Lost’s “Solitary:” Karma Hole

December 24, 2019March 21, 2020 ~ Piece, of the Sky

Said would be very good in the Gulf Wars version of Apocalypse Now, (not Jarhead, although that’s also a good movie). The Men Who Stare at Goats also comes to mind. Intel and comms.

In Survivor: Borneo, and other seasons, the tribe-mates eat rat. They’re not eating rabbits on the Lost Island. Speaking of rodents, here comes the Island plague. The Losties begin lathering up, to prevent disease. Got to stop the boar rash. Avoid a genetic bottleneck.

Rousseau is a genius. She built her whole bunker and several bunkers – like my underground Minecraft lair, in 2011-2013. She is good at signal, SERE and EOD. She knows her weapons: can’t shoot an M9 without a firing pin.

Rousseau says there are no monsters. Hell is other people. Some people, on the island, are way scarier than random beasts, like polar bears or obscure smoke monsters. Sartre. Cut to Soldier Said executing a prisoner. Nadia’s real name is Nur, Arabic for Light.

There are polar bears on the island, but humans are the most dangerous animal. In a museum I went to, as a kid, they would show you a mirror, after asking you what the most dangerous animal was. They were holding up a mirror to the darkness of the human condition. The true heart of darkness.

As noted earlier, the B plot is a bamboo aqueduct. The Losties get a plumbing system, like in ancient Rome. Showers and bathrooms. Unfortunately, for Rome, many of those pipes, back then, were made of lead. Plumbum. Pb. That certainly made for some wild Saturnalia feasts, near the Winter Solstice.

The Staff Station reminds me of the caduceus, carried by the god Mercury, namesake of another dangerous element. This mystical staff is also often connected, mistakenly, to medicine. Moses lifted up a serpent, on a staff, to heal the Israelites of a disease, in the Old Testament.

Rousseau faced the disease that killed her expedition – an epidemic from the slave ship, the Black Rock, like smallpox blankets, given to the New World. The Black Plague followed one of the Crusades, and was featured in the film, The Seventh Seal. The flu outbreak, that followed World War I, took the lives of millions.

The Others. Polar Bears. Two shipwrecks. Dharma Stations. There are so many threats on the Island. It is a quantum space-time sinkhole, the bottom of the world. One step above the Netherworld, the Other Side. One Step away from the global spirit world. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun believed that there was life after death. He created the Saturn V rocket that took us to the moon.

The Dark Territory. Smoke monsters. Remnants. The island is a very dangerous pocket dimension. Survivor: Ghost Island is the Lost Island. Rousseau’s expedition was there to study space-time. The Numbers (from the equation) involve all of the planet’s history and time. And of course, the Hatch is a time capsule.

The whole island, itself, is a conduit and a time capsule, from ancient times. It folded away, from the rest of the world, almost 6000 years ago, only to be reconnected by wormholes. The Lost Island is a place that is a medium. The spirit of that place is very strong, like Genius Loci, in ancient Roman spirituality. Some of the statues, of those spirits, that have survived, held up snakes, to offer pilgrims protection and healing. Snakes and rats. Mercury and lead.

BB: “ZERO STARS!”

August 12, 2018November 21, 2019 ~ Piece, of the Sky

I made the argument, before Bay’s eviction, that it would be in production’s best interests, to keep an HG with a power, even a power everybody knows about, over an HG, who will go up multiple times, as a goat, only to be finally evicted. Well, it looks like this is the time that RS finally gets evicted.

It was another week of another terrible Foutte HOH. You could argue that Angela was still under the influence of Tyler, but at least, she got out her desired backdoor target, on the other side of the house: Bay. (Foutte still doesn’t even know Level 4 exists!).

Bay got out a member of Level 6, but only because Rachel managed to tick Tyler off. Kaitlyn was controlled into backdooring a member of her own alliance (Swaggy C) – and what do you know? RS might just go home during Hay’s HOH week.

Only Scottie has done the right thing, on the Foutte side, and still has the best HOH week, of the season. This pawn nonsense doesn’t work! Sure, Tyler could have jumped in the Cloud – but let the chips fall where they may! He then wouldn’t be able to use the Cloud, during the POV ceremony. And Tyler wouldn’t have won OTEV, without RS stupidly comparing answers with him.

Hay is proving that her intelligence only extends to competitions. She tried to promise Tyler safety, from her HOH bathtub, after chugging almost a whole bottle of her HOH wine (Sam WOULD NOT approve). Noah, much?

But naturally, Tyler is never going to believe Hay’s pitch in a billion years, because 1) when Hay was the Hacker, she put Tyler on the block, and 2) during Hay’s fiasco of a house meeting, she further explicated that Tyler had been her target for weeks.

If that was the case, why put up Angela and Kaycee – Kaycee who only wins a hacker comp based on furniture, Kaycee who also yells at RS, (right before OTEV, after the feeds cut) Kaycee’s elder by ten years, a mother of three, not Kaycee’s peer, and also a someone weaker than herself. (Pick on someone your own size – or bigger!)

Speaking of looming threats, no tiny David, seems to be able to slay the Tyler Goliath. There’s no St. George, for this dragon, except maybe JC. Stupid Foutte is getting wiped off the board, as JC and Tyler, move around their chess pieces, toward the final showdown.

It’s not so much that I want to root for the underdogs – Foutte and Sam – but that as a super-fan, virtually playing in the house, myself, I want to see someone take down Tyler. I want to know that it can be done.

Right now, to use video game lingo, particularly from “Super Smash Bros: Melee,” it’s like the rest of the HGs are a bunch of NPCs (non-player characters) running around, with the intelligence of 1 or 2, all fighting against Tyler, an NPC, with an intelligence of 9. Of course, the NPC with an intelligence of 9, is going to beat a bunch of n00b bots, running around with the intelligence of ants.

When Tyler is the king of the ant hill, shining a magnifying glass down, and torching those morons, it isn’t very fun. So, let’s see if Tyler continues to be overpowered and destroy the game. As long as he wins every single POV, it doesn’t really matter who is HOH. Shake things up Grodner.