Last Wednesday's episode of LOST was precisely the kind of thing that I don't want to see from these writers. They took two characters that we've seen very little of and heard absolutely nothing from, and created an episode for them, apparently just to eliminate them. They could have saved themselves an episode by simply not including them among the survivors. And what's with this scientist/teacher guy, by the way? Where has he been all this time?

They need to stick to the current mysteries of the storyline, and not create new mysteries, such as "WTF are these writers thinking?", and "How can they be so intermittently cool and lame?" Right now, I'm more interested in those mysteries than I am the storyline's conundrums. And that's usually when a show jumps the shark.

It wasn't just the fact that the last episode was irrelevant and contributed nothing to the smaller or larger puzzles, it's that they not-so-cleverly included that damn teacher/scientist guy who tells them he's found a new spider species with a venom that doesn't kill, but creates a coma-like paralysis for a convenient 8 hours. For the spiders, they used what looked like garden variety silver Argiopes. But worst among their choices for this scenario has to be the whole pheromone thing. The teacher/scientist/annoying guy who will hopefully be killed in the next episode by a falling case of Dharma beer, conveniently laid out for us at the start of the episode that, once one of these spiders is killed, it emits a pheromone that attracts all others in its vicinity. I thought, gee, do you think that will be incorporated into this episode somehow?

Come on, Misters Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse...get on track, pick up the pieces of your annoying jigsaw puzzle, and start assembling them. LOST has gone from a show that I really like to a show that I love to hate. And I hate loving to hate things.

In the meantime, this guy's 10 ways to fix LOST are both dead on and hilarious.

Labels: commentary

A while ago my friend Josh sent me this video of the Lyrebird. I had only heard of the Lyrebird from an old XTC song. If there's a more amazing bird on the planet, I'd like to know what it is. To me, what's really astonishing about this is, this bird doesn't seem to require practice. When we attempt to imitate, we usually get better at it over time and with repetition. What mechanism does the Lyrebird have in its walnut-sized brain that allows it to almost perfectly emulate such a variety of sounds in its environment, and without the need to hone each sound as an individual skill? Is practice merely the product of human limitations? This thing is amazing. Turn up the volume and watch—to the end.

Labels: neat-o

Strange. The first day of Spring brought the first day of Springlike weather. Like a switch being turned on. Way to go, vernal equinox. Youdaman.

A few days after scribbling about the eerily mild December and first week of January that we'd had, winter arrived carrying a truncheon which it used to bash us over the head unrelentingly until last Tuesday. In a word, this winter sucked.

It was so cold, so constantly cold, we hardly walked the dog. Instead we let her go unleashed into the back yard to drop her steamers and then lured her back inside with milkbones. I just looked out the window and noticed that I have quite a minefield to clear tomorrow. I actually look forward to it. Fresh Springy air, soft soil, and birds singing tunes as I shovel shit. From mid-January to last Tuesday, I probably moved my body less than I have in any three month period since my infancy. I've got some catching up to do in the fitness area.

Labels: at home

Check out this fast-forward through a drawing of Lost character John Locke. I probably won't bother launching Adobe Illustrator ever again.

Labels: neat-o

I thought I was sitting still when my uncle wrote to remind me that we're moving at 2,160,000 kilometers per hour, which is...you know, fast.

Labels: at home, neat-o