Lost and confused...

I think spring is finally here – yes, after days and DAYS of cold, freezing weather, it is finally climbing into the 70s every afternoon, just as it logically should (being the end of February and all). Sigh… I guess it’s back to t-shirts every day. The sweaters were fun while they lasted…

So I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about my new globe yet – well, technically, it’s Rick’s new globe. He got it for spending the last ten years of his life in servitude to Dell. And while it seems that ten years of working hard should be worth more than a puny little globe, I really LIKE globes and have never had one before. So it’s cool in a way, yet at the same time not necessarily as cool as a “ten years of loyalty to one company” gift should be. But seeing as I have a fascination with all things map-like, the globe was a welcome addition to my living room. Even Allegro thinks so.

So who watched Lost last night? Am I the only one still tenaciously holding on to this show? I’m with it until the end… I don’t care how weird and nonsensical and annoying it gets – I’m seeing this thing through. But as always, last night’s episode left me thinking, “huh??” Last week we had the time-travel paradox, and now we have a flashback where Jack is hanging out on the beach in Thailand, drinking Coke and flying kites. And of course he manages to hook up with a mysterious Thai woman who has weird tiger-striped hair. She also has a loyal following of equally-mysterious men who present her with envelopes full of money because she has a “gift.” Uh, right. A “gift.” I hope it’s an uncanny immunity to STDs, otherwise, Jack is gonna get the AIDS. (That’s what Rick said last night as we were watching the show: “Jack is gonna get the AIDS…” That is, by the way, a reference to an episode of Family Guy, where a barbershop quartet sings a song called “You’ve Got the AIDS.” If you haven’t seen it, then you just don’t realize how hysterically funny it is…)

Of course, at the end of the episode, Jack follows his Asian-paradise hook-up girl to her place of employment, which he discovers is… a tattoo parlor. And her “gift” turns out to be an ability to “see” what people “are” and a talent for tattooing them with, uh, whatever they are (seriously, that’s about as intricately as it was explained on the show…). There was then a bizarre exchange between the two, where Jack demands to know what she “sees” about him, and she hesitates so much you have to assume it’s something horrible, like he’s a selfish, narcissistic jerk who’s destined to be alone forever, or he’s a serial killer in the making, or, at the very least, that he was never supposed to be a doctor. But no, she just gives him the usual, “you’re a great leader” stuff we’ve been hearing about Jack all along. Yes, yes, Jack is a leader. We get it. And then he demands to be tattooed, and his tattoo ends up saying something like “he walks among us but is not one of us.” For some reason, this entire thing culminates in a bunch of guys beating up Jack on the beach, and telling him to leave the country and never return. I have no idea what that was all about...

But the lame back story in this episode wasn’t the most annoying thing about it. I’ve actually been annoyed by something ever since we first met Juliet – mainly, the way the Others act as if they can’t understand why the Losties think they’re such horrible people. That attitude has sort of been getting on my nerves, and it especially annoyed me during last night’s episode when Jack wakes up in the cage with a crowd staring at him. We discover that the flight attendant who we thought was abducted by the Others actually IS an Other. And when Jack starts ranting and raving about his situation, she looks at him as if he’s insane. It’s like she can’t possibly understand why he’d be so upset about being locked in a cage. Like he’s supposed to be perfectly comfortable in there and not care that he’s being held prisoner. “Gee, the polar bears didn’t seem to mind…” I mean, what is the deal with that? Do some of the Others actually not know everything that’s going on? Do they assume that the people locked in the cages are there because they WANT to be? Is there some kind of Other against Other thing going on?

Like I said, I don’t care how annoying it gets… I’m sticking this thing out until the bitter end… :)