UConn James

After a couple of months on the island, you would think he could have picked up some English. Nowhere near fluent, but when you go to Mexico, you pick up some little things like Tu = you, caliente = hot.... etc. Also, bear in mind that Sun gave him that book full of Korean-to-English words and pronounciation. When he's answering a question asked of him in English, I think he goes more on hand/eye signals (i.e. the Nigerian guy making a plane sign) and what he guesses is the obvious question being asked. Hmmm. Kate and Sawyer sittin' in a tree.... For the teddy-bear, I'd say, being raised by the Others, Alex probably has the mental age of a.... well, her mental growth/health has probably been stunted. Knowing something about storytelling, I'd say with 90 percent confidence that was Alex. He struggled to get service jobs where the clientele is wealthy. Bellhop last night was his first job, waiter last year during his romance with Sun. Last season showed Jin as the son of a poor fisherman. You are right about the domineering part; Jin is very controlling and does what he needs to do, but as shown last night, he does have a sense of doing what's right. He found his friend (that was a really nice part of the ep where Michael says that, after all of their troubles last season) and brought him back. When you think about it, that's what a true friend does; they don't leave you to wander on your own (and not to say that Sawyer is a bad guy, he just has a different definition of friendship and letting other people do what they need to do). I was very wary of the Nigerian guy before but he went along w/o even knowing the guy he was chasing.

Right now, I'd say the Superdome is last, no?

Well, I didn't think it was that bad of an episode. Nice flashback tie-in on finding things; the introduction of Sun and Jin -- how he found her according to that chart thing (anyone get a good look at that? Numbers, etc? My reception sucked for ~ the first half) and "orange" (duey, could it be that the word for orange in Korean is "orange"?). And, finding through happenstance, or is it guided? Was it fate that Sun found her wedding ring? Michael trying to find Walt.... This group of 4 survivors trying to find an easier life, though it will probably lead the Others right to everyone else. And now that you think about it, there has been a LOT of discussion about marriage throughout the show. Ana asking Jack in the airport bar.... Sawyer tonight.... Marriage and what it means. Probably the best English prof I ever had said that virtually all of literature can be boiled down to 'The Search For Family.' Might be interesting to try to think how this could apply to this series. Searching for things happens like that in real life too. You stop looking for something and then there it pops up. There was a connection with Sun losing the ring at the bottle, tho. She buried that w/o hope and dug it up and found the ring (=hope/love). With static, I didn't catch what Kate said when she was dumping all of the messages out --- that she didn't say goodbye? What does that have to do with anything? The Lost group's walkthrough was a really cool camerashot. How many were there? Eight? The one with the teddy bear was probably Alex, no? Hurley's dog crapping $1.35. That was ; something that's really been missing so far this season. The comic relief from Charlie and Hurley just hasn't been there.

Compare this to the NFL execs ruling that head coaches absolutely must dress like beach bums. In one league, you'll be fined for wearing a sweatshirt; in the other, you're going to be fined for wearing a tie or a suit.

There's a church in a nearby town that is named the "Sufficient Grace Church." Not Eternal. Not Everlasting. They want just enough grace to get by, apparently.

Didn't the AP stop doing their poll? Basically on the grounds that they didn't so much want the AP's name/reputation to be involved in the fracas and that they shouldn't be "making the news" (rather than simply reporting it) by doing a poll? Play the standard 10 games with one or probably two bye weeks and enforce this rather than the willy-nilly of some teams playing 12 or some teams having three or four weeks of byes. Then have conference championships or what have you. Top 8 (according to whom, tho?) --> 4 --> 2 --> Nat'l Championship game. Everyone else like the Motor City Bowl, etc., can invite who they want and do their thing. I think these steps would pretty much put it on the same time schedule as it is now.

Meh. Per ep, there's quite a bit of discussion, but probably a little from column A, and a little from column B. There hasn't been all that much shown, or all that much mystery (relatively) introduced; many of the theories have been guessed at. People seem to be just sitting back and watching, and waiting to see what happens --- I think a lot of this season will be like that rather than the "Hmm! Maybe..." of last season.

Actually, Oprah recently revealed that she was raped at ~10. She's devoting a lot of resources to fight child sexual abuse. I.e. she highlighted two of the most wanted abusers who moved and didn't register with their new town; they were booked w/in 24 hours. Nice that she's doing it, b/c lord knows the states (ahem Florida ahem) can't be bothered to. As for LC, it takes some guts to stand up and speak and encourage others to do the same to protect others from being victims. Part of the big problem is that these things are never reported, so it's a societal issue that's swept under the rug.

... He says... After FOUR games.

Everybody looks at me like I'm crazy but Rose is HOT!!!

tgreg, that bluff is a pretty recognizable feature on the island. They're on the other side that they hadn't been to. Jacks' tat seems to have some Asian symbols, and the number 5. And no, I don't have an inflatable Jack; I don't swing that way. Ask LanaK. I didn't watch closely enough to be able to say the bosses are the same person, but Locke's IIRC had a whole experimental hair thing going, this guy had it combed. Maybe Hurley bought the box company the guy went to work for, just for the hell of it?

Actually, the point was that we are all humans and humans often do stupid things, no matter how old, or what job they have. Not trying to excuse him for his bad decisions. Insert 'Teddy Kennedy Is Not Human' joke here.

And then there's the Milawakee Brewers to refute that theory. I was the same way up until about 17 --- diehard, wear Bills clothing, feel down or even physically ill after a loss and feel good after a win. And then I just said, you know what? this is effing stupid. I like to watch sports, but it doesn't make up who I am, how I feel, etc. Sports are a man's social tool; you don't call your buddy up to come over to try out a custard you're making (unless you're in the Not That There's Anything Wrong With That group). Sports on television is the modern version of Fire. You watch a game and it combines all of the things men have been born and become conditioned to be good at. Physical contact sport is a metaphor for war with the balls, clothing, etc as part of the tools of said war; how to win becomes an exercise in a problem-solving to create the best strategy. Then... there's beer! Don't look at it as being anything more than it is and the illusion fades back to a healthy level.

I've had the idea going through my head for a while now that maybe amino acids were invented out of the soil b/c there was some need for us in the process of the earth. This came after an early botany course (would have been my major). Look at our life cycle and the life cycle of any plant and it's basically the same steps. Mitosis and meiosis. Look at the clymedamonas(?) plant under a microscope. They're seperate plants, basically heart-shaped with two flagellum that propel them through the water, making and breaking alliances and stopping at something to take in nutrients. You look at them long enough, and you start thinking they're alive. But they're plants. In the same way, maybe we just amble around and spread nature's seeds (there's actually a lot of seeds that require passage through a digestive tract before they can grow into plants --- and it's something I've tried to think about in relation to the LOST island as a character, attracting people to it to do its "bidding"), thinking we're alive and developed and can think for ourselves and so on and so forth. Shakespeare was keen on these ideas of comparing us to plants, when you read his sonnets and other stuff. There's times that I try to do a whole earth-bound microcosm to macrocosm. Picturing each individual atom and how they interact with each other to produce molecules.... the soduim-potassium pumps that produce the electric currents that transfer the energy that keeps our bodies running.... The social orders that we've made up. The collective of our output that changes the world more every day, usually for the worse. All tied up in Newton's Laws. The breakdown of energy eventually leads to chaos (I see this also in a social/humanities way, not just pure science). Essentially, we're hurtling toward a fireball, I guess. I don't know if we were designed. Probably not. Our bodies are way too imperfect and the world too effed up for me to believe this. We're basically just walking protein and potential energy (work). Some might call this a bleak outlook, devoid of purpose and direction, etc. I don't give it much mind. My purpose is to wake up tomorrow and do whatever it is I need to do. Accept whatever is in store for you, whatever happens, and try to go forward and why bother asking questions that you'll never know the ansswers to?, that is the definition of Grace. "Drink a bit of wine, 'cause we both might go tomorrow." And when we go, we break down into calciums, carbons, oxygens, hydrogens.... It's a little cryptic, but we simply go back to the earth and enter the nitrogen cycle. I like the fact that I'll be pushing up daisies someday. I've written this stuff out before, and it's really deflating and incomplete to reduce these concepts to words. Words here that are probably jumbled and hard for anyone to understand.

It's still to be seen if Tom Clements has seen the light and realizes that the dink-and-dunk 10-yard passing game combined with a LOT of power running has been successful in the AFC East for a reason.

Let me guess at the coming responses.... "That's different."

I don't think anyone "hates" him or doesn't appreciate what he's done for the franchise, just doesn't feel he's worth $9M for the whole 60 yards he gets. His production has dropped, he catches passes but he sure didn't help JP out at all by not coming back on his route when he was in trouble. He doesn't really have that escapability anymore. Not blaming him for getting older, but it's a situation similar to Jerry Rice in his last year in SF, or like Troy Brown now in NE. We've got several young guys nipping at his heels that won't have much of a dropoff, and he makes a lot of $ that needs to be spent elsewhere (ahem OL ahem).

A Jersey wedding? Hope you've got a money tree in your back yard....

Watch that game and you wonder what Charlie Weis would have done for the Bills. He took a lot of mediocre guys and installed a plan that highlights their strengths. To think that he wasn't hired b/c NFL assistants were in danger of all being hired away by the time he could get them, and/or he was asking for too much $. I've become soured on TD as much for this as for his lack of really building up the OL.

The rain has now stopped and assessing some of the damage.... - The lake in my backyard is at the highest level the old-timers here have ever seen. - Lots of roads around that have just been washed away. Several dirt roads around here just got "gulley-whomped" to use one of the terms of an old weatherguy in CT; several hundred feet by about 20' in height are just gone. Lots of bridges are out. - My brother is a police officer in a town nearby. He called tonight and said there have been accidents up the wazoo. People driving through water, hydroplaning and crashing. He had to swim out to rescue a few people who were stupid enough to drive into deep water. - A guy died at a campground a couple of towns over (my dad has a site there and knew him) when the ground under his ATV collapsed. Tried to push it out of the hole and the ground gave way more and water poured in from a river nearby. Drowned trying to save a $1,000 ATV. I'm sorry, but that's Darwin at work right there. - Prediction of sustained winds from 25-40mph for the next couple of days. With all of the water making the ground soft, we're probably going to have a lot of downed trees. If you're in the affected area, stay inside and away from trees and branches! Fill up water bottles, b/c there's a good chance of the power going out.

Watched the rerun of it tonight, and there's something pretty big that wasn't mentioned, and probably one of the bigger things from this filler ep. Claire found the bottle with all of their notes, and her and Shannon give it to Sun. So, those three, who had been featured in a big soliliquy scene in the finale around the boat launching, appear again, mostly w/o words. That it washed back up at least means there was trouble, and they know the likely scenario is that the boat failed and Jin, Sawyer, Michael and Walt are all dead. Sun takes the bottle and buries it in the sand. She's in grief, but doesn't want to ruin the hope of rescue that the raft meant to everyone, b/c if they knew what happened, it would just drain the desire to go on. Another thought on why the small group of survivors were so suspicious might be the handcuff on Jin's wrist. They probably figured if he was cuffed in the real world where there are enforced rules.... And I still hate Analucia. "B word!"

My father has the same model. Excellent gun. It's got some kick when you first try it, but once you get used to it, it's not that bad. Many of the 9mm peashooters suck for stopping power, and a lot of police departments are finding that out; you shoot something with that .357 once and it's going down. Called him up b/c he knows everything and reads all of the gun mags cover to cover. He basically reiterated stuckincincy's post, a little confused by how it might wobble when in place. Said you probably should take it to the gunsmith and have him check it out. The vast majority of those guys won't play grabass and if there's nothing wrong, I doubt they'd charge you. And *ahem*, just to make sure, you'll need to buy a few boxes of ammo and test it out at the range. Any excuse you can get, man.

Anybody see USC #39 walk up to the fumble scrum and grab a ND player's foot and twist it 180*? That's the most chicken thing I've ever seen on a football field. And if I'm the ND player, I'm waiting at the USC bus ready to kick his f---ing ass.

And good marksmanship.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. ~10 seconds left with the clock ticking down, 3rd down, and the ST coach sent the FG team out there for a hurried kick. Snap at 1 second, kick is blocked, OSU returns for a TD and they're back in it just down 17-14 rather than 20-7. Wow. Wow. The MSU coach is pissed! And rightfully so. In other notes, for all of those OSU fans who would revel in saying MR. Teddy Ginn! the entire preseason.... He has been an absolute non-factor this year, probably by thinking he could skate through practices and anything like actual work. HANDS! HANDS!