After my son posted with the REAL plant from which Wasabi is made from, he was horrified when we came up with many nicknames for the said plant…
Somehow I doubt he would include the picture with him holding this in his scrapbook for this trip which is to be shared with his classmates upon his return…
Posted via email from The Absence of Alternatives
Posted via email from The Absence of Alternatives
Dear Mr. Gleeson,
I know this sounds like a cop out to you, but here is a short, incompletely researched response to your question to which I have not responded to. But I have other duties to tend to, such as packing for our long trip to Asia which commences tomorrow, (Here is a picture as proof), finishing my work (unfortunately, I am one of those women that are “uppity” and need to prove themselves), and taking care of my children (hence the second part in my Twitter ID “Submom”). Anyway, enough with the violin in the background…
Though I am never an avid fan of any TV shows… On second thought, I do recall not being able to sleep when the BBC TV series, “Jane Eyre”, was on many years ago. Kind of silly, I know, since everybody knows the plot already. But Timothy Dalton was quite dreamy as Mr. Rochester. By the way, what happened to the guy? Anyway, I digress…
Where was I? Oh, yes, I can understand your demand for a proof for my accusation that the writers of Lost have been known to change the plot when one of the mysteries was “figured out” and became public consensus through the many fan sites. I swear that I have come across an article talking about this, quite a few years ago, otherwise I would not have formulated such an impression since I do not watch the show. None at all. For those who simply came upon this blog post of mine without knowing the back story of why I am writing this post, please curb your anger. Yes, I know I should not be talking about a show I have not even seen. It’s a long story. Suffice to say that on Twitter, I made such a bold confession: that I Hate Lost. The claim was made partly in jest as one of the random cyber vents I send out via Twitter: “You Know What I Hate?” If you are familiar with Mad TV, you know the bit I modeled this on. The audience is supposed to say, “WHAT?” with much glee and anticipation.
And it all went downhill from there.
I didn’t mean to do this to garner attention, you know, the way how some people yell out obscenity for attention. Some other Twitterers responded and asked me Why? I then responded, because I was brought up with good manners. All in the name of trying to explain why me, personally, do not, and will not, spend my time watching Lost.
Yes, I get the irony of me spending time Twittering and writing this blog. But you have your guilty pleasure, and I have mine. Live and let live, they say.
Perhaps I was flattered that someone even cared about why I do not like Lost, won’t even give it a try, No Sirree. I now feel compelled to give them a good reason. I am by no means a good writer. Please bear with me here.
So I cannot present you with the article tonight because Google failed me. When I typed in the keywords, “Lost Writers Changed Plot Fans Speculation”, BOOM! the search engine came back with articles after articles, blogs after blogs, posts after posts, analyses, interviews, on Lost and its writers. It was like I opened Pandora’s Box! And I promise you that I will continue trying. I am a researcher at heart, and I am as of now obsessed with finding it.
What’s really interesting is that I came across quite a few articles that talked about how the Lost writers made up the plot(s) and mysteries as they went along, twist after twist (i.e. what I call “upper hand” over the audience which got your goat) especially in the previous seasons. So that pointed to the same direction as my said “grievance”, to a certain degree. What I also found interesting is that even the writers themselves are finally realizing the entire alternative universe that they have created has taken on a life of its own. A new ecosystem separate from its creators. The collective force of the fans is larger than the writers themselves: through the Interweb, the fans have conjured up ,multiple universes more immense than what the writers have envisioned in the writers’ room. I am especially fascinated by these two articles: one about continuity of the “mythology” and the other one about “time-space continuum“.
(For Mr. Nation’s dilemma for keeping all threads accounted for and untangled, I would like to suggest a relational database. Not a joke. In fact, the George Lucas empire does just that for the Star Wars ecosystem: with its own “Continuity department“)
All brainy stuff. Great for debates and discussions, preferably after a pint or two.
In fact, if I were still in school, the analysis of the universe within Lost the Show and the meta-universe of Lost the Fandom as a way to understand how the Internet has changed how popular culture is shaped would be the subject of my dissertation.
Seeing how I have left school a long time ago, I will not spend my time on the show. Sorry. It requires too much investment on the part of the audience, perhaps that is where you and I differ fundamentally as TV watchers. I am the “brain-dead” type. I do not want to get sucked into a fictional world that is striving to be as complicated as the real world (albeit in very different ways) that I have to constantly worry about what is going to happen now and agonize over the fact that I cannot figure the mysteries out.
I worry too much as is. As for puzzles, I have my Sudoku and Crossword puzzles. Or my pre-teen boy.
And I stand by the point that it is hypocritical that men (yes, mostly men) laugh at women for treating soap opera characters as if they were real live people, while they discuss incessantly about what is going to happen to which group on the show Lost. I just have to laugh. Not passing judgement here. Just sayin’ that if you think one scenario is ridiculous, then you have to take a good look at the other scenario.
Sincerely,
Not a Lost Fan
Wine with chocolate. Need I say more?
Sent from my iPhone
Posted via email from The Absence of Alternatives
So the Treasury Department today released the details for HARP “Home Affordable Refinance Program” & HAMP “Home Affordable Modification Program”. The title of this press release is “Relief for Responsible Homeowners”.
Drum roll please… Apparently, the plan is NOT going to be able to save EVERYBODY. (Actually, the number given today is 7 to 9 million homeowners). To emphasize, the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gave this simple message:
“This is not going to save every person’s home.”
OMG! We didn’t expect that!
Sarcasm aside, there have been understandably a lot of cries of “What about me?” all over the country.
In order to make folks feel better, Mr. Gibbs said, according to Kai Ryssdal on Marketplace, “people who bought homes they clearly could never afford won’t get help.”
So my question once again is: how are you going to prove and enforce that?
Being a visual person, this is how I envision the scene inside my head:
(In contrast to the Nextel commercial shown here)
Chairperson: Will the Irresponsible Homeowners please stand up and get out of the room so we can all move on?
Cricket chirping.
Chairperson: Anybody? Bueller?
Homeowners look at each other angrily.
Chairperson: Nobody?
Now, this is a commercial that Nextel will not be making. Ever.
Posted via web from The Absence of Alternatives
Actually, my 11 year-old did this, though he denied it. I was laughing so hard when I noticed this I couldn’t properly reprimand him. Who knows how long the word has been up on the refrigerator.
SO, this is how you curse *properly* with Word Whammer…
Posted via email from The Absence of Alternatives
Even on the Interweb, we cannot escape our evolutionary past. According to The Economist article: “Primates on Facebook”, some of things that we do to/for each other on the social networks over the Internet can still be defined as “Grooming”: you need to ping your peeps, follow up on their status, read their Tweets, comment on their Tweets, reply to their Wall because they have left something on yours. These all take time. So does monkeys’ grooming each other.
A while back ago, Dr. Robin Dunbar concluded that our brains simply cannot support a social network with unlimited size: think of having to memorize all the names! Probably only Mr. Monk will be able to do that, but of course, he probably has the tiniest social network known to man… Irony, isn’t it? Anyway, Dr. Dunbar suggested that the magic number of network limit any animal will be able to maintain is: 148.
Even though in the virtual world, it seems that we can grow our social networks indefinitely, to a certain extent obviously (say, like, 6 billion, the number of entire population…), the average number of “Friends” on Facebook turns out to be 120. And the number of Friends with which Facebookers interact with on a regular basis by leaving comments on their “Wall” is even smaller: 7. That’s it. For men. Women are more social, 10.
Even for Facebookers that have more than 500 friends, the number remains relatively low at 17 for men, and 26 for women.
Here is a nice way of explaining this:
“[P]eople who are members of online social networks are not so much ‘networking’ as they are ‘broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle’… Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”
This also concisely explains what a “social network” such as Twitter represents for a lot of its users, or Tweeple, as they call themselves. Only that it is even beyond the “outer tier of acquaintances”, all the way into the nether.
Somebody should give the gal or guy who is in charge of Subway’s “5 Dollar Foot Long” marketing campaign a raise. Oh, whatever. They are probably making a ton anyway. I don’t worry about their financial health really. But when you see a genius move done by a corporation, that seems to be the right thing to say, even though the people may already be up to their ears in stock options.
Here is what my Kindergartener said last night:
MOM! I am 48 inches tall. I am FOUR SUBWAY FOOTLONG!
Posted via email from The Absence of Alternatives