LT178: Reader Feedback

FROM MY INBOX

In the past week we have received a lot of comments and emails about two topics more than the rest: Jack being the shark and Island Mythology. Being a Saturday and cold outside, it seemed like a good idea to “interact” a bit with some of the reader’s observations.


SHARK SCHOOL

One comment in particular summed up the Jack is a shark tidbit: “If there actually is one [a shark], you're building a pretty good case for who it might be. “

Before I respond, let me point out the reader is Ms. Wendy. She has her own LOST blog which is entitled “It’s About Bunnies!” There is always added attention given to any reader who ponders on LOST in a blog, right?

Ms. Wendy goes on to write, “I keep going back to the whole Cobra/LaShade thing from "Expose", in that there might be a "mole" that has been amongst them all along.”

To do a little follow-up on this…Expose is the TV show within LOST that Nikki was an actress on before her untimely life in a grave (is she dead yet?). The father figure in Expose, Mr. LaShade, is exposed as the bad guy, The Cobra. This revelation is given to the viewers by a character named Corvette (played by Niiki). She was killed for coming to this conclusion. However, unnamed sources tell me that the word “Corvette” will come up again in Season 5. This adds another layer of possibility that Expose was revealing more than the fact that Nikki was an actress. This strengthens the idea that a mole does still exist within the survivors and as you know, by bet is on Jack.

And let’s remind ourselves of Corvette’s catch phrase, “Razzle Dazzle!”. According to the dictionary this phrase means, “Elaborate action or maneuvers designed to deceive an opponent.”

Hurley happens to find the script to the episode on the island where Mr. LaShade is identified as the Cobra. To quote, “this big bad guy" whose identity "has been shrouded in mystery for four seasons". This is Season 5 coming up for LOST. Will the Cobra on the island be a Shark? Is the Cobra a reference to the serpent in the Garden of Eden tempting Adam and Eve?

My theory is that Jack is the shark, snake, and wolf in sheep’s clothing. Jack is Mr. Woolstein. And this could be why Tom tells Ethan that “Shephard isn’t on the list” because he is under an alias on the list perhaps? After all, Mister LaShade is an anagram of “See Dharma List”. Hmmm…

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Again, thanks for the feedback and be sure to check out her blog, “It’s About Bunnies!”, at http://mswendy.wordpress.com/. You will find, without surprise, a post about rabbits. She explains a correlation between Dr. Marvin Candle holding a rabbit in one Comic Con video to the real Candle (Pierre Change) holding a baby in another Comic Con video. Interesting reading.


ISLAND MYTHOLOGY

Another very popular section was on the Underworld and how the writers of LOST use mythology to create the island’s mythology. It seems that hardly a day passes where my ear or eye doesn’t catch some reference to the Underworld including some movie promo for that Lycen-Vampire trilogy.

One poster writes (edited), “I believe this is mythology too. The Pillars of Hercules are the borders of the known world. They could be on the island. Hera would not allow certain births on her island. Newly deceased went to Hades with Charon. If you could not pay you had to walk the shore 100 years. Heroes returned still alive. What about Echidna and her kids. Zeus let them live to challenge future heroes. They are immortal and ageless. There was a nymph named Echo who spied on Hera. The broken statue was maybe Cerberus. Pithous was a hero freed from Hades by Hercules. The original colony of Hades had another small island nearby. Could it be the Garden of Hesperides ( a distant blessed island)? Hercules killed Antaeus by holding him aloft and crushing with a bear hug. Like Echo. Antaeus was invisible when he touched his mother (earth). One of the levels of the underworld is frozen and is home of the traitors and those who commit fraud. Lots of levels of the underworld. Depends on what you did. What do you think?I know they time travel. Maybe they are protecting the Pillars of Hercules. Dharma found it.”

First, let me reply by suggesting you should send me your research more often! It does seem as if we should take greater notice of the Countdown Clocks message: Underworld.

I do agree with the expanded points made in the post. We have really ignored an important part of the LOST story and that is the temple. For some reason, temples seem to fit nicely with ancient mythology, doesn’t it?

We have heard plenty of references to Apollo and Cerberus, so there is no reason to doubt there isn’t a parallelism. When we stop and think about some of the stories of mythology – like turning oneself into a swan – they seem like fables. But if LOST is using it as a guide then our questions need to start being phrased like, “Who is Zeus?”.

Good stuff…keep the feedback coming.


NEXT ON TIDBITS

Tomorrow I’ll share my final piece of the Biscuits and Gravy theory: The Whispers. It’s a little far-fetched. But let’s see what you think about it. It does demand a follow-up and if possible there will be two postings on Sunday…the second being some analysis of Whispers to see if it fits with my theory.

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If you've enjoyed reading LOST TIDBITS, please consider clicking an ad when you are finished reading.

Enjoy,
KC

LT177: Dharma Special Access 8

FINALLY

I get my email today and here is the content:

Hello Dharma Friends,In less than a week, LOST season 5 premieres! You're hopefully excited. We're heavily medicating ourselves to overcome our anxiety.

What you'll be seeing on premiere night is, first, a special clip show designed to get you back up to speed after our eight months off the air. The clip show is followed by episodes one and two of this season. While we did not write them to air as a two hour block, we are happy that you are getting to see both episodes on the first night. Episode one entitled "Because You Left" picks up where the finale left off, and the second episode "The Lie" is a Hurley-centric episode. Honestly, we're very excited for you to see them.

Speaking of the Hurley episode, this week we've got a special sneak peak at a scene from that episode just for you.

We've also put together some photos from a recent photo shoot set to the music Michael Giacchino wrote specially for our 2008 Comic-Con appearance. (Actually, we didn't put them together, but our awesome DSA team did -- and a good job they did, too.)

Click on the link and enter the password to check it out.

Until next week...

Peace,
Damon and Carlton

Website: http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/dharmaspecialaccess/index
Password: bharosa

Your 72 hours special access begins NOW!


REVIEW OF DSA 8

In case you can't connect, here are my observations:

First off, the clip from Hurley's episode finds them on a boat...I found that strange but then how do you land on that island? Otherwise, sort of anti-climatic. When Hurley says, "He's your dad"...well, for 4 or 8 seconds my mind thought..."Did he just say that to Jack?" HA!

And of course they are discussing about lies. Can't anyone tell the truth about this island???

THE PHOTOS

We've seen most of this promo pictures of the cast. There is one guy I'm looking forward to seeing more of:
The guy intrigues me and will likely be the one to reveal secrets that mere mortals can't see or hear!

Well it was great to see anything new, so although a bit late, enjoy! If you did like this post, please consider clicking the ad after you done reading. Thanks.

KC

LT176: Parties, Pages and Polar Bears

BISCUITS AND GRAVY THEORY – How to Plan for a Dinner Party with Friends

Once the Dharma Wheel was damaged, time began to oscillating to and fro on the island. And this was probably without any kind of pattern to which to make future plans with anyone. Someone had to step up and stop this madness or humans would forever lose their precious need for a logical sequence of events. Just imagine watching a football game when the final pass to win is heaved and then the island decided to jump. Then imagine the father of the wide receiver who was clearly open and about to win the game for your favorite team is killed in a freak accident. Moments later, the game is back on but the receiver is missing and the ball falls to the turf – incomplete pass. Of course, if you bet the other team you would be thrilled. But on your way to your bookie to cash your winning ticket, the island oscillates again and now instead of Walter Camp inventing football he decides Ballerina Basketball without score, just an art form, would be pretty cool to invent. The island swings the pendulum back again and your bookie says, “What’s football?” You get the idea.

So someone had to stop this madness! Enter the Dharma Initiative. Who knows, maybe the Hostiles/Originals led by Richard Alpert welcomed Hanso and his merry band of Capitalists? Or if you don’t think the Black Rock drilling caused the Incident and you believe Dharma caused it, then it was their job to clean up their own mess.

SIDE NOTE: I do hope you notice how many times this theory uses terminology from the show like when Boone told John to “clean up your own mess”. I’ve picked up a lot of these from the Hindsight review we do here at TIDBITS!

Scientists of the late 1970’s are a lot smarter than scientists of the missile-fearing 1950’s and they offer a solution: build the Swan Hatch. What they discover is the electromagnetic properties of the island are what are causing the time oscillations. Where the Dharma Wheel used to regulate this “build-up”, now Dharma proposes they build a nifty hatch that as long as someone pushes a simple EXECUTE button every 108 minutes, then they avoid time oscillating. They contrive this idea and need volunteers to push the button.

Mr. Patchy tells us in episode 3.12, “Par Avion”, that he answered a newspaper add that read, “Would You Like To Save the World”. Mr. Patchy and a long line of list-approved idiots (of the likes of Radzinsky, Mikhail and Kelvin) have all sign-up to do their part. Even Desmond becomes part of this sanctified line of button pushers. As Mrs. Hawking tells him there is nothing more important that Desmond will ever do than to push that button. And without him, we all die.

The Swan Hatch gets built and like all good capitalists like Charles Widmore, enough is not enough. Eventually they want a power station, roads, and aquariums. The Hostiles say enough is enough and here comes The Purge.

This is basis of the Biscuit and Gravy Theory. By this time we had maybe a half dozen Bloody Mary’s and were well on our way to explaining the meaning of life, the universe…everything! For the record, the answer to the life, the universe and everything is 42. I’ll explain that comment to those who don’t recognize it some other time.

Next up…I’m going to share with you how the B&G Theory would explain the Whispers!


ODDITIES

Hope you got to watch the rerun of Season 4 finale last night. The part that struck me as most odd was when Keamy was dying and Ben sits there like, “So?” In fact, that was his comment, “So? It’s not my problem” when Locke was stressing that they had to keep this guy alive or the Freighter would blow.

I’ve been on the lookout for oddities and this one is downright odd. So? I’m so worked up about this attitude of carelessness that if I saw the actor on the street tomorrow I’d probably have to slap him silly. But in light of the time loop, could this be taken a different way?

Maybe he is saying this because Fate has already determined things and the Freighter and its passengers were doomed to die anyway. Or maybe he was nonchalant because his time as the prophet was coming to an end.

Very odd.

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Last nights re-run also provided me with an item that could be the “runner-up” for oddities this post: the crackers. Ben and the enhanced captions reminded us the crackers were 15 years old. Yet, Hurley chomped them right down. Granted, after weeks of papaya and boar, anything processed might taste pretty yummy. But if your pantry is like mine, it seems nearly impossible to keep crackers from going stale for about two weeks after opening them. We double-seal and still those suckers once exposed to air seem to go bad quickly. Now imagine 15 years.

Can you say “time oscillation”? If this is true, then the crackers are not really 15 years old in one sense. It also means that Ben is a pretty good judge of time. I don’t wear a watch. It seems that my sense of time is improved without one (sort of like losing one sense and the others get stronger). Well, guessing time within a few minutes is one thing, but don’t ask me to keep track of the time in Romania as well. It just seems that Ben is pretty good at juggling a few timelines in his head…or we are all completely off base on how the time thing works! Guess we will find out in about SIX days. Yes!


TURN THE PAGE

Be warned that this has NOT been proven as authentic, but someone did post this snapshot of a page from Daniel’s journal. I can’t recall seeing this good of a shot, so please ponder it with some hesitation.

Notice the arrow is pointing to the word “Claymation”. It is an attempt to explain Smokey. Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.

Other observations:

-- Kate and egg are prevalent on the left hand page
-- I see eyeglasses and think of Sawyer…is that him swimming back to the island?
-- Last Generation on the right side along with Quantum Physics

Now if this does prove to be authentic, you saw it here on LOST TIDBITS! If not, well it was fun examining it.


SEASON 5 PROMO

Tell me eyes aren’t fooling me, but is that Ethan?

First, this sort of supports my Biscuits and Gravy Theory which says we go back in time, but then maybe not quite so far back. Of course, this assumes that is Ethan.

Second, I’m reminded of a promo picture way back when that showed Ethan and John fighting in the mud when on the show we saw Jack and Ethan doing the fighting. This was when Claire was being used as bait to lure Ethan to them. Maybe that scene is now going to be used on this second loop?


POLAR BEAR ATTACKS!

Must apologize right up front, but in my search of the web one can come across some interesting things. On a lost-related site, some posted this picture that just screamed to be shared. He even suggested it was Walt being attacked.

Again, my apologies, but it is darn cute.

NEXT ON TIDBITS

We are going to respond to some more emails and comments we have been receiving regarding the B&G Theory. Then the final installation of my theory will be posted which explains the Whispers. And expect a dedicated follow-up to the Whispers because if this is correct, well, it could be the show in whole new light.

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If you enjoyed this post, please click on an ad on the way out.

And please leave a comment if you have questions or thoughts on a topic.

Thanks for reading!

Enjoy,
KC

LT175: Shark!

DUDE, WHERE’S MY DSA?

Very disappointed that Dharma Special Access for Week 8 never arrived. I checked back on Week 7 email and sure enough it ends with “See you next week”. Of course, with LOST a week could be a thousand years…


BISCUITS AND GRAVY THEORY – The Cuban Missile Crisis

I believe it has been firmly established that the past is alterable to some degree. We get this idea from Desmond walking out with the ring from the jewelry store. It must be noted that it didn’t really change the future since he ends up throwing it into the Thames, but it hints and the possibility of “course corrections”. This if further reinforced when Desmond arranges the Christmas Eve phone call with Penny which results in a quite different future for him and Miss Penelope.

However, I can’t see Hanso spending millions in order for Desmond to find a bride. There has to be something larger.

Back in the 1950’s the media constantly reminded the world that the “something bigger” were nuclear missiles. The media cultivated a society of fear and excitement. Companies began to offer a concrete house which could withstand a blast within certain limits (besides just who would you sue if their promises were not kept?). School children routinely rehearsed Missile and Bomb drills which consisted of hiding under their desks. Forget how little a school desk would protect the kiddies, but it all went toward convincing the public that they needed their government to save them!
Even at the movies the patrons would be reminded of how crazy the world was becoming and how much they should fear Martians, missiles and a 50-foot tall woman. The newsreel segments shown after a movie (yes, those clips were shown AFTER movies in the old days which is why they are called trailers even though now they are shown before a movie…but I digress). The point is that the media was constantly reminding citizens just how dangerous the world was becoming.

There was one artist in particular which every newspaper and national magazine utilized to go with their stories of doom and gloom. I forget the name, but he was appreciated for his near photographic depiction of missile attack. Time, Look and the Saturday Evening Post all ran stories about missile launching platforms in space alongside these descriptive drawings. The claim was that these platforms could hover over YOUR house and if the Russians wished, they could drop the bomb on top of your garage.

It took several years before Joe the Plummer came to the common understanding that space launched missiles couldn’t function the way the news media claimed. First, the missiles would take orbit. Second, the Earth rotates and unless they had computers to calculate the proper trajectory – which they didn’t – it wasn’t likely Russia or anyone else was going to be wasting millions of dollars for a shot in the dark.

This background helps understand why the Cuban Missile Crises was such a crisis. Americans feared the bomb. President Kennedy warned us that Russia was setting up launching platforms just 90 miles off American soil. Oh my! He ordered the famous blockage and the next Russian ship with nuclear weapons on board was going to met with some serious resistance.

There was even a plan designed by McNamara (if my history memory serves me properly) to do a pre-emptive strike on Cuba to show just how serious we were. From what history buffs tell us we were within minutes of launching this strike. The truth discovered later was that Cuba already had about 150 functioning missiles. This meant that had we attacked Cuba, that with a push of a button, 150 missiles could have landed on 150 of the largest populated cities – which happen to include my hometown!

Because of all of this the United Nations gathered the brightest scientist together to figure out how mankind could keep from killing itself off. Enter Valenzetti and his Doomsday Equation!

Here is where my B&G theory picks back up…

If The Incident involved the Dharma Wheel and if time was then altered, it is possible then that we could relive various parts of history and have very different outcomes. The ramification so The Incident had a lot more to do with Desmond and a ring…it had to do with saving the world – minus the cheerleader, of course! HA!

Now is the time to remind you that I don’t believe when the Wheel failed to operate properly that time jumped a determinate time forward or backward. I think this is where you need to find my posts on Oscillating Time. I think the Wheel keeps time for oscillating back and forth along the timeline of history past and present. You can use the term oscillate or loop – either tend to support his.

Imagine then in 1850 when the drills of the Black Rock brings the ceiling of rock down on the Wheel. Time could have started oscillating which in practical terms simply means the island is here one moment and then gone the next.

I hypothesize that the ONE location is where we first found it: in the South Pacific. The other remains a mystery although we will get to that later. Now picture this…the island moves, but the Black Rock stays. The next time the island re-appears it moves slightly. To explain this – go back to where I discussed the rotating Earth making it difficult to launch a missile from space. I think each time the island “jumps” that could also physically move slightly. This then explains how the Black Rock ship gets to the middle of the island.

It also begins to explain why we get varying degrees of exit to and form the island. 305 degrees changes to 315 degrees over oscillating time.

Ok, that’s enough for this post. Next time up I’m going to offer a theory on how someone stopped this oscillating time from driving people crazy as well as making it very difficult to make any kind of dinner party plans for a future date.


LOST ODDITIES

One of the oddities that caught my ear is found in the episode “The Long Con”. Hurley and Sayid have the radio that Bernard brought from the tail section. Sayid twists some knobs and they pick a radio show that is playing “Moonlight Serenade” by the Glenn Miller Band. The prior song is by Duke Ellington. Combined with the radio announcer and the song selections one gets the feeling this really was a dated radio broadcast.

We hear the song on the show a second time when Jack is spying on Sarah at the schoolyard. So maybe the song isn’t that much out of reach of today’s playlists.

Miller was born in Iowa, like Kate, and was famous for his USO shows for the military during the war. He died in December 15, 1944, when his plane disappeared near England. No trace of Miller or the plane has ever been found which forms the catalyst for several conspiracy theories.

One of Glenn Miller’s albums is entitled “Lost Recordings”.

Is Miller used on LOST because of his plane crash and dated reference? Or is somewhere the radio station WXO caught in some time warp and still cranking the big band tunes of the 1940’s?


ANIMAL BITES

I came across an interesting discussion recently that suggested that one of the Survivors were actually a Dharma member. It has been quite some time since a theory along these lines has been floated, but I recall back in the early seasons we were very busy pointing fingers at who might be the wolf in sheep’s clothing. If memory serves me, Kate and Rose were always serious candidates for this role.

But a recent trend has arisen that points the finger at JACK! And what better person to be described as a fake sheep than someone named Shephard? HA! Most of the evidence to support this theory comes from Jack’s tattoos.

There is a lot of similarity to Dharma logos and Eastern religious symbols. While part of the tattoo’s are actually Matthew Fox’s doing, the producers do seem intent on using them to advance the LOST mythology. And, to date, Fox has never talked about them in an interview which I’m sure the producers have asked to be refrained from doing since they plan to utilize them.

The show has explained several portions of Jack’s tattoos except a portion. For example, the “5” was used when Jack tells his story about operating on a young girl and a mistake he made which caused fear to grip him. He told Kate that he counted to five and the fear went away. Kate follows this advice when hiding from the monster after visiting the cockpit. Again, Kate uses the fear control of counting to five when being lowered into the Swan hatch. And when Jack sliced open Ben’s kidney sac, he asked Kate to remember that original story on Day 1. Hmmm…

The sheriff of Othersville brought our attention to Jack’s tattoos, but focused our attention on only a portion of them…and then incorrectly interpreted them. Jack even corrects her in a cryptic way with something like, “that’s what they say, but that’s not what they mean”. The theory is that Jack’s tattoos identify him as some high-ranking official among the Dharma hierarchy!

Isabel seems to be doing what LOST does a lot: using misdirection but edging us all so close. . It is further supported when a director for LOST mentioned in an interview, “I wonder why people are focusing on Jack’s tattoos more”, before quickly changing subjects. Hmmm…

As further evidence of the important of tattoos, when Kate returned from the Hydra Island, Sawyer and Locke questioned why Jack wasn’t with her and Sawyer. During this time, Sawyer was singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home” which is from the movie “Jaws”, which takes us back to the shark we saw and seemed to be inconsequential. In further proof that LOST is probably the most genius piece of writing we’ve seen on television, I am now convinced that NOTHING is irrelevant with these guys. We didn’t see a shark with a Dharma logo only to have it be forgotten. The nature of the shark plus the zoo station plus Jack in the shark tank – all seems to reveal that Jack is our shark. (Insert the theme music from Jaws here, please!)

Combine this with an interview with the producers and they commented that they wish they had incorporated the Dharma shark when the Oceanic 6 were floating in the lifeboat. Their comment was jokingly made but now seems to have a bit of truth to it. That comment was, “That would be cool if the shark gave mouth to mouth”. I can’t help but recall that Jack has been the only person to give mouth to mouth to Rose on Day 1. The interview continues and while speaking it is interspersed with video. The video being show is Jack helping drag Desmond onto the lifeboat while the producers are saying, “the shark appears and it just lefts Desmond up and throws him into the lifeboat.” Coincidence or fate?

And let’s not forget that one of the hidden pictures on the Hanso Foundation was of a shark that left many puzzled.

More possible evidence comes from Flight 815 manifest. During the memorial service for the victims of the crash, Claire mentions a Howard Woolstein. Yet we have never seen a Howard in the seat Claire says he was sitting in. In fact, that seat is occupied by Jack Shephard. WOOL-stein? And we are back to our wolf in sheep’s clothing again. Jack, like Marvin Candle, has a few alias perhaps and the Survivors are the lambs being led to slaughter by their shepherd. Hmmm…

Now this all begs the question, “Does Jack know he is a Dharma operative?” I think not. We have discussed at length the impact of memory (flashes before your eyes) and the religious tie-in to reincarnation and déjà vu, so perhaps Jack’s role is suppressed at this time. What if Jack eventually does realize that, as his father stated, “has a lot of work to do” on this island? I would imagine that if I realized my Bourne Identify, that I might be driven to drink and drugs in a wave of regret and realization. Or I might even be motivated to return to the island and make amends for my past actions (Kate, we’ve got to go back).

And finally, if you notice the arrow on Jack’s tattoo it seems to be pointing to a compass heading of 325 – but only if you saw it in a mirror. Hmmm…


SEASON 5 PROMO

This picture is from the ABC promo:

It appears that the Oceanic 6 are going to have to fight their way back on to the island. This brings up an interesting angle for who would know about them and wish to keep the Oceanic 6 from returning as well as the constant question of why?

The obvious candidate is Charles Widmore. We have been told that terrible things happen on the island after it moved. My theory is that the island moved back in time which leads to the possibility that the past can be rearranged. If we consider that Widmore doesn’t seem to be in a great position when Ben last visited him in his penthouse bedroom, then wouldn’t he want to see a few changes made to the past? Of course, he would want to be in control of those changes and perhaps that is what he fears if Ben or Jeremy Bentham is in charge. And don’t ask me why, but for the first time I just notice BEN and BENtham shared those letters. Duh!


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And please leave a comment if you have questions or thoughts on a topic.

Thanks for reading!

Enjoy,
KC

LT174: Biscuits, Boxes and Birds

BISCUITS AND GRAVY THEORY – The Incident

The year on the island is 1979-ish. The Survivors of Flight 815 are beginning to come to grasp with the fact that the time has shifted on them. Imagine you in their place. What would you do at that point in time?

One of the first things would be to retrace your steps, so to speak. Find the Swan Hatch! Find Othersville! Find the other hatches! We have to be careful here because we don’t the exact order that things got built on this island. But this is where The Incident mentioned in the Swan Orientation film might come into play.

To explain my theory a little better, I need you to go back to before the Dharma Initiative. Let’s imagine the Hostiles (the inhabitants prior to Dharma’s arrival including Richard) are living a pretty nice life. They know the secrets of the island passed down from the Ancients. This includes a Dharma Wheel.

In my mind the Dharma Wheel is in a fully sized room where someone or something is able to turn it the full revolution. I’m guessing donkeys since the name for the wheel provided by the producers is the “Frozen Donkey Wheel”. Now imagine that in order for the island to exist as it wishes, the wheel MUST be turning all the time!

With all that in mind, here comes Dharma. They start digging and building tunnels, laying cables, and setting up shop because Alvar Hanso is convinced the island holds the cure to what Valenzetti has predicted will happen to the world if he doesn’t do something. Combine the equation with the knowledge that his family is connected to the island via the Black Rock and one can understand why the Hanso Foundation is extra motivated to inhabit this island.

But in their haste – and stupidity – they begin to dig…oh wait…

SIDE NOTE: My wife suggests that instead of building hatches, maybe they were there to drill for minerals. This could mean that the Jump Back Date is the Black Rock arrival to the island. She makes a good point and I guess it could work the same because we would surely avoid any paradoxes with people in the mid-1800’s. I’m going to stick with late 1970’s for now, but keep this in the back of your mind.

So whether digging trenches and roads and hatches…or drilling for minerals and black rocks with special properties…the intruders are shaking the ground. These actions then cause the Dharma Wheel Room to partially collapse.


This then leads to “The Incident”.

As we work on this theory, we discover we might be able to merge the Black Rock with the Dharma Group. How? Imagine the Black Rock was drilling for gold and minerals which we know because mining equipment was found on the ship. This might have caused The Incident. Keep reading and you’ll see how either event could cause The Incident.

We believe The Incident refers to the impact on time on the island due to Wheel unable to be kept continually spinning. When the wheel stops turning, strange things begin to happen on Mysterious Island! This is why the Black Rock drilling COULD have been involved...if you subscribe that dated clothing points to strange events beginning with the occupants of the ship.

If the Black Rock drilling caused the damage to the wheel, then time might have skipped FORWARD to the late 1970’s. A few days later and this sea-faring people who wear frilly shirts might observe a nice, sleek, modern ship coming to shore which includes a crew member named Danielle. Bet that freaked them out as much as the Survivors are freaked about going back in time!
This drastic impact on time – caused either by the Black Rock drilling or the Dharma Initiative digging is The Incident. Without the Dharma Wheel spinning, time is not longer under control of the Hostile/Originals. To control this, a fail safe mechanism was put into place by Dharma which requires the power being safely released every 108 minutes – perhaps this number represents the amount of time it took an animal to cause one revolution of the wheel.

In the next blog, I’m going to then try to explain why I continue to refer to world events like the Cuban Missile Crisis and how it fits into our Biscuits and Gravy Theory.

HISTORICAL ODDITIES

Instead of an episode by episode review – which was too time consuming – I’m sharing some oddities that are new to me or seem to have a larger meaning with what we know now…

Not sure I knew this before, but in the episode Tricia Tanaka is Dead, the song “Road to Shambala” is featured. This is where Hurley gets the VW Dharma van started and the song plays on the 8-track. Well, the song was done by Three Dog Night whose name comes from the indigenous Australians who would dig a hole and sleep in it on cold nights while embracing a dingo – a native Australian species of a wild dog. On really cold night they would sleep with two dogs and if especially cold, it would be a Three Dog Night. With the references to Australia, dogs and music on LOST, I thought it was interesting.

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Boxes…something hit me the other day when reviewing the episode where John is shown his father is on the island. This is where Ben talks about his magical box. As you know from a recent post, JJ Abrams has been known to reference his magic box he was given as a child, so this took on even more importance for me. I must admit that while related to boxes, the scene where Ben reveals Anthony Cooper is on the island, the part that REALLY caught my eye was that Richard Alpert was present. In this episode, Richard seems to servant like to Ben. Plus he played along during the magic box story. Hmmm…

But my point here is boxes which have been mentioned a lot:

-- Survivors hope the plane has a black box
-- Danielle has a music box
-- Locke works for a box company
-- Hurley owns a box company
-- Lenny tells Hurley, “You’ve opened the box”
-- Charles Widmore tells Desmond that “one of those boxes holds your past, Hume.”
-- A former torture victim is talking about her cat to Sayid and says that children trapped it in a box
-- A piece of equipment in the Tempest Hatch is labeled “Box Maker”
-- Ben hides some stuff in box including those stale crackers Hurley doesn’t mind
-- Add the safe deposit boxes and that odd shaped box seen in scenes

For some reason this reminded of a preacher in my past who used to claim some verse in the Bible that spoke of “a strange glow coming from the people’s houses” referred to television sets. TV’s have often been referred to as a box.

Then that led my brain to think that maybe the “magic box” that is referred to on the show is our, the viewers, television sets. The dual time concept is our time in real life versus the show’s time on our boxes. The show did begin on the small screen the same day it started on the television. The same this lines up with season 4 and the re-opening of Oceanic Airlines. And again Season 5 appearst to synch with Ajira Airlines new Destination Destiny program. Hmmm…

Could this mean that “imagine whatever you will and the box will provide it” that Ben mentions is really our TV boxes? A lot of things from writer’s imaginations are shown on those boxes.

And perhaps the most intriguing oddity from my historical review of past episodes is Cindy. Recall when she visits Jack when he is moved to the outdoor cages. She tells him, “We are here to watch.” Jack says something back like, “Watch what, Cindy?”, but she is interrupted by the children (or your wife during a football game, etc. HA!).

We’ve seen surveillance camera’s all over this island as well. Danielle and Frank are watching TV when they hear of Flight 815 being discovered. Hurley learns his lottery ticket result from TV. Expose is a TV show. Desmond watches the football/soccer match on TV. Hurley is seen in the background when Jin delivers his “message”. Kate visits her step-father at the military office and Sayid is on the TV in the background.

In summary, the show is hinting for us to view our TV’s as the magic box. Now my mind is led to contemplate things like subliminal marketing…after all we’ve noticed this is nearly every video clip related to LOST. There was some sci-fi show about using televisions to communicate a signal that would trigger a reaction in human brains. Ok…enough with the oddities.

SEASON 5 PROMO

Here is another postcard for the new season:

Since that really isn’t showing us anything exciting, here is another promo picture sure to excite you:

When I was on ABC.com website looking for a Season 5 promo picture, it made me sit through an ad for a new movies called The Unborn. You’ve probably seen it on TV. Being that it was on ABC’s website and my mind was on LOST, it struck me as strange that the movie trailer includes a close up of an eye. The next line was something about an evil twin. I’m just saying…


STARS IN HIS EYES

Recently the mention of constellations on LOST has come up. In fact, a recent posting on TIDBITS mentions one star formation during the discussion about the Underworld. That constellation is called Cygnus.

In the Underworld post we mentioned that Cygnus was the son of Apollo. Cygnus was an evil persona and was eventually punished by being transformed into a SWAN. Now that rings a bell. Zeus disguised himself as a swan and produced Gemini – Kate’s sign we discover way back when Claire and Kate were talking about the feasibility of astrology.

The U.S.S. Cygnus was also the name of the spacecraft in the movie, “The Black Hole”. Again, with the bells.

In the sky, the Cygnus constellation contains the famous Northern Cross; which happens to be the mirror image of the Southern Cross.

So, I started digging a bit more on Cygnus and discovered a group of researchers believe that this star has the greatest potential for the formation of a black hole. Others believe that all religion and life originates from the stars. Some authors claim that the star proves the existence of multiple dimensions. You can see why this stuff caught my LOST eye.

The brightest star in the Cygnus constellation is called Deneb. It seems that most ancient temples – including the Egyptian pyramids and the stone circles of Europe – were all oriented towards this star. Often the swan is the symbol but over time and adaptation into other cultures, it had been modified to an eagle or a vulture (think of the symbols on the Countdown Clock). These birds all shared the same function: to carry a soul into the afterlife.

Most religion stories share a commonality that these birds would lead a soul to the Underworld via a portal found where the Deneb star is – also known as the Polar Star. Growl. In one particular version, each person would stop at the Pole Star and be judged as worthy or not. If good enough, they would pass over the Milky Way and meet their “over-soul” or “twin soul”.

In Christianity, the star constellation was seen as the Cross of Calvary. This religion converted the bird shape of the stars into a dove. Recall the doves that Charlie sees in his very religion vision. Christianity adapted the judgment process into whether a person’s name was on a LIST or not, called the Book of Life.

The most modern adaptation of Cygnus comes from Carl Sagan who proposed that solar radiation from the constellation affected human DNA some 18,000 years ago and caused a new germ lines (germ in the sense of the three initial cell layers to form in an embryo, not germ as in bad bacteria) to make drastic leaps forward along the evolutionary path. Scientific evidence does show the earth was bombarded by strange sub-atomic particles in days past and spawned the phrase “children of the swan”.

Do all this star-gazing serve as the basis of the mythology of LOST and the research work by the Dharma Initiative? We can’t know for sure, but there is something finally that caught my eye. Ancient religions developed a symbol to represent the Circle of Cygnus – again, “The Circle” being the original name of LOST. Here it is:

Tell me this doesn’t remind you of the brand on Juliet?


EMAILS FROM READERS

LOST TIDBITS received a nice email from a faithful reader. He offered to link to TIDBITS from his site which is always welcomed. To return the favor, if you have a few minutes you might check out his blog on top of the line sports shoes at www.MyAirShoes.com. It is always nice to hear from readers, so email me or drop a comment.


NEXT ON TIDBITS

On Monday, I expect to post Dharma Special Access 8, so keep you eyes on the lookout...

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Enjoy,
KC