For real.

Yes, I’m aware I haven’t posted much here on chuggnutt.com lately. I’ve been focusing most of my writing energy on The Brew Site and Hack Bend recently, since I keep thinking of topical things for those blogs and I really don’t want to become a caricature of myself with "Lost" rants.

Aside from that, here’s a loosely-presented list of things that have been happening:

Thanksgiving was very nice, and low-key. We did the expected big dinner at my parents’ house, though we weren’t a big crowd. We made some excellent pumpkin pies with a gingerbread graham cracker crust. (Gingerbread graham crackers. Seriously. Rachael Ray is on the box.)

I hung outdoor Christmas lights on the house the day after Thanksgiving. The cold air gave me a bit of a cold.

The day after that consisted of generously picking up weary travelers Shannon and Brian from the Redmond Airport; Shannon confessed a creepy desire to pummel saguaro cacti. Whack job.

The two recent books I’ve read/are reading are Stephen Baxter’s Manifold: Time and Manifold: Space. I think Time is the better written of the two, where he actually builds characterizations (mostly; he’s not as strong here as some writers) for his cast, whereas in Space they feel more like mouthpieces or conveniences. Maybe he just got lazy, since he’s sort of continuing the main character’s story, and didn’t feel necessary to rehash… or not. I don’t know. They’re full of interesting concepts, nonetheless.

When I get a chance (which isn’t often), I’ve been thoroughly enjoying "Secret Weapons Over Normandy" for the PlayStation 2. That game completely rocks. I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I do; I think a big part of that is the relatively simple controls used.

(Yes, that’s me: I need simple video game controls. I’m retro that way.)

Anything else? Um… working. Nothing interesting to report there.

I hope everyone’s Thanksgiving is a good one. We’re baking pumpkin pies today (made with a gingerbread graham cracker crust) and heading out to my folks’ house for dinner and family. Enjoy the long weekend!

Something I don’t really get about those people (mostly young?) waiting—no, camping—in line for days outside of stores like Best Buy for the PlayStation 3… Do they not have jobs, that they can take the time to spend a week camping out at a store? And if they don’t have jobs, how can they afford to buy something as expensive as the PS3 (at $600)?

Of course, I don’t get why people would camp out for movie premieres, either. YMMV.

I’m starting to think I’m becoming a parody of myself with these "Lost" posts. I’m also thinking about coining a new phrase: "to pull a Lost." It should be self-evident what I mean by that, but: to start out strong, have everything going your way… and then blow it. Which seems to be what they’re doing.

Actually, last night’s episode was better than it has been this season… mostly. I’ll get into that below after the obligatory spoiler warning…

Here there be spoilers!

I really had no use for the Kate/Sawyer substory this episode, and the Kate flashbacks were, as far as I can tell, totally worthless. Like all the of the flashbacks this season. The only flashbacks I’ve liked so far were Sun’s and Eko’s, but even then (especially as I ranted last week) they had nothing to do with advancing the story!

Face it, guys, the flashbacks are over. They were strong and compelling for the first season, and relevant when the story was still about an unusual group of plane crash survivors actually trying to survive, but at this point, there’s so much else going on that they’re bogging things down and detracting from the actual show.

As far as the Kate/Sawyer thread… Worst. Escape. Ever.

The whole time I was thinking, "Are you kidding me with this?" They’re out of the cages. And they don’t leave. I don’t care if they "broke" Sawyer with the "futility" of trying to escape by being on an island a là Alcatraz… there are plenty of places to hide and evade capture, and there’s obviously a way on and off the island. But no. The level of stupidity here is appalling… I know Sawyer’s role in things tends to be that of the punching bag, but even so. Just kill him and be done with it at this point. I wouldn’t mind.

The main Jack/Ben/surgery story, on the other hand, that was good stuff. Jack isn’t trusting anything the Others are doing, even Juliet’s video message. That’s good. That’s exactly right, in fact. I don’t have much more to say on that except that it was cool. It’s about time he took charge on these bozos.

Now we have to wait 13 weeks until it returns for 16 straight episodes. I’ve seen a bunch of complaints about that, but I don’t mind; in fact, I think it’s a good idea. The same thing has worked for the show "24" (even though they wait until January altogether to start the season) and I’d rather wait for a rerun-free stretch of episodes rather than have two or maybe three episodes followed by a bunch of reruns.

Still not hooked on "Lost" like I was, though. These first six episodes should have been really compelling, a whole lot better than they were. In fact, I think they could have covered everything that’s so far happened in two, maybe three episodes tops: trim out the pointless flashbacks, skip the Eko episode entirely (just have him killed in the hatch implosion instead), skip most of Locke’s goofy "vision quest"/rescue Eko episode, and cut out most of the pointless Others drama with Kate and Sawyer. Get back to telling an actual story, rather than just peppering the show with needless mysteries and having your main characters act stupid.

Hmmm, that would be an interesting project, re-editing the six episodes down to two or three…

I realize I’m about a week late blogging this item (should have been around Halloween), but I just can’t resist: Count Dracula not in the numbers, physicist says. A scientist is playing Scully to scientifically disprove the existence of monsters—vampires, zombies, ghosts, and so on.

Articles like this make me amused and irritated at the same time. I always get a kick of out it when a goofy, kooky topic like this shows up in the "serious" mainstream news, but it annoys me when they purport to have The Answer to things and get their science and logic wrong.

Case in point: his proof against the existence of vampires is flawed:

[Costas] Efthimiou takes out the calculator to prove that if a vampire sucked one person’s blood each month — turning each victim into an equally hungry vampire — after a couple of years there would be no people left, just vampires. He started his calculations with just one vampire and 537 million humans on January 1, 1600 and shows that the human population would be down to zero by July 1602.

Now I’m not saying that vampires do exist, but that’s weak. Yes, you’ve shown us that repeatedly doubling a number increases it exponentially very quickly, but this "proof" is hardly proof. First of all, why the assumption that vampires always make more vampires? If the vampire doesn’t kill you outright, then you become a vampire. I think it’s up to the "source" vampire. No exponential increase.

Second, couldn’t some of these vampires be feeding on animals instead of humans? (Digression: wouldn’t vampire cows be funny?)

Third, I’m sure vampires are reasonably intelligent enough to have figured out that if they keep making vampires, there’s no more food left. I imagine they plan accordingly.

Fourth, where did this "one person per month" figure come from? That seems rather arbitrary.

So his reasoning is flawed. I think he would be better off arguing against the more implausible vampire myths, such as the physical impossibility of their not casting reflections in mirrors.

Or, you know, doing real science.

I love this video mashup of Lost and The A-Team. I might even like it better than the actual third season of "Lost" so far!

This entry stems entirely from a gross misspelling/mishandling of the word "proletariat" on my part. "Protolariat" is not a real word; if you search for it nothing comes up. What better opportunity to create a new word and be the only search engine result for it?

So, what should the definition be? I’m thinking something along the lines of:

• An incomplete model of string theory
• A poorly-executed or work-in-progress "Web 2.0" site; possibly derogatory. "Friendster is a real protolariat"
• Mushroom juice
• A long piece of rope with a knot at one end

Coining new words with the power of the internet!

The "illness" referred to in the title above is our daughter’s; she isn’t seriously sick but has this cough that really kicks in after she’s been asleep for a few hours, and this happens two or three times a night. It really sucks to have your sleep punctured every couple of hours to go administer meds or water or whatever.

Anyway. It was also our daughter’s birthday weekend, so we were running around a lot getting things ready and such. The birthday party went really well, so that’s good. Thankfully they seem to get easier as the kids get older and more autonomous. No need to give the little ones booze and sleep it off anymore.

I’m kidding. (Or am I?)

The only hitch was two kids didn’t get picked up; turns out the mom who was supposed to be picking them up went to the wrong place. Fortunately, we had our minivan and cellphones, so we were able to take the extra kids to where they needed to be. That may well have been the first time we’ve carpooled…

Anyway, I’ll try to get back to my regular blogging schedule. Which hasn’t been very "regular" of late, I know. I’ll get right on that… sometime…

No, this won’t be quite the rant I did last week, just thoughts since watching tonight’s episode of "Lost." In particular I thought tonight’s Eko-centric episode was far better than last week’s, but most of this is just braindump. Maybe some ranting. And oh yeah, huge spoilers.

Huge spoilers ahead, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Mr. Eko

Curtain call for him. Which, for me, pretty much makes last season and their focus on the "Tailies" pointless. I mean, the only Tailie left is Bernard, and he hasn’t even been on this season at all yet. Plus, he’s useless. Even more pointless? Eko’s death in the first place; because his entire flashback sequence basically had nothing to do with the show. Well, other than show Eko seriously kicking some ass, which rocked. You know you were all waiting for that. Hell, we’ve been waiting a season and a half for that. But he didn’t get to whup up on some Others, so we’re left with nothing.

Well, not entirely nothing… we (the viewers) now know a bit more about the Monster.

(My wife had predicted it would be Eko dying tonight. Why? According to the TV guide, the actor playing him is appearing on all the morning talk shows starting tomorrow. Why else would he do that?)

The Monster

Still appeared primarily as black smoke, though now it seems clear that whatever it is can take on other forms as well: Eko’s brother this evening, at least. I’d seen some speculation online as to whether this was the case, and whether it could read minds: apparently so (to both). And Locke admitted what he saw was different than what Eko saw: a bright light. Contrast with black smoke? No, not entirely, because at least Locke, Jack, Kate and Hurley also saw snippets of black smoke at the end of the first season. Makes me wonder what Charlie saw when he saw Eko confront the monster last season…

Not sure why it decided to kill Eko this time around. But the fact that it spoke (as Eko’s brother) implies some kind of intelligence is driving it. Remote controlled? Autonomic?

I guess we need to assume any apparitions that are seen on the Island are actually this monster thing. And that should go all the way back to Jack’s father in the beginning of the first season. Interestingly enough, Eko’s brother’s body went missing, much as Jack’s father’s body did, too. Taken by the monster?

I guess that means they’ve addressed several points from my list last week…

(I wonder if the apparitions of Walt last season could also be attributed to the monster?)

The Others

More crap from them with Jack. Nice to see Jack finally—finally!—start to take some control back. Although I was complaining during the seen with Ben/Henry Gale, who’s confessing that they had elaborate plans to break Jack to get him to do what they wanted, that it would have been the right time for Jack to say, "Why not just ask us?" and call him on the entire weird scenario. Damn writers…

And I couldn’t help but think during this same scene that it smells like another set-up. I wondered if the cheeseburger that Jack was conveniently eating would turn out to be drugged or something.

And of course, Juliet appears later with her hidden message for Jack. Of course we the viewers know that they have to sustain this plot twist for the rest of the season at least, so she’s probably for real in trying to get convince Jack she’s not with Ben/Henry. But Jack? He should just assume that it’s more games, and not trust a single one of them. At all. Assume everything is a lie.

Anything else?

Did the guy with the eyepatch on the screen look like Locke to anybody else? No, I don’t seriously think it is, but they way they cut to Locke and then back made me wonder. That, and how did he know there was suddenly a camera on him?

Eko burned the plane his brother’s body was in last season. Sure didn’t look burnt up to me…

When Desmond showed up last season, they gave him the catchphrase/habit of calling people "brother" as a gimmick for Jack to recognize him from his past. I can’t help but notice that it seems like everyone this season is saying "brother" a là Desmond.