Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The LOST Conspiracy

There is one TV show I have to watch every single week.  I've never missed an episode, and if it takes me more than 24 hours to catch up on my DVR, I might go nuts.  I got hooked on LOST a few years ago, because I got tricked into thinking it was about survival, but now I know I'm just one of millions of people who are being laughed at by the creators of this show.

In its first couple of seasons, LOST showed us a few glimpses of odd things that just didn't make sense, but ever since then it's gotten progressively weirder.  For the last few years, I've resisted admitting that one of my favorite shows was Science Fiction.  But now I can't help but admit it.

I don't like Science Fiction.  I like shows/movies/books that can be explained by logic, or at least humor.  Similarly, I don't like Romantic Comedies, as they lack both of those elements, but I digress.  If you like Sci-Fi, you should like LOST.  If you don't, but like LOST anyway, you need to come to the realization, like I did, that LOST is an elaborate attempt to turn normal people like you and me into Sci-Fi fans.  It's a conspiracy.  I don't like it one bit, and you shouldn't either.  Start chain emails, and make sure your parents are on them.  They love emails about conspiracies, so this will turbo-charge our message.

If you are a Sci-Fi fan, please don't take this personally.  I'm not saying I'm any better than you, just considerably less of a dork.  And that should be okay.

Back to LOST.  There's little argument that it's a Science-Fiction show.  It has a black smoke monster, uncontrolled time travel, alternate realities, and (mostly) beautiful people who can't act.  If they had told us a few years back that these were major parts of the show, nobody would have watched.  For three years, we thought it was all about the Oceanic 815 survivors and The Others.  We were duped.

Go back and watch a few episodes in Seasons Two or Three.  Knowing what you know now, was there any relevance to these?  Sure, there were key points that needed to be made, but each season could have easily been two or three hours long until the last two.  LOST's creators sent us on a four-year wild-goose-chase.  Do you know what it's like to be tricked and taken advantage of?  I don't like it...and there's nothing I can do about it.  There's nothing I can do, because I'm hooked.

Some people have expressed their dismay over the fact that LOST will be over soon.  I, for one, can't wait.  It's like I'm suffering from an addiction.  Addicts get to the point where they no longer love that to which they are addicted.  They can't wait for it to be out of their lives forever, but they also can't wait for their next fix.  It's not a drug that satisfies me, it's answers.  I watch LOST because I want to be done with it.  I hate LOST and the control it has over my life.

What do you love about LOST?  Do you love the mystery, or do you love something else about it?  Maybe you love Sawyer's clever little one-liners.  Maybe you love the way Hurley says "Dude" and "like" more than any real human ever has.  Or maybe you love the over-dramatic acting or music.  My guess is you're in it for the mystery.  So don't be sad when LOST is over.  We can happily bury this awful show and hopefully never be hoodwinked again.

Update from the Sick Bed

Every four years or so, whether I need to or not, I get sick.  It's the kind of sick that starts out feeling like allergies, then ends up feeling like I was the slowest guy at the Running of the Bulls.  Right about now, I can feel the bulls' breath on my back, and I'm slowing down.  I've been going non-stop for a couple weeks now, and my body is finally pushing back.

As you know, I'm a bachelor.  What that means is that everybody in the world figures they know infinitely more about dealing with sickness than I do.  I know to take Airborne, drink lots of fluids, get plenty of rest, and...well, I guess that's about all I know.  Maybe everybody is right.

I have a fever, and that's somewhat disturbing.  It's disturbing because I checked my temperature with a meat thermometer (orally, of course).  Perhaps the most troubling part of that is that my temperature was 89.1 degrees.  I figured my temperature wasn't actually that low, and my hunch was confirmed when I purchased an actual thermometer at Walgreen's.  But I got worried about my meat thermometer.  When your meat thermometer is almost 13 degrees low, you stand a pretty good chance of dying from salmonella.  Then I was further troubled that I was more concerned over the temperature of chicken than I was about my own body's temperature.  But I shouldn't be surprised.

Being somewhat of a moron about these things, one of my strongest lines of defense against a cold is the cough drop.  A cough drop lasts no more than 10 minutes, but if you're asleep, they could last until the end of time.  I always get nervous that I'm going to choke on my cough drop and die before I even wake up.  So when I have a cough drop in, my sleep is kind of tentative.  I took a nap yesterday and was having a dream that my tooth was falling out, so naturally I tried to chew it up.  I awoke in a panic to find myself viciously chomping on my cough drop.  I wasn't that scared though, because I was being protected by LeBron James, Britney Spears, and their army of sword-fighting horse-dragons.  As if my dreams weren't weird enough already, I have to go and add medication.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  Maybe I'll see a doctor, but I can't remember the last time I saw a doctor for being sick...I think I was actually in college.  I have Advil Cold & Sinus and that's helping some.  I would make chicken noodle soup, but I'm not sure my new thermometer will work for chicken, and I sure don't trust my meat thermometer anymore.