UConn James

The thing with the visions of Locke and Des is, who/what is sending them; and for what purpose? To make the vision happen, or to thwart the harm in it? Locke has gone on and on about 'the island' being behind it, but it's bunk. He doesn't know, he's guessing. The flashback conversation re: Issac and God's sacrifice test... Des said something like why was the sacrifice really needed anyway, and the head monk said You need to think more about the meaning of sacrifice. Jack is probably just a little snakebitten, trying to figure some things out (including who to trust), trying to hold onto his leadership role (he had to verbally stick up for Juliet, several times) and add in that a woman he had a romantic interest in is going in another guy's tent. Kudos that Jack seems to have gotten over his obsession problem, as he was playing ping-pong and getting caught up on matters of state since his departure. Good point about Hurley. Notice last week (from the repeat) that his conversation with Juliet "Charlie got angry. We buried Ethan over there" was the cool-dude's version of a threat... Subtle note that 'People who hurt one of us get a dirt nap.' It's kind of re-assuming his bumbling sheriff's deputy status (i.e. how he took the census after Claire was attacked), after he came back from that dock and told no one --- until he was grilled about it --- that Jack, Kate and Sawyer were captive. BTW, the Flash would --- and did --- so beat Superman in a footrace. Gotta laugh at Jin's flashlight face too.

Lean in and say in a calm voice, "It is a common courtesy to remove your hat during the Anthem." If they remove it, all right; if they don't, that's all right too and at least you said something. Sometimes people just forget they're wearing a hat. As for being old school --- I actually found a passage in my town's late-1700s records where the men voted on a measure to be allowed to wear hats indoors during the cold weather.

In the 'Up-is-down, black-is-white' school of thought, you forgot: 5. Since Marv had a cup of coffee at the table, we will shortly be signing a long-term deal to revive Pepsi Clear at consession stands.

After Columbine, the police only released the videos, writings, etc. of the killers ~ a year later and only b/c they were forced to by FOIA. There is such a thing as respecting the families. Giving airtime to this, especially so soon, is sick. It is policy for most orgs not to air so-called martyrdom tapes; that is what it was, same look, same feel, same tone of blaming others for problems w/in himself. 'Journalism ethics' classes only taught the creeps how to justify actually airing this crap and giving him what he wanted. Same thing here, minus a needed debate of the allowing of non-citizens to purchase firearms.

Bull sh--. Our former state police commissioner said he'd rather his police crack down on weavers, tailgaters and ---since they passed the law --- cell phone drivers (read: erratic, no-look) b/c they cause so many more accidents than marginal speeding it's not even funny (77, tho, is pushing it). In three years on a city force, my brother said that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the car accidents he's covered (and it's lots, considering they give those to the newbies) had cell phones involved with one or both drivers. Let's see the cameras for what they are. A civic cash generator. Let's see what happens to the NJ gov's police chauffer. He was driving 91 mph, which led to the accident, to get the guv to the Imus-RutgersWBB meeting (really important, that! ).

You know, whenever I hear the line of reasoning of 'We're going to flout common perception and instead of getting a fulltime starter at Position X, we're looking for a player who'd more blah blah blah. We think we have someone on the roster who plays third-string at Position Y who can do it; he'll learn the job in two weeks of camp.... while he's also learning his other position' I get this shiver up my spine. You just hope this doesn't come back to bite you in the 6. And, might I add, people speculate about where FBs will go in the draft, they speculate where RBs go in the draft. They are usually wrong, and especially recently FBs aren't selected until the 5th round despite some teams blowing smoke. FB/RB tweeners like Leonard have an even tougher row to hoe, being certainly neither one nor the other.

I've actually met the writer. He said he used to work at a dairy farm for $ for college back in his time. Co-started a statewide arts mag several years ago that gained its footing. And yes, the HA does keel to the left. That said, I don't doubt the veracity that all of the questions are pre-selected. The WH communications staff knows what they have in this president. Sh--, this is a man who, with text in front of him, regularly goes "...............uhh .............. .............. ........................ .......................... <disembodied giggle, perhaps at a poop joke he just remembered>............................. ........................ uhhh .... ............................ ..... uhhhh......" and uttered that he hoped that man and fish could live together peacefully. The reason I mention the farm work is that it closely resembles the model of the news cycle in this country. Pols/PR/etc. dump their swill into the media trough, it is consumed entirely w/o discretion, digested through several stomachs, and we the people are forced to pick through the feces to see if we can find anything like a clue to what is really happening. They are happy to get all the swill they can eat and until the people start asking questions themselves, are perfectly content not say anything to overly displease those who feed them.

Well, it's Desmond's Catch-22 that if he lets happen what is ultimately fated to happen, it means Charlie dies. If that's right about the picture, that is such a trip!

So.... Seems evident that the writers wanted us to reflect back on the Locke-Boone "sacrifice." Instead of thru a dream, it happens close to real-time, in broad daylight; and rather than pyschadelic metaphors like 'Theresa falls up the stairs, theresa falls down the stairs; Desmond receives true-blue visions. And instead of sacrificing Charlie as Locke did Boone, keeps saving him. All that was to change, Desmond thought, but when the moment comes, he can't bring himself to let it happen. Seems like the same kind of frustration is getting to him as punching in the code for 3 years; it's a task that he has to do to save Charlie instead of the world. Seemed like before the cut to commercial Hurley & Charlie had a WTF moment where they knew Desmond planned on letting Charlie die. I think the question going forward is, does Charlie keep 'letting' Desmond interfere. Thing to take from the flashbackS, I guess, is that Desmond is kind of... destined to fail at things. Jilted the girl from tonight; dumped Penny; entered the race and washed up on mystery island; the hatch imploded; he 'fails' by saving Charlie. Also, we know why he calls everyone 'brother.' The heavy accents always give me a little pause with my hearing, and CC always blocks out too much of the picture. Still, I enjoy the Des eps, as he has a great depth of character and sense of humor (the jokes he tells Penny had me ) despite all that happens. Also, who was in the picture on the head monk's desk? It flashed for a split second. Anyone have TiVo? As for the visions and real life, there were the red specks against the dark sky, which evidently were the flashing beacons on the flightsuits, which would mean that one of them is out in the ocean? What was the splash (sounded heavy-ish...) --- the helicopter proper, some sort of supplies, Penny? This was obviously the result of the scene from the S2 finale. What was the book that fell out of the pack --- "Catch 22" in a different language? What was that w/ Kate+Sawyer, that she was crying as she was jumping on him. That's pretty odd. And to continue from last week's discussion, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she does get preggers and becomes the answer to Everything.

For damn near any TeeVee show, it's always the case that people say seasons past were the best and the current season is subpar/crap. For me, S1 was the best; mostly due to the sheer originality of the series and freshness of everything that was going on as it was a new kind of show. That has subsided since then; viewers know things, viewers expect things, viewers want answers. I've always compared it to reading a really great novel one chapter at a time, over the course of several years.... you know, something like Dreiser, of whom critics often write that while his words, sentences and chapters are like ordinary bricks, how he puts them together that makes a beautiful building.

Actually, it was said about McGahee. Just never delivered.

Photographic extrapolation.

Quite reasonable doubts, actually.

Sept. 9 DENVER BRONCOS (Loss) Sept. 16 @ Pittsburgh Steelers (Loss) Sept. 23 @ New England Patriots (Loss) Sept. 30 NEW YORK JETS (Win) Oct. 8 DALLAS COWBOYS (Win) Oct. 21 BALTIMORE RAVENS (Loss) Oct. 28 @ New York Jets (Win) Nov. 4 CINCINNATI BENGALS (Win) Nov. 11 @ Miami Dolphins (Win) Nov. 18 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (Win) Nov. 25 @ Jacksonville Jaguars (Loss) Dec. 2 @ Washington Redskins (Win) Dec. 9 MIAMI DOLPHINS (Win) Dec. 16 @ Cleveland Browns (Win) Dec. 23 NEW YORK GIANTS (Win) Dec. 30 @ Philadelphia Eagles (Loss) 10-6

Lots of good observations in there. Point #3 especially, something I hadn't picked up on with the intentional pairing of Kate & Sawyer, esp. in light of the Kate-centric ep's "You can't help who you love" mashing in with her dilemma of who to choose. In part she wanted to reject who she was; to wit, she killed her real father and hates that she feels something deep for Sawyer --- but then her inability to fit/feel comfortable when she did get married to a good man, and her connection with Jack. In essence, she doesn't want to be po' white trash but she is, and try as she might to change it, she can't escape it. Which kind of ties back into Desmond's ep that if something is meant to be/fated, it will happen eventually. I dig your point #5, something I was thinking myself and didn't have the time or initiative to write down. The Others seem to know so much about the Lostaways, it can't all come from public records, etc. And the stories all merge so much, it can't be coincidence that they're all there. When the plane crashed and Ben said to get a list, it's quite possible that it would be a list of who was where --- the plane crashed in two sections. I do not doubt that the Others do have that connection to do things in the outside world, and Ben's "Hurry back" was curious. Ben is a man of his word; I don't question that. But it doesn't stop him from making promises and then having other people break them i.e. promising to get Jack and Juliet off the island with the sub, then playing his game with Locke to get the sub blown up. Ben's hands are clean from breaking his promise. The writers have put in several homages to The Office. I've only seen a couple eps of the British Ricky-Gervais version, which... isn't my brand of humor. And I don't watch the American version. Duey, the bolded part, I believe, is one of the BIG things of the series. If Kate is preggers, it might fit into Abrams/Lindelof original plan that they wanted Jack to die in the pilot and Kate to be the hero. As of now, she is kind of a co-hero who volunteers to solve so many problems. Kate could be a hero that they first invisioned if her child is the first (questionable) to be both conceived and born on the island. I also wouldn't say Charlie is a "good person" or that Shannon was a "bad person." They are both really in the middle. Tho we don't know what distinctions the Others draw on --- does drug use, attempted theft, etc. make Charlie a bad person? Does the fact that other people (step-mother) being total a--holes that made you into what you were make Shannon bad?

Some of my last post had a response to the first paragraph.... Perhaps there is a link b/w the inability to get cancer and the inability to survive pregnancy. Something intrinsic to the island. Maybe magnetics, maybe something else. Ironic that the price of life/health is the inability to continue life/give birth. For each ying there is a yang, for each black there is a white. Hmm?

See, I'm not seeing all that. If her ulterior motive was to join in with the Lostaways, she prol'y wouldn't have bogarted Kate when she opened the door to deliver food and then again in the jungle, and she wouldn't have given away that she had the key to the cuffs. Kate suspects her, Sayid suspects her. No matter what Jack says and no matter what Juliet does. They both know that the Others will give a little and then play you like a fool/use you in their experiments. How many times has Jack been totally, totally wrong about the Others and what he thinks they'll do, and Sayid has been totally, totally right? I think trusting Juliet is Jack's last mistake as the Leader. Notice the last moment of last night was her tying that knot forcefully; she's going to do what she needs to do and go back to the Others and Ben, who showed last night that he is "a man of [his] word." She does believe that; and by doing this plan she will either try to get off the island.... or, she stays on to continue the research. Another thing she does believe in is the worthiness of the Others' cause. We probably shouldn't try to read into things with her. Something else.... If the Others can cure cancer wily-nily, then why did Ben need Jack to do the surgery? Well, we know why; Ben's cancer immunity isn't working anymore and he's scared about that. Why the need to be so secretive about it, tho? Note that they went to an entirely different island when they could have stayed on the main one; only a select group of the Others were there. Does he need to hide this from the rest of the group, and why? Did many of the Others group see him sick? Call me out if I'm wrong.

Touché! Do I need to go sit in the corner now? There was just something soooo "12 Monkeys" about that scene, tho. I kind of got caught up with that theory. She well could have been a 'seer' (she was never billed as one, as opposed to the 'seers' where it was a Lostaway who did the initial-encounter approaching); just that it would seem odd for a woman selling jewelry to suddenly go into that unless she had been planted there for the specific purpose. The nature of what brought the plane down was revealed last season. To wit, when Desmond was lookjing at the printouts from the Pearl station and saw that the crash coincided with his not entering the numbers in time and the 'system failure.' That's not something the Lostaways are going to be hunting him down for --- they know. I would have to check to be 100 percent certain, but yes, I believe she did. Which, evidently, would make the phenomenon something that had developed w/in those 16 years.

"I'm cool about time." I think especially after the Desmond ep, you have to accept there's going to be some kind of time travel/worm hole things brought in. How could the Others have put the woman in the jewelry store to tell Desmond all that unless it had already happened? They looped back (and I'm thinking in a "12 Monkeys" kind of way --- there was something about the way that scene was shot that was familar) to keep Desmond from trying to make a free will decision to not do the things he had the visions of. Like I said at the time, that ep is going to turn out to be one of the penultimate for understanding what is going on. But yeah, any connection w/ 9/11 is likely dubious. Besides it being a major event that forces the Others to speed up their plan to save humanity and take a more hard-core Utilitarian Ethics approach (notice then, that Juliet's ex would likely have been hit by the bus very soon after 9/11. Mideros/Others/Dharma needed her tout suite, so they killed him). I don't think the writers want to go anywhere near involvement in 9/11; that would be such a poison pill/jump the shark moment.

"So it goes." (Damn.)

It's not that I was surprised by it. Just wowed by the level of writing even so.... and Juliet on the bed. I think she does exactly what Ben wants. Why would she? There's got to be some other way off of the island. She wants off.... but I think you have to also wonder if she wants control if/when something happens to Ben. From her past, remember, she is subservient to dominant/'higher-up' men. Once they're out of the way (her ex-husband killed in exactly the way she had described, too), she's ready to take a gamble. So, every woman who's been preggers on the island has died. Claire has not. But the Others want the Lostaways to think that she could w/o their vaccine. Ben had cancer, when no one else on the island had cancer. The Others/Dharma can cure cancer (only, not in Ben's case? why? Locke hit a nerve w/ Ben when he suggested that the island's healing power wasn't working for him anymore) non-invasively. Why haven't they shared the secret? If you've seen the Dharma stuff on youtube (that the creators put on there), human overpopulation may be a part of the number that they are seeking to change; therefore, allowing people to die of cancer isn't a bad thing to the Others, in the interest of the human race surviving. Since the farmhouse place where Mikhail(?) got all the information from blew up, are the Others now w/o their eyes and ears on the outside? This ep showed a big reason why he, as a true believer, would rather die than reveal anything by being interrogated/tortured. Did anyone catch what Ben said when Juliet asked him how he got the medical records? Before the end of the season, I want to see something re: the S2 finale with Penny and those two guys in the listening post.

No. But then again, no one thought Warren Moon would be, either. Tho, I think there's other reasons why WM got it; was the 'mobile QB' prototype who was also a great passer, stats, a consideration that if the teams around him were just a little better.... For Drew, his main team won the SB(s) only after he went down and out.

Dude! This show is just awesome.

While we're in the shower? Pervert!

Whatsamatter, Pete? Hartford didn't make your list? I'm very provincial myself. Farthest west I've ever been was the Ralph, farthest south was the Bronx, farthest north is central Maine & St. Lawrence Seaway, farthest east is the Mass. coastline. But even within these confines, I've been to some pretty cool places. I don't need to drop names. In Maine, I've been to a natural spring that only a few townfolk know about where the water is better than any I've ever drank. I've walked the floor in Gampel Pavillion. I've looked at Babe Ruth's plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I've looked at the gold timothy fields shining in the sun and blowing in the wind at my grandparents' 350 acre farm in WNY. I've hunted amid bare mountain laurel and fished in both the clearest and the darkest (cedar trees turn the water absolute black) of ponds. I've walked down a swamp road with my german shorthaired pointer and placed flags at the graves of men who fought and died for this country in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. I've been at a house where I helped construct walls that will still be standing 300 years from now (excluding vis. force majuer clauses). I've stared at Monets and hundreds-year old pottery in the MFA. And a thousand other spots that I'm perfectly contented to be in as long as there is good food, good humor, good conversation and good works.