As previously mentioned, I had been pondering the season finale of Lost, the Best Show in All of TV History, and the questions and semi-answers raised therein. When my head begins to explode, as it so often does, I find lists to be zoloft-ish (or is it zoloft-y?). So I finally got my notions together mid-hiatus and here we are.

1. The writers have started a whole new chapter of the show: 

a. no more pushing the button (but will those T-shirts still sell?)
b. no more chillin in the hatch, showers, or cute shots of shirtless Jack shaving. DAMN!
c. the Lostaways (to borrow a TWOP word if I may) are now divided,
d. we will see how the neglected Lostaways/underused extras will react when Hurley tells them what happened (or maybe they won’t because we never see them),
e. we are going to learn more about The Others and their hatch,
f. looks like we are going to see what happens to "the good ones". Is that why the Others took them?
g. we know there are more places on the island and it has more of a history than we had expected (the foot statue, which was one of the highlights of the show),
h. we know why planes and boats crash on the island, but how exactly remains to be seen
i. it doesn’t look like Michael and Walt will be back,
j. there may be newcomers to the island (this idea furthered by Spoilerfix). I hope they are indeed hot, male, and have an accent,
k. Penelope may return in an entirely new kind of storyline- one taking place simultaneously but elsewhere than the island
l. "Look, Skipper, there’s a boat! A real one!"
m. I still miss Ana Lucia and Shannon. I will miss Walt. Damn ABC. Damn them to hell.

2. Obviously, what is going to happen to Kate, Sawyer and Jack?!

3. What did Kate’s and Jack’s blink mean? At first I thought they were saying I Love You (awwww) with the thought in mind that they’d be murdered or god knows what, but rewatching it, it looked slightly meaner, like "we fight to the death at the first chance, are you in?"- Reply blink. Why was Sawyer not included? He has all the best lines. Poor Sawyer, I am really beginning to like him. Sure he’s messed up, but enough already. I swear that if he gets shot, smacked, whacked, punched, caught in a love triangle, almost dies, or one-night-standed for his gun by a potential love interest who then promptly gets killed by the same gun Once More I will send copious virulent emails to the writers.

4. Where the hell are Jin and Sun, and did Saayid find the Others? Did any of them get captured? Will they rescue Kate, Jack and Sawyer? I was rather disappointed we didn’t come back to them and I can’t wait to.

5. Why did the Others capture them right after Jack himself just told Kate in the previous episode "they don’t want us, they could have taken us but they didn’t." Was Jack just wrong or did something happen between then and the "developments" (as the Other who interrogated Michael said)? Of course, what were the developments?

6.What the hell is it that makes the "good ones" so different than the rest of the characters to the Others? Why is Sawyer better than Hurley, for example, or now Locke better than Claire? (And why didn’t anyone come back for Locke anyway yet?) Anyone have any ideas, because clearly this isn’t a moral "goodness", The Others are referring to something they consider good.

7. It’s absurd that Eko lived through that dynamite blast (but I am glad he did, I like his character alot), so it follows that he would have gotten out in time to escape the failsafe detonation. I think he was with Locke the last we saw of them, so chances are we will see them together when we see them again.

8.Is Claire stupid? I mean, I know the level of Weirdness on this island is off the scale, but after the ultraviolet nuclear sky, deafening high-pitch explosion and flying steel door which missed her and her baby by about two feet, she seemed more interested in kissing Charlie for no reason than interrogating him about what the F*^@! that was about, considering he came directly from the source of it.

9. The thing I still don’t get is this. The failsafe blew the whole magnet or whatever was causing the electromagnetic charge (I am stupid and know zip about electromagentism) to smithereens, the thing is gone and done with. But what exactly was the difference between that and letting it go by itself after not pushing the button? I mean, what would the charge have done if not kept at bay- wouldn’t it just have exploded by itself, and I dunno, maybe brought down a airplane or something, but Desmond and the others wouldn’t have had to push the button all those years or commit suicide via failsafe? Everyone’s running around insanely readying for doomsday but what were they afraid of happening? Would it have blown the whole island?

10. Two more things that didn’t add up about that plotline: First, Locke was easily able to pull Desmond into second-guessing the button thing with his "hey, let’s not push the button, fuck the bastards, la la la I’ve lost my faith and I’m having an existential crisis who cares cause I saw a television in another room" crap as if Desmond forgot he already knew what the button did and had in fact seen the start of what would happen if they stopped pushing it. Second, how come Locke evolved from a wise man (without this whole faith thing), to a wise (if slightly erratic) man of faith, to a violent raving adolescent after losing faith? I understand the idea of a psychological crisis, but attacking Eko was just out of character. He seemed to have been comparatively more mature than many of the others yet he just degenerated continually and it doesn’t ring true.

11.Why was FHG (Fake Henry Gale as they call him here) coming for Locke?

12. I wonder if the injections were to protect the body against harmful effects of the electromagnetic charge in the hatch? Are these effects the sickness that both Rousseau and Desmond mentioned? Is the medicine Kelvin injected the same as the ones in the medical hatch and the Other injected when Michael was taken to their camp?

13. Are the Others and the Dharma Initiative people somehow connected? How? Something Kelvin (who worked for Dharma) said to Desmond about "the hostiles"-which may have just been a way to keep him from going outside, maybe not- gave me the idea that he had seen or had a run-in with the Others. Until now I was vaguely assuming they were linked to eachother: they’re both just so freaking bizarre, they had a hatch at their camp, and maybe the Others were originally Dharma members, forgotten or renegade or something. But now I wonder if maybe they were totally different entities completely unknown to eachother.

14.Someone on a forum somewhere made an interesting comment: Why didn’t Walt even ask about Vincent before he left?

15.What is up with "we got more than we bargained for with Walt" anyway?

16. Here’s a summary () of Dicken’s Our Mutual Friend  http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=46755

17. I read in the flight_815 community here an awesome theory that Desmond symbolized Odysseus: these are some of my thoughts on it
a. he loves Penelope 
b.he was on a voyage 
c.he was a soldier, Odysseus was a soldier
d.the statue could have represented the giant Cyclops Odysseus encountered? Maybe it’s a reach but I know that scene felt like a TV reenactment of a Greek myth.

18. So in the flashback with Desmond and Penelope meeting again, was the stadium where Desmond ran into Jack (another day presumably) and was suddenly cheerful and psychic? How could he have predicted Sarah would miraculously not be paralyzed? How could Desmond know this and yet not know he’d later be trapped in a hatch on a semi-deserted island pushing a button every 108 minutes, miles away from the only person he loved? If I knew that I wouldn’t be as cheerful as he was, let me tell you. Oh this weird, weird show.

I hope I got all the main points. At least I know I am now officially, a geek. 

[	Current Location	|	Nobody's Baby Now - Nick Cave	]
[	mood	|	hot	]

For whoever is reading, I should be done with the San Francisco photos tonight when I am in the city. Again, I'll post when I am done.

I thought this TWOP recap I just read (of Jim Henson Workshop-fueled Farscape) was genius. Here's an excerpt: 

….the difference between forcing yourself to read Ulysses and watching this show is the difference between hitting yourself in the head with something heavy, and watching people who are entirely too hot blowing shit up and making out. No fucking contest, Joyce. Sorry. 

*haha* I love the the recapper's out-of-nowhere Jung-ish depth psychological analysis on the episode. But that's why you gotta love TWOP; you never know what to expect. Of course, anything that feeds my Ben Browder obsession is A-list info to me. 

Just wanted to note this link to Spoilerfix's Lost page, providing a much-needed Lost injection (and accurate information as far as I've seen) during the hiatus. My engines are at go already for September. I swear they should bottle this show. 

[	mood	|	aggravated	]
[	music	|	Set Yourself on Fire- Stars	]

Well, I am back and not dead from a terrifying 239,000-foot plummet to the earth below. Yay! Suffice to say, this was my first time flying.

My trip to San Francisco was awesome, only wish I'd had more time. I didn't get to do and see everything I had wanted to. Everything was soooo different from the New York area. People were friendlier and more laid-back, the streets were clean, old Victorian houses were common, the geography of course was full of high hills and cliffs (headlands); my mom even commented about how different the trees were. The Pacific Ocean was amazing, and it's corny (naturally as I am a corny romantic type) but I have to admit I fantasized about this watery passage into exotic lands- a big deal to someone who's never in her life been off the East Coast. 

I think I overcame my famously extreme fear of heights, while hanging off promontories with sheer drops for the right shot, riding across winding mountain roads, and watching the wing of a 747 fly at hundreds of thousands of feet over the clouds of America, Google Earth style. More later.

I'm attempting (unsuccessfully so far) to upload most of my photos- originally I had taken 130- into a gallery online and that link will be coming soon. 

So far, I think it will be http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ariannahiggins/my_photos. Only 4 so far are there. And unfortunately they aren't as large as they are on my HP slideshow, which is a pity since some of these shots are absolutely awesome and better in more detail. But my HP online sharing program works like crap because I don't have much RAM on my computer.

If anyone has a problem with this link, please let me know.

"The artist formerly known as Henry Gale." 

*hahahahaha*  That's why you gotta love Sawyer.

This show has been giving me a Wednesday heart attack the last couple episodes.  I am still REALLY pissed about Ana Lucia though.

Hey check this out:  I have to read or at least skim this book. So far the Lost writers have been choosing books to reference that have themes and titles common to what's going on in the show, but I 'm not sure yet that they *actually* could yield any clues until now. Here's a book actually written for the show. I wonder who the real author is...

Want to hear every possible wacked-put theory in the world about this show? They're all here.

Here is a great new article in USAToday about Lost with lots of fun links.

And yes, I am obsessed. 

By the way, anyone watching Invasion?