Why It's Important To Be Nice To Government Workers

I work downtown. Unfortunately, part of working downtown is paying the meters. I usually park in a ramp but if I have to run errands during the day that just doesn't make sense, so sometimes I meter it. And I always lose track of time. So I get tickets.

Every time Jamie rides in my car she reminds me to pay those tickets but I never seem to have that at the top of my priority list.

At work today, leaning against the bar, I look out the window and see the little meter maid truck pull up behind my car. So I ran out and tried to see if he could maybe not write me a ticket and here, look, I have quarters. No, he said, very nicely, sorry. And by the way, I have to tow your car, you have too many unpaid tickets (six is the limit I guess).

Oh no! Well, he was very nice and apologetic about it and I have a hard time being mean to people who aren't mean to me, so I just had a little problem solving session with him to see if we could avoid a towing. In the end, no. No options. So I grabbed some stuff out of the car and went inside.

Some of the stuff I grabbed were the tickets, just in case I needed them. And I'm looking at the tickets and I remember - you can pay these on line! So I ran downstairs, paid my five parking tickets online, printed off the receipts and ran back upstairs to the guy waiting in his Geo Metro or whatever the government gives these poor bastards.

Here! Look! I just paid! Can you call off the tow truck? No, he said, but how about you just drive away and we'll call it even. So I ran back down into the dungeon of the bar and frantically tried to remember where I'd put my keys FIVE MINUTES AGO and after what seemed like forever but was probably 30 seconds I ran back out and there was the tow truck, just backing up with it's bed starting to go down.

I ran across the street, through traffic, dodging cars, yelling thank you at the meter maid guy and dove into the passenger side of my car, jumped in the drivers seat and peaced the fuck out of there.

I'm lucky I'm such a nice guy because if I cussed that dude out there's no WAY I'd be at home blogging right now but I would be stuck in the courthouse all day tomorrow and then have to deal with the beautiful people at the city impound lot and pay their garbage fees plus an overnight charge.

The moral of the story is, you were right Jamie and I should have paid those tickets a long time ago.

Jeremy BanthamwhAT THEF**KISGOINGON!

My mind is melting.

The season finale blows open everyone's theories about Lost and, guess what? validates some of mine. Here we go...

1) Please refer to my earlier post. I was half right. Starts with J and ends in -antham. I said we hadn't met him yet and I guess we could have never expected an alias. I was wrong about the character of the person in the coffin. Really, the only thing I was right about was that it wasn't Micheal.

2) Jack is a wreck. I was right about needing to get back to the island.

Let's look at my Hail Mary predictions...

1) Life sucks for MOST people off the island. Kate feels it's best for Aaron but everyone else is not cool with it.
2) Only Sun is back but she is definitely using her dad's company and his connections with Widmore (which were never shown but somehow I inferred) to find Jin and the rest of the survivors.
3) Dead on. Penny found Desmond thanks to his time-traveling call and her subsequent search for him using her father's boat. Word.

So we've learned that immediate predictions are stupid to make and the only way to get a handle on Lost is some long-term thinking. Which I rule at!

Everyone is Lost. Especially Me.

To sum up:

So now Ben controls the smoke monster, the island has been both behind and ahead of "real world" (boat) time, Jack and Claire's dad is alive (or at least in the picture... called it!), and the island can be moved. Also, Mittelos Bioscience is definitely an Others front and apparently has been for at least 50 years. Richard clearly doesn't age.

BOLD PREDICTION:

Jacob is Jack's dad, Christian. Check these screen caps and tell me they don't jive with a script that calls for someone of Christian's description without actually using the actor and blowing the secret early.

Some questions:

What is the significance of the pebbles, the compass and the knife that young Locke chose?

If most of The Others were chosen to be on the island, are most of the main survivors also chosen to be there? Jack's father faked his death, Locke went on walkabout as suggested by the tall dude that Hurley is afraid of in the mental hospital... there must be other connections...

PUSA

Last night Jamie and I went to see The Presidents of the United States of America. I know! Yes, they're still together. This was a show I should have gone to 12 years ago! It was great. They played all the hits and their new stuff was just as fun to rock out to as their old stuff. Every song they play makes you smile and jump around. I didn't get the new album there but I should have. Check out the website and rock out to some videos. And go see them live if you can - this band is still supernova!

Hahaha You Suck Yankees

Thank you, Brian Cashman, for turning down a ridiculous trade for Santana back in the Spring that would have ensured your dominance over the American League for years. Thank you so much for holding on to your prized "prospects" Phil Hughes (0-4, 9.00 ERA) and Ian Kennedy (0-2, 8.37 ERA). I sure hope that you are confident in your decision to hang on to this young "talent" and were planning all along to have one demoted to AAA by May 3rd (Kennedy) and one out until AT LEAST the All-Star break with a broken rib. I hope your new-found dedication to youth in your organization makes you feel like you're really competing with the Red Sox or even the Rays on that front.




See, Cash, the difference between your club and the Twins, Sox,or Rays, is that just having young talent isn't enough. You have to actually develop them. The Yankees haven't developed a player since Jeter and Posada, so I'm sure you've just forgotten how. Meanwhile, the Twins will take a kid who is a terrible first strike swinger, who has raw outfield instincts and who is tied for the MLB lead in steals and turn him in to something a lot like this.

UPDATE: Just wanted to mention that the day after I wrote this Gomez hit for the cycle. Just sayin. Oh, and yesterday I heard PA and Dubay talking about this exact thing with Cashman. I'll get a link to their segment but basically they must have read my post. Just goes to show that unless you play for the Vikes or the Wild those guys won't pay attention to you until they need to fill some time on a Wednesday morning.

Lost: My Brain is Going to Explode

OK. I never posted a follow up to the Lost season premier a few weeks ago, mostly because I'm busy, but also because I've been trying to formulate a counter-point to my friend Dave's theory that the secret of the island involves a parallel Earth.

Basically, I thought that it's the electromagnetic properties that make the island special. Everything going on is tied to the island's extraordinary physical properties. From super fast healing to an inability of people to find it or leave it, to the primary reason of the Dharma Initiative - they're all tied to the island's off-the-charts activity.

Tonight's episode seemed to be a convergence of our two theories with quantum physics as the link. While I'm still not convinced that the island exists on a totally different planet or plane I think that our two theories moved one step towards each other during Desmond's adventure. It seems to me that the properties of the island are so powerful that they can really mess you up on a quantum level if you don't use the right channels to come and go - it's worse to just get the bearing wrong a little and be able to get off the island than it is to sail or fly aimlessly around and never be able to escape the magnetic effects on instruments. People's consciousnesses bounce back and forth between spaces in time like quantum particles and would probably do so indefinitely if the human brain could handle the strain. The quantum explanation is solidified by Faraday, the physicist, being the go to guy to solve Desmond's problem.

I have some more general predictions regarding some things we've seen.

1. Dharma has set up other facilities around the world to try and harness this type of phenomenon in the past. This is what I think they were showing with the polar bear fossil in the desert.

2. The Others are a counter-foundation/conglomerate dedicated to the preservation of these spots. Remember that Hanso, Paik and Widmore formed Dharma. Just who formed the group that Ben works for is unclear but the conflict between the two that exists below the public consciousness is clear from Sayid's episode last week. A good place to start is to figure out exactly who Richard, the guy that recruited Ben as a child, is and look out for his company, Mittelos Bioscience (the company that recruited Juliet).

I'll think of more I'm sure - we're watching tons of old episodes to pick up stuff we missed. Whatever happens, however the season turns out, we're going to be fucking blown away and no one will have seen it coming.

UPDATE: I must be totally addled - Dave is right. Widmore and Paik so far have nothing to do (that we know of) with Dharma. I have no idea what episode I thought I saw that in. If I could do one of those strikethroughs I would, but I don't know how. Crap.

DOUBLE UPDATE: In your face, Dave! Did you see last night's episode? Widmore! Boo-ya!

The Moment of Truth

Last year I posted a little recap and some predictions about the next season of Lost. Finally, in 20 minutes, we'll see how accurate I was. Tomorrow I'll post a recap of the first episode of the fourth season and some adjusted predictions and we'll agree that yes, I am the coolest person you know.