Adorable LOST Comics

Thanks Nedroid!

- David

I Believe In You

I spent a lot of energy avoiding spoilers and other people's opinions about the Lost finale until I could see it for myself. I did ask a few trusted sources how they felt about it to test the waters and one person told me to sleep on it before I made a decision. Happily that wasn't necessary. I loved it immediately.

The Internet is abuzz with confusion and conjecture about the end of this amazing show. Some people seem to get it, others hate it, some feel robbed, and some have no idea what happened. Here's my two cents, but first some direct quotes from the final five minutes of the show between Jack and his father as HE FLAT OUT EXPLAINS WHAT'S GOING ON:

Jack - "Are you real?"

Christian - "I sure hope so! Yeah I'm real. You're real, everything that's ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church. They're all real too."

Jack - "They're all, they're all dead?"

Christian - "Everyone dies sometime, Kiddo. Some of them before you, some long after you."

Jack - "But why are they all here now?"

Christian - "Well there is no now, here."

Jack - "Where are we Dad?"

Christian - "This is a place you all made together, so that you could find one another."

---

Jack - "For what?"

Christian - "To remember. And to let go."

Jack - "Kate, she said we were leaving."

Christian - "Not leaving, no. Moving on."

Jack - "Where're we going?"

Christian - "Let's go find out."

I'm trying to stay professional so I apologize for the caps, but Christian seriously tells us straight out what's going on and what the "alternate reality" has been all along. To anyone who feels confused and angry at this ending take Kasey's advice: Never watch Twin Peaks. This is cake to that.

So here it is: All through season six we've been getting flash-sideways views of what appeared to be an alternate reality where the island is on the bottom of the ocean and the plane never crashed and all our beloved Losties went on with their lives as usual. However as the season went on incongruities became more and more apparent, starting subtly with Jack being much more optimistic than normal to obvious things like Sawyer as a cop instead of a con man. In true Lost form everyone's lives interweave and follow a parallel to what happened in the main story.

At the time I theorized that either Locke succeeded in destroying the island but an alternate reality was somehow created so the Losties could still make things right, or the new Jacob sunk the island and killed or trapped the smoke monster and the island reset everyone's lives to before the crash with little improvements as kind of a reward for being awesome and defeating evil.

But what in fact happens is this: The island is saved, Hurley is the new Jacob and Ben is the new Richard, and Jack dies after returning to the spot he first woke up on after the plane crash of Oceanic flight 815. The island is real, the light is real, the smoke monster is real, everything they did actually happened. The alternate reality is a self-imposed purgatory or limbo created by all of the Losties together so that they can resolve their issues with life, death, whatever, and move on. Everyone in limbo has died, but not all at the same time. They've rejoined each other in this timeless place to move on together.

This ending answers all my questions. I don't fixate on what the Man In Black's name is. What does that really matter? I think it's more fun that the fans named him anyway. I don't really want someone to spell out what the smoke monster is. It's a monster, made of smoke. It's pure evil. It wants to escape the island so it can murder the world. Good enough for me. Walt was special because he could call animals to him (except that dog, which I'm convinced will live forever) and make people scream his name for an entire season but puberty got him so they had to write him out. The island is a beautiful and mysterious place with unique geographic and electromagnetic properties where the manifestations of good and evil happen to reside. It's more fun to have some things left to the imagination.

Now in my opinion the Ajira plane makes it off the island safely and everyone aboard lives out their natural lives. I haven't seen the credits with the wrecked plane so I can't say for sure, but according to Wikipedia it's not clear whether the wreckage is from the Oceanic or Ajira flight. However Christian's statement that some died long after Jack leads me to believe they made it okay. I also believe Desmond gets off the island now that Hurley is running things differently.

Also under the opinion category, I really cannot think of a more perfect ending. Everyone gets to reunite with the people that were most important in their lives, everyone is okay. Everyone is happy. They found each other again. The little flashbacks each person experienced were so emotional. Jin and Sun's was my favorite, flat out. Especially when the yet un-awoken Saywer walks into their hospital room and they have those huge smiles on their faces! Locke's was awesome, too. I will never get over the moment when the audience has just been shown that he was paralyzed and he stands up on the beach after the crash to go help Jack. And that music. Gets me every time.

And speaking of Jack, he definitely came back as my favorite character by the end. For the first two or three seasons he was my solid fave with Locke a close second, but he got bitchy there for a while. He just needed time to come around. His death scene was so powerfully bitter-sweet.

And I cannot convey how much I love that the show comes completely full circle and ends with him laying in the bamboo, with Vincent coming out of the forest and laying next to him, and as the plane with his friends flies overhead he smiles, and the last thing we see is Jack's eye closing. I cried harder for that than anything else. Well done, well done.

- David

*EDIT*

Kasey found this explanation from one of the writers that worked on the show and I'm proud to say I'm tooootally right:

http://designwoop.com/2010/05/lost-finale-explained-well/

To Do

My son Jonas is going to be a year old on the Fourth of June-ly. While it didn't feel like it at the time my life has been in wonky upheaval ever since he was born. I suppose it was hard, and some days I just wanted to sit down and cry, but honestly looking back it didn't ever feel like my life was difficult. New baby, money problems, sleep deprivation, then the loss of my job and the near impossibility of finding a new one during the holiday season, the eradication of our humble social life, all seemed natural. People have said I was meant to be a dad and maybe that's true, but for a while there it was very seat-of-the-pants.

With this new job though things seem to be mellowing out. I've only been at it a few months but already it feels like I'm back on track. The promotions job I had was a blast, but it was very unstable. I went into the interview thinking it was something completely different and decided to give it a go about halfway through even though I had no experience. One thing I noticed was that I never dreamed about it. I guess that's how I know I'm really doing a job, when I dream about it. As I started to enjoy my first job on the farm (it only took about three summers) I'd have dreams about working in the fields or in the shop. I dreamed about GoDaddy regularly during my time there and when I was doing tech support for EDS I'd have mellow nightmares about phones I couldn't answer. About a week into this new position with Qivliq it's already made a few cameos during my nighttime adventures.

So it feels like time to get things straight. Not to just survive but to start thriving. A list formed:

• Start taking better care of myself. Mentally, physically, spiritually, grammatically. Time to start taking vitamins again and watching what I eat.
• Get back on that damn bike. Work is only ten miles away, which is totally do-able. Lord I miss riding a bike.
• Write. Write write write write. Practice writing every day. Finish the two stories I started. See if I can get published somewhere. I need to hang a picture of Marquis de Sade up where I'll see it everyday.
  
• Read. I walked by a technical writer's desk today and she had a big ass dictionary and thesaurus. It made me smile.
  
• Talk to my family regularly.
• Frugality anyone?
• Stop being afraid of who I am. It's way too late in the game for that.
• Date nights and play dates.
• Further my education. I still want to learn massage therapy and sign language and I really should get some more computer training under my belt.
• Be less lazy. A little lazy is okay though.

- David

Look How Pretty!

My friend Kurtz came over yesterday with his awesome camera and took some pictures of me and the little one. Check out the rest of his stuff here and here.

Probably my favorite picture of us ever.

That's his emergency pacifier. I swear he has a more manly one somewhere.

If Jonas was looking away pensively this could totally be an album cover.

I like the lighting in this one. And my ceiling!

He was seriously afraid of the camera flash. I throw him all the time.

No animals were harmed during this photo shoot.

- David