The Lostians walk away from their beach… (click to embeggin)
Walking away, backs to the audience water on our right, and since their backs are to us, it is on their right as well.
cue Lost swoosh, cut to commercial, return from commercial we get.
Now they are facing us, water is still on our right, but has switch to their left. Impossible to do on an island without a switchback change in elevation, which given the wave, they are still at sea level, and thus is a production error.
first a nitpick. If your on an island and you walk along the shore with the ocean on your right, the only way the ocean ends up on your left is if you turn around. Yeah, I’m looking at you Damon.
Thoughts on the bigger picture. Lost, in my opinion has largely been about the dilemma of faith and reason. Much like the first season finale’s name ‘Man of Science Man of Faith’, Jack Shepherd and John Locke personify those two supposedly separate people. Lost’s hangup of name dropping a virtual who’s who of philosophers and the panorama of literary references often explore the dichotomy of faith/reason, free-will/fate, etc…
The first three season of Lost have focused on getting to the point of rescue, and the exploration of ‘fate’ in describing and detailing our favorite castaways lives. Some accept their fate and enjoy their new digs, Locke & Rose for example. Others desperately try anything to escape the island Jack, Sayid. The rest fall somewhere in the middle neither thrilled with being lost, nor rejecting the idea of rescue. Locke’s journey has been an exploration of faith, or accepting his situation and finding the best way to realize it. This season he’s been somewhat militant in trying to force his view that the island is the best place for them by systematically destroying everything that can aid in a rescue. Jack journey this year has been trying to find someway off the island that he sees as being counter to his whole life. He rebels and forces Ben to provide him a way home, though foiled by Locke’s interference, then left behind when Locke went with the Others, Jack has wanted desperately to escape, never happy with accepting his fate, or having faith that crashing and surviving on the island had ‘meaning’. Through the lens of Locke’s actions this year, I think Ben’s deceptions begin to make sense. He is also on the side of accepting fate, and living on the island where faith in its powers is somehow rewarding.
The game changing rattlesnake in the mailbox flash-forward of last episode, closely mirrors last seasons’ finale when Locke faced his dilemma of faith in the button pressing, and realizing that he wasn’t entirely wrong to blindly press the button. Jack is shown to struggle in the present day, because of his decision to force the rescue of the survivors against the better (arguably) judgement of both Ben and Locke. Things didn’t turn out as rosy as he had reasoned, and now he wants to go back to the glory days of the island, having power and leading (often rashly) other people.
I expect in the last three seasons this thread between ultimate faith, and extreme reason will continue with a happy middle being where both Jack and Locke end up. Maybe opening a bar up in Cabo or Key West.
Well I didn’t call that our next American Idol would be Jordin Sparks, but DialIdol certainly alluded to that despite our desparate dialing for Blake that upped his votes by something around 500, yer welcome B-man.
I’m talking about LOST. Totally called that the finale would be all on-island flashbacks. I won’t go further in case you haven’t watched, and don’t want to be spoiled. But for me, it was worth staying up until 2am.
What am I in college? Totally Feeling IT too.
I wasn’t too impressed with any of the contestants, Blake and Melinda were aiight, and then lump the rest together. Even Simon had tepid praise for Sanjaya, so it seems the judges are resigned to seeing him continue.
Dial Idol has everyone in the bottom-three tonight, which means for DI there is no standout contestant. Since there are some VFTWers that use DI software to dial for them, that even may skew the number for the Sanjizzle. So there is some hope of redeeming the year with a surprise boot. But the lowest DI score was Lakisha. If Lakisha goes, then that raises Melinda’s value. If Blake can tred water until Chris R. leaves then it is fairly clear that Melinda and Blake will be in the finals. Unless there is a Haley wardrobe malfunction — then all bets are off.
mea culpa, &tc. Last week was a bit hectic, so let me kinda give a summary for my 2 1/2 readers, so you don’t think I fell off the end of the world.
work: last week was our staff meeting, which srsly cuts down on my ability to think outside of work. It is fun in an exhausting sort of way. That couple with
church networking: which I’ve spent too many hours working on getting a windows small business server up and running, sorta, kinda, *sigh*. the hours spent on this has meant less time spent
watching tv: which I haven’t been doing. I’ve caught up a bit with the reality mix (survivor and the amazin race) and the entertainment mix (idol and dwts), and I did catch LOST (expose) which I thought was wonderfully done, and left some interesting questions and plot devices just lying around the island (spiders, walkie-talkie, diamonds). But I’m behind on everything else. Trying to watch The Riches which is good stuff, FX does a good job with the darker dramas, but I’m at least two episodes down, good thing for DVRS.
FPU and Family: We’ve done some work around the casa, last week we (the kids and I) did some yard work, which helped beat back the jungle a bit. FPU budgeting is in the house, which means we are controlling our spending, and using a plan. Good discussions at church during the FPU sessions, have realized that we are in the same bag as many others. Discussions at home on the budgeting planning mix have been mixed, but at least we’re having them, instead of just ignoring the elephant in the room. It will get better, and our debt snowball has us debt free in 30-36 months. We can do it faster if we allot some bonus money, or extra employment income. So it’s all good.
What going on in your neck of the woods?
First, to help set the stage for why I think doing this Financial Peace thing, read this day-by-day strip, g’head, I’ll wait.
back? good.
I don’t want to know how much of our money each month goes to interest. Not just mortgage interest, but credit card interest. My lord, I think we could probably fund all of our children’s college through that Harvard Master’s they’re all gonna want if we just sunk what we pay in interest each month in the mattress. Simply because we went pure and simple daffy crazy in 2005. Sure we had a family vacation to end all family vacations, but we also refinanced/consolidated our credit card debt, then went and doubled if not trebled the credit debt we had. *shakes head*
Seriously, our behavior reminds me of the movie Tin Cup, when in the final day of the US Open, tied, and needing a birdie to possible win, a safe par will force a playoff, Roy McAvoy goes for the green on a long par 4. He hits it, only to have his ball roll back into the water hazard. (we hit it, we had a plan to be credit card debt free like right then, but then rolled into some ‘necessities’) He then proceeds to whale away at the pin from 300+ yards, when a drop and a pitch would have still put him in the playoff. While he descends into pure selfish madness, threatening even his qualification for the following years tournament, the announcer says, “Someone tackle that guy!”
srsly.
There are a couple of slides in the FPU videos that bring this home, one is how much you’d accrue in wealth if you socked anything away at 18% interest. I took the bait and admitted that saving anything at 18% interest is pretty much impossible to sustain, unless you invest in some pretty risky ventures and end up guessing right, and impossible to sustain for the long term. Except that, as Dave Ramsey explained, that is pretty much the investment that banks make all the time, though they aren’t investing in a company, but in their own marketing of credit card debt to the public. Think of how much interest you pay on your lowest interest card. Then look at your savings, and consider if you had done the whole ‘save first, pay cash’ thing, how much larger that savings line could be.
So while we have made our zero based budget, and allotted for a $1000 emergency fund, and giving again (something we haven’t done during our descent into madness) to our church. The line I’d like to keep track of, is what our monthly outlay to the interest line is, and watch that value decrease to zero over the next 2-3 years. That should help us keep on track, I think, I hope.
yah.. i know, I’m teh suck. No recap again, and I still missed last week. So instead of recapping .. (you know where to go for that) I’ll do some theorizing commentaritizing stuff.
First off, the rest of this assumes that you are at least caught up through ‘Man from Tallahasse’, if not, stop go away and come back when you have been properly initiated. I’m not pausing of stuffing this in the more section. Deal.
Points:
Ben plays Locke like a big bass drum. Seriously, all Ben needs to keep a lock (heh) on his power is to tell Locke to do things, and Locke will end up talking himself into it. Think back, Ben is the one that put the seeds of doubt in Locke regarding pushing the button that exploded the hatch. Put his distrust of computers and all things Dharma, that made him discover and destroy the Flame station, reserving a chunk of C4 for any other opportunity to blow things up. Then when he finds Ben, Ben convinces him that blowing the sub is not what Ben wants, when it is exactly what Ben wants. Locke striding out of the jungle is as helpful to Ben as Jack falling from the sky. Which leads to…
The Big Magic Box (not the goracle’s lock box, or so we hope). This is where the island seemingly gives people what they most desire, kinda like Jack Sparrow’s compass. And it is fairly reliable, and a recurring theme that explains many of the manifestations. Locke walks again because he wants it. A bear appears because Walt imagines it. Jack’s dad plays the white rabbit, because Jack is mourning. Kate is reminicing and a horse appears. Eko feels guilt about his brother, and he appears. Yadda Yadda, but it along with seemingly miraculous things appearing, there is also a long string of coincidences that bring this magic box to fruition. Ending up with the revelation that Locke’s dad is on the island, and in Ben’s custody. Is he the ‘Man from Tallahasse?
Speaking of Dads, doesn’t just about EVERYONE on the plane have Daddy Issues? Jack does, Locke does, Charlie does, Claire does, Kate does, Sun does, Jin does (though his Dad doesn’t seem as bad as the others, he just a lowly fisherman, which Jin doesn’t want to inherit, but kinda wishes he does now). Obviously Walt did, and Michael is on the reverse side. Just once I’d like to see a dysfunctional mother, just for a tad bit of fairness.
My theory on Pappa Locke getting to the island is that he is somehow wrapped up with Julia’s appearance on the island, and will be related to Richard (the guy that convinced her to come) along with Ethan. Also there will be some twist to involve the other Tallahasseans Sawyer and Kate into the six degreeness that is another recurring theme. (speaking of 6 degrees it returns Friday… I see nothing about The Nin3… sorry deboobily.)
Also my working theory on Paulo/Nikki is they are so going to be exposed as others, and the Paulo/Nikki backstory ep (Expose – there is supposed to be a swirly thingy on the last e) comes next week. The producers were pumping up the intrigue on this one in there weekly podcast, so that butresses my theory that this will be in island centric backstory, that will reveal how NP infiltrated the group, and the beachies are totally screwed.
Thinking forward, for my local peeps, last night I didn’t get to watch this til like Midnight, because of the AI party at my house (buh bye Stephanie, we hardly knew ya. Sanjay, we wish we never knew you) I’m thinking it would be fun to plot out a season ending Lost party, any interest?
Urm.. no sorry, that is Floating Point Unit.
Nope – Still wrong.
We are starting Financial Peace University at our church. And so I’ve added a category of ‘Green Stuff’ to the list, so you can cure your insomnia reading about silly little financial advice. We’re going into the class with a bit of momentum, in that we paid off our van last month with the bulk of my 4Q bonus.  That is a $425/month bill that goes into our cash budget, which isn’t much of a budget. Now that were are at least treading water without taking a drink every few weeks, its time to also get serious on the rest of the debt load we carry.
This class is a step, and not THE ANSWER but more tools for our tool book, and a chance to continue the momentum and keep financial planning near the front of our minds. Â SO more to come, and probably some belly rumblings as I ‘kick at the goads’ a bit, and realize that the path to being rid of debt is the right path for me, and my family.