Random Commands

For those not following my @LOST_WFTB twitterfeed, we’ve shifted to an undisclosed location for a little vacay.  So when we got here, I got setup to work from our vacation hut (aka Grandpa and Auntie’s house.

It’s TOTALLY AWESOME.  It’s a HATCH… I need some Dharma labels to trick it out, but here are some photos for a tour. (click to embiggify)

View from my workstation.  Note the concrete construction and eerie lighting. I haven’t noticed any magnetic anomalies, but that’s cuz Locke stole my compass. 

Here is a view out the back entrance of the hatch.  Note the black shirted others.  They may be aligned with Smokie.  Investigating.

Around the corner are shelves full of provisions! I’m not gonna tell Hurley about this, or he’ll tell Dave, and once Dave knows, EVERYONE will know.

This is my computer setup, dual screen greatness.  Note the VPN FOB above the keyboard this is important to be able to periodically punch in the numbers to communicate with Mittelos while on wokring vacay.

Here is an alternate shot looking back at my workspace.  The others stopped by to watch a movie, but I chased them out so I could do the important work of saving the world, brutha. An upgrade from Super8, I think I may do my re-watching from that chair.

The hatch even has an exercise station.  I had to chase this other off of it, incase he hurt himself, I haven’t found the first aid-kit yet.  I haven’t found the armory either, but I’ll be sure to change the combination one I find it to keep the others out.

Namaste and 4 8 15 16 23 42

First and foremost, the goal is the same, Re-watch (or watch for the first time) all episodes of LOST, sequentially before the beginning of season 6.

That is what we’re both trying to do, and I’m going to continue to do my best to promote not only LOST (aka the greatest tv show evah!) and re-watching efforts.

We started early, admittedly off the cuff (read the first post of this series). We focused on a twitter based live tweeting experience and that has been our strongest point.

Lost Rewatch seems to be blog and message board based with some of the biggest and best LOST blogs/sites/wikis participating and promoting. Here’s a sample list from one of the participating sites: “A bunch of Lost bloggers, including Doc Artz and Friends, JOpinionated, Sledgeweb and the Lostpedia Blog”

I think it’s entirely possible to do both, if you have the time, and inclination.  Join us for a  LOST_WFTB Live TweetUp, and then you’ll be more than prepared when Lost Rewatch watches the same episode two weeks later. (For instance, this week their re-watching episodes 1-4, while we live tweeted episode 9-11.)

I don’t think its a competition.  I’m not treating it as a competition.  The point is to enjoy LOST.

So do. Enjoy. Lost.

Earlier this morning we had a few WFTB tweeps had a  Twittersation about Season 5 stuff.  Click more to read the tweets, and comment in the comments.  All comments are welcome, except spam which will be placed where there is gnashing of teeth.
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For all you non-nerds, RFC means Request For Comment.

Which leads me to a confession.  I’m a 41 year old father of four.  I have degrees in Computer Science (B.S.) and Information Technology Management (M.S.).  I spent nine years in the Navy.  With that back ground, I’m an expert at acronyms.  I totally get those.

My problem is, I have two teenage daughters (okay, really one is 12, but still she ACTS all teenagerey) that are starting down the path to adulthood.  Since starting WFTB I’ve noticed a few of my followers are of the same species of my daughters (teenaged girls).  I’ve also noticed that they talk with a weird coded language at times and I need help.  Please my role as a respected father is in your hands!

I need a crash course on Shipping, and by that I mean relationshipping. Namely how this whole shipping referencing works.  You know, so I can be down with it, when I banter with my girls.

I get some references (Jate = Jack + Kate), but is there a rule or do you just make it up?  Conventions? Does the male come first? (Sake = Sawyer + Kate??!)

If I try that with Jin and Sun: Ji(n) + (Su)n = Jin

That’s not really unique, should it be Jiun?

Rose and Bernard (Ronard? Bese? Bernase?)

What about Sawyer and Juliette? Sawette? Julyer?

Jack and Juliette? Jatte? Julck?

*sigh*

Help me out here folks, quick!  Summer is here, and I’ll be spending time on the road with my daughters and I’ve gotta be able to relate!

Help me out in the comments.

Disclaimer:  The above was written by a member of Team Edward – don’t hate.

As part of the re-watching experience, one of the fascinating things to examine is the role of John Locke in the epic battle being waged.  In the first few episodes, John Locke is portrayed as a mystical guru that is in tune with the island.  He saves Jack from certain death falling off a cliff, coaches him towards leadership of the survivors.  He sees Charlie’s battle with heroin addiction, and gives an impassioned speech about how the struggle makes one stronger like a moth coming out of a cocoon. Then we see a darker side of Locke, encouraging Sayid to torture Sawyer, indicting Sawyer as the saboteur of Sayid’s triangulation experiment.

Re-watching just shows how morally ambiguous they have portrayed Locke from the beginning.  The episode Walkabout is revealing.  Locke’s pre-island paralysis is hidden in plain site for all of the flashbacks, his ability to walk miraculous, his determination to become the hunter of the group fulfilling his preparation for a walkabout.  The lead up to the final memorial scene is interesting.  Just a few hours before, John Locke came face to face with the smoke monster.  Then Jack sees his father disappear into a clearing, and after chasing after the white rabbit, finds Locke emerge from the brush covered with blood, hauling a dead boar.

There are several theories on the role of Locke, who is influencing him? How early?  Is he dead from the beginning?  Was he scanned by Smokie but allowed to live?  Did he die from the first encounter and is possessed by Esau?

Here is a place to discuss and talk about the role/character of Locke. I think he is the key, not only in the struggle between Blackshirt(Esau) and Jacob. Let’s hear your theories.

The Twitter conversation that sparked this post is below the fold.

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If you’ve read my blog at all in the last week, you’ll know I’m embarked on the ambitious project of re-watching all of the LOST episodes to date before the beginning of Season 6.  So, please excuse me if I get a little (my daughter would say more than a little) obsessed with the topic of LOST.

The show itself is masterfully produced, the themes a seemingly endless maze of twisty little passages all the same. Going back to the beginning and re-watching it my thoughts return to what might be the best starting point for a potential möbius strip through time:

BLACKIE: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?

JACOB: You are wrong.

BLACKIE: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.

JACOB: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

This is the struggle where our beloved Oceanic survivors were plunged.  I view this series through my series of lenses, part geek, part pop-culturist, part husband, part father… However, the over arching filter is that of my faith, and the more I watch the early episodes, the more I’m reminded of a passage from the bible:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. – Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)

We have been viewing the continuing drama from the eyes of men, and have allowed the hidden battle of two mystical opponents to be obscured by the characters we’ve grown to love.  A struggle summed up by John Locke while explaining a game of backgammon to Walt in the series pilot.

LOCKE: Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand years old. That’s older than Jesus Christ.

WALT: Did they have dice and stuff?

LOCKE: [nods] Mhhm. But theirs weren’t made of plastic. Their dice were made of bones.

WALT: Cool.

LOCKE: Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.

Seeing the characters from the beginning with that perspective shines new light on everything. Our characters, are they nothing more than pawns played against each other in an unseen game, where chance, choices are played along with strategy and foresight on behalf of higher powers?  Is Locke’s guru like wisdom, as we observe early in the first season could colored by influences of one side versus the other?  Do the manipulations of the various factions in the struggle effect the different passengers on the flight, and start to ripple outwards as we’re introduced to more of the inhabitants of the island?

Those questions along with others are worthy of inspection as we’re introduced again to Rousseau and Ethan, the mysterious, nameless whispers in the jungle, the shrouded others that plot against those plopped on the island by the coincidental fluke in the crash of Oceanic flight 815.

I’ll use this space to ramble more as I worry these thoughts in the back of my mind.

Namaste.

A whole lotta minutiae, not sure if any of it means anything, but I spent sometime playing with the numbers and the Lostpedia timeline:

No pretty formatting, just numbers.  Maybe it’ll help someone sleep.

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We all had a good time watching the first 5 episodes over this past week.  This morning I was inspired by a fellow tweeter to mix it up a bit and add some fun to this challenge of our to watch the whole thing.  It’s supposed to be fun.  So here is a simple little puzzle for you.

The following six screencaps (label them A-F left to right top to bottom) are from S1E4 – Walkabout.  The challenge is to put them in the correct order.

This is a two part question:

1. Label them in the order they appeared in the episode (HINT: screen cap D was the first to appear so that would be D1)
2. Label them in the order they occured in the larger time line (HINT in this case D3)

Send me your answers in a twitter DM (d LOST_WFTB).

Also in the comments or tweet anything special you see in the screen caps.  For instance Screen cap E has something hiding in plain site that gives away Locke’s condition before the final scene in the sequence shown below the fold.

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Reprinted with permission from LOSTblog.com

White Rabbit is a Jack centric episode, that tell two stories.  The first is about his relationship with his father and the second it about his relationship with his father. Bah! Well kinda.  The flashbacks flip back to Jack as a kid, and continue to his getting on the plane in Sydney with his father in a coffin.  On Island Jack is feeling the pressure of being the leader, and not sleeping very well, and still haunted by the death of his father.  The survivors are caught up in the quest for drinking water, and it all starts going Lord of the Flies until the ending scene.

Last night’s Live Tweet was well attended, but we had some technical difficulties.  Twitter search went down about an hour before our viewing started, then didn’t come back up until after the viewing ended.  This pretty much left us using the All Friend Feed to follow the conversation, rather than being able to rely on the #s1e5 hash tag in search to filter out non-live watchers.  I made a PDF of mine to use as a transcript of the live tweet.  You can read the whole thing here. S1E5 WhiteRabbit LiveTweet Transcript

One WFTBer, MollyFaraday escaped the curse of the broken search by live tweeting the episode early, so you can see her thoughts here.

The rest of the Live Tweeters were: @LOST_WFTB, @ccollinsmith, @batchout, @DieCer, @KatGirl44, @ASHATL, @kristin_madeja, @justinkeyes, @bejaedblost

This time I asked for some summary tweets in #LOST140 format, but I didn’t get a lot of those.  So I’m gonna write a re-cap, then add some of the tweets at the end.  Read the transcripts.

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LOST_WFTB S1E5 White Rabbit Transcript (read from bottom up)