAZY IDEA *
Would Jack's dad have been on the manifest as a passenger? Even tho he was, y'know, in a coffin? Could he be one of the Oceanic Six? Who knew that he had died in Sydney? Wasn't the arrangement to get his body and coffin on the plane last minute, secured as Jack checked in at the airport?
* CRAZY IDEA *

Ahhh... "The Trial of Kate Austen." Good, we need to know how she gets to live freely when she gets off the island, instead of thrown in jail for the murder of her abusive jerkass father.

Locke: I just killed a chicken.

He says that to Kate when he answers his front door and she points out that he has blood on his hands. Blood on his hands. Chicken. Last two eggs.

Locke: If I was a dictator, I would just shoot you, and go about my day.

Good of him to clear that up.

Hurley: You just totally Scooby-Doo'd me, didn't you?

Heh. I'm not sure if that's truly a Scooby Doo move, is it? Suckering someone into giving information by pretending that you already know? Still, funny.

Later, Sawyer: If Hugo knows, everybody knows.

Kate: You are not using my son.

Okay. Kirsten mentioned a theory, something I hadn't thought of at all, that Kate's reference in last season's finale to someone she had to get back to (presumably at home), was to a child (and not to the obvious red herring Sawyer). But, whose child? That is, who's the father? Perhaps she had a kid before the island? Hidden/left behind in one of her past lives/identities.

Or... It could be Aaron. Although, that would take some 'splainin, no?

Lawyer Duncan: The defense calls Dr. Jack Shepard to the witness stand.

Jack: Only eight of us survived the crash... She tried to save the other two, but...

Okay. So we get to hear the Oceanic Six cover story! Or at least, part of it. So, eight crawl or swim from the wreckage, Kate responsible for saving them. Nice yarn spinning to turn the federal fugitive into a castaway hero. Pretty clever. Calculated to change her mother's mind and influence her testimony regarding the murder of her father?

Two of the eight die. Must be a reason for those two to have been alive for part of the time. Or maybe just details to make the story richer, more believable?

Meanwhile, back at the frat house...

Hurley: XANADU or SATAN'S DOOM?

Ha, now there's another line that's talking about the show on a meta-level. Fun. And hey, XANADU! So great hearing that music playing somewhere beside my head for once. Gotta look up/for SATAN'S DOOM. * Later. Couldn't find an imdb listing for SATAN'S DOOM. Must've misheard Hurley, eh? S'funny how the two titles (at least as I heard them) sound very similar. Paradise or hell. Not germane to anything going on w the Island, right?

Umm... everyone else heard it, too, right?

What is Sawyer reading? A Penguin Classic, no? Looks like the same design/series of a copy of LOLITA I have. Hrmmm...

And to complete the seduction suite...

Sawyer: I know it's in a box, but it's pretty damn good wine.

As he breaks out some Dharma box-o-wine for himself and Kate. He's a sad romantic, but he's no dummy.

Sawyer: So, at least be woman enough to tell me you want to use me for something.
Kate: I want to use you for something.

Fair nuff. It's good that we can talk like this, no?

Dammit, I wish that Hurley hadn't shut off XANADU in the background. It was so cheezily perfect.

Sawyer works the con on Locke with Kate, but in such a way that only Kate takes a fall. Not a bad plan. And why? To get Miles some alone time with Ben.

Sawyer: I think they're saying "baa!"

Chickent and sheep. Nice. Old John Locke, he had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. The con works. Locke gets suckered into looking over there while Kate takes Miles over here to get his minute w Ben.

Miles: Three point two million dollars.

Disappointingly silly and predictable (if you buy into the development they've given Miles so far). I know he was set up to be a sleazeball, but I really don't want to believe it. So, I'm gonna keepin on hoping that he's making this offer as some kind of code, to get a message to Ben, or maybe because the spirits of the dead on the island have spoken to him and told him things that he hasn't or won't share with others, at least, not yet, and this extortion gambit is something more than what it appears to be on the surface.

He'd "take care of" Charlotte? He's certainly taken advantage of people, but killed people? I dunno. That doesn't quite feel right. Maybe a tragic accidental/necessary/dutiful/righteous/crime of passion homicide? Like the Losties all seem to have racked up.

Miles: Do not treat me like one of them, like I don't know what you can do.

How much does Ben know about Miles? Does his man on the boat know anything about the four rescuers' histories/abilities. Does Ben know that Miles talks to the dead? Maybe Ben and the Others tried to recruit him in the past?

Miles: If I were you, I'd stay right here on the island. Who knows? Maybe you didn't survive the crash.

That pretty much explains the Sawyer option. Perhaps that's the seed of the cover story that the Six have to put together in order for them to leave the island without disturbing the security and secrets of the island and those they must ultimately leave behind.

Funny, when Locke shows up in the girls' cabin, Claire's and Kate's, it suddenly feels very GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. Like the Skipper dropping in on Ginger and Mary Ann, y'know? Funny.

Ayep. Kate's baby is Aaron. So, she returns to the real world as Aaron's mother. Given Aaron's apparent age, and blowing off any possible accelerated aging blah-de-blah, the trial must have happened years after the crash. So... How long were they on the island before they were finally "rescued?" Does AAron live on the island for over a year before being taken to the real world? Desmond's vision had Claire and Aaron getting on a helicopter. How different is the passage of time on the island vs. the outside world? C.S. Lewis. Daniel's rocket test. The chopper carrying Sayid and Desmond...?

So, Aaron's not one of the Oceanic Six. He wasn't on the manifest.

Sad. There's no reason to think that Claire would stay on the island and yet let Aaron leave, right? Well, unless it was for Aaron's sake. Maybe Claire couldn't leave the island and live (like Locke, Ben, and Rose?) but if Aaron stayed on the island, it would be too dangerous for him, or would provide a lame life for a 21st century child. Or something.

So, maybe Claire's alive on the Island, left behind. Maybe she stays because Charlie still "lives" there?

Jack has trouble with the idea of being in the same room with Aaron. That seems unlikely, if there's nothing wrong or strange about Aaron. Claire's freaked out fortune teller knew that her baby had to be born on the Island, safely away from some malevolent influence in the real/outside world, or perhaps for the world to be safe from the child. Hrmm... Damien, anyone? Or Billy Mumy in the TWILIGHT ZONE "It's A Wonderful Life?"

So, Jack has an inkling of a Wrongness w Aaron. Kate, the adoptive mother, sees only the child (that I'm guessing she could never have).

Pilot Jeff Fahey knows every name on the manifest, but Miles says that they only looked up Kate after getting her name from their phone call to the freighter. So, Jeff's there by chance? Or as part of a secondary objective or contingency plan. They weren't looking for Oceanic 815, but they knew that it was a possibility they'd find it, because, hey, they (maybe I should be capitalizing "They?") knew enough to fake the submerged plane and the bodies found by the remote subs, right?

What's going on there at the beach w Daniel and Charlotte? Seems like they're testing Daniel's abilities somehow. His memory? Is he, like, MEMENTO'd? I think Naomi called him the "headcase" in her summup, right? He does seem to forget things, right from the get-go, like the "tell my sister I love her" code. Or, is he supposed to be telepathic/extra sensorily talented? "Reading" the cards, or Charlotte's knowledge of the cards. Seems like maybe his abilities are failing, or unreliable now. Due to the island? Due to lack of some meds or the like that he usually takes?

* BIG PICTURE *
I'm working under the assumption that everyone ends up on the island for a reason, either by fate/luck or design (which latter might be a subset of the former). Those possibilities might also be divided into the plans of the island and the plans of the cartel (aka Widmore, Dr. Shepard, Sr., Paik heavy industries, and such),.

So, are we seeing what the Island needed Kate for? To take the baby Aaron and raise him in the outside world? And what *is* Aaron? In the bible, (how) is he related to Jacob, Ben, and Esau? Anyone else thinking, perhaps, DEMON SEED? Aaron as a vessel for the Island to walk like a man? Or perhaps for Jacob to leave the island and return to the outside world? Aaron IS still the only baby to be born on the island and live, right? That makes him very special.
* BIG PICTURE *

Keep on keepin on~

happy frickin valentine's day...

Empty. Just as I suspected...

=)

Keep on keepin on~

black thursday: Refrigerator of Wuv...(for IE + Windows)

Haven't found a full-on legitimate fix for the Refrigerator - IE incompatibility, but did manage to cobble together a workaround page which will allow IE users to properly view and interact with the Fridge.


You will be able to view the wisdom of the Refrigerator, create your own messages, and share and send them to friends, however, you will *NOT* be able to view messages that others have sent to you. Apologies for the technical difficulties.

Note: If you receive a Fridge message from a friend and you've only got IE to view it (get something else!), you CAN brute force things by right-clicking on the fridge and zooming in until you can read your friend's sentiments...

Douche bag.

Happy Black Thursday!~

Keep on keepin on~

Schott's Valentine's Day Miscellany

Featured today in the NYTimes.
Keep on keepin on~

black thursday: Refrigerator of Wuv...

Get some tips on your romantic game this Valentine's Day by consulting the random smartass non sequitur wisdom of the Refrigerator of Wuv.

* Black Thursday afternoon... User feedback reveals that the Refrigerator is not happily compatible with IE on Windows. The QA department will get a serious talking-to...

First, visit the Refrigerator. Then, think of the object of your desire.

* Note that scientifically selected audio stimulus is provided to help you with this, so don those headphones or adjust your volume accordingly.

Picture your promised one...

That boy you followed around Trader Joe's on Sunday...

That matchelorette, you know the one, she's looking for a "partner in crime," the one who likes staying in as much as going out? Yeah, that's the one...

The "party of the first part" in that restraining order you keep close to your heart...

Now, focus on the conjured visage of your adored. See the eyes, hear the laughter, and breathe deeply of that singular—some might say, peculiar—aroma of your beloved...

There, just like that...

Now, with your king or queen perfectly envisioned...

Whang your head mightily into the handle of the freezer door!

Once you regain consciousness, marvel at how the refrigerator's words have rearranged themselves to reveal a hidden truth of your intended's thoughts and feelings, your own subconscious, your relationship, and even the prospects of your future together.

For more enlightenment, repeat, ad lib, and fade.

Then go and cry yourself to sleep.

Happy Frickin Valentine's Day!

Keep on peepin on~