Lost Again

We are nearing the end of the final season of Lost and I have to admit, this season sucks.

I absolutely loved the previous five seasons and would go so far as to say they're the best TV I've ever seen. And I knew I couldn't get my hopes up about this ending because so many great stories have been tarnished by their endings. Some examples:


A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

This movie should have ended when David was trapped underwater with the Blue Fairy. The whole aliens in the future thing was a waste.


A Series of Unfortunate Events

13 books in all. The first 12 were amazing, especially because they were dark, unconventional, and mysterious. A number of the mysteries were resolved in the 12th book so I was looking forward to the finale of the series with the 13th book. Little did I realize the 12th book was essentially the denouement and could have ended the series right there. The 13th book revealed nothing new and was just an extremely long epilogue.


Seinfeld

Seinfeld changed American humor and television forever. The finale was one of the most anticipated in history and was absolutely disappointing. I'm happy Larry David redeemed the series by creating a faux reunion on the latest series of Curb Your Enthusiasm.


Heroes (Season 1)

When Heroes broke it was a huge success and that was for good reason. Great character development and a compelling story. It all pointed to the finale, and we all wondered what would happen with the prophesied explosion that would destroy New York. Well turns out all those great characters and plot points were a waste. The ending of the first season was unsatisfying to say the least.


Signs

I love the movies of M. Night Shyamalan, but I have to admit Signs train-wrecked at the end. All the suspense built up throughout the movie was so well done, but the final reveal left us all wondering, "Was that really it?!?" The aliens are allergic to water? Water???? 71% of the freaking planet is covered by water!!! It rains all over the place on this planet. Everything has water in it. How could the aliens not have figured that out before they invaded?


So before I say all the things that annoy me about this season I would like to say once again, I absolutely love Lost! Even if this season ends miserably I can't deny how amazing the first 5 seasons were, and there have been some highlights from this season that I also thoroughly enjoy.

And now that I've said that, what are the elements of Lost this season that really make it suck?


Bringing back old characters

It's nice every once in awhile to see old characters, but when each episode is filled with random characters from throughout the series, you've gone too far. This is so kitschy! I don't care about so many minor characters and personally I don't want to see dead characters again, unless they really are integral to the plot. It just feels like they're doing this for no reason other than to try and impress fans.


Alternate universes

This is connected with the previous element. TV shows and sequels have this idea that people want to see their characters acting completely opposite to how they normally would act. So now we've got Ben Linus as a timid high school teacher and Hurley as a successful entrepreneur that everyone respects. Seriously, this insults me. All these characters have been developed over 5 seasons and now it's like that is all thrown out the window and we're expected to care or be interested in what happens to them in this alternate reality. They might someone justify all this in upcoming episodes but it's going to have to be really good.


Completely altering characters

The change that has happened in some of the characters on the island has been too dramatic. Claire is back but it's not Claire anymore. It's some implausibly crazy girl that no one cares about anymore. Same with Sayid. Now he's emotionless and does whatever "Locke" says. They should have just killed these characters off, because their actions are so ridiculous now.


Mysteries revealed

I know we've all wanted these mysteries revealed since they began, but people forget the main reason why magicians don't reveal their secrets. It's because questioning and debating the mystery is much more interesting than learning the truth behind it. Some mystery reveals are cool, such as what we've learned about the smoke monster so far, but other mysteries I think should be left secret unless the reveal is mind-blowing. Finding out what the whispers are wasn't mind-blowing. It was meh. I hope the remainder of this season won't be as meh.


Strained romances

Up until this season, the love stories have connected with people. They were touching and well done. This season, however, has felt so forced. No one cares anymore about Jack and Kate and Sawyer. Hurley and Libby was a waste of an episode. Richard and his girl was unnecessary. No one cares. I do still like Desmond and Penny but that's it.


And I guess I'll wrap this up now. This season seems to me like it's taking on more than it can chew. At this point people just want it to end so there's no reason to drag things out and introduce new characters. They should have just kept it simpler. It's hard to care about Jacob and the Man in Black when we've only just met them. Maybe the remaining episodes will blow my mind and justify all I've just said. We'll see.

...Therefore I Am

As human beings, we are complex. There are different sides to who we are. We are emotional beings. We are sexual. We are intellectual. We are spiritual. We are physical.

But something confuses me, and perhaps you can help me find clarity. Even though we are complex and multi-faceted, there are really only two verbs (that I can think of) that we use to express our deepest parts.

"I think..."

and

"I feel..."

The first is intellectual, the second is emotional. What about the sexual, the spiritual, and the physical (not to mention the other sides I couldn't think of)?

This bothered me growing up Pentecostal, because whenever we talked about spiritual things we would talk about our feelings. "I could feel the Spirit of God in this place." And then later in more conservative Christian circles we talked more about our thoughts. "I think God wants me to take this job."

Why do we only think and feel? Is there no other way to express those other sides of our humanity? Or are those two the only ways we truly experience life and everything filters through them?

What are you thoughts? Or feelings?

How I Am Not A Catholic - Part Three

So going into Columbia Bible College I basically believed Catholicism was heretical, yet many Catholics were Christians and by God's grace were still going to heaven.


That started to shift almost right away at CBC. I could tell the attitude of students and profs was more accepting of Catholicism than I was. I had heard a couple years ago that Catholics don't use birth control and that always intrigued me. It actually made no sense to me at all. Why would they be opposed to birth control?!? I never heard of anyone being opposed to it before.

So it began to nag at me. And around that time I realized something I hadn't really thought about. Before the Reformation, the Catholic Church was THE Church. If people wanted to learn about Jesus they would have to do it through the Catholic Church (okay, I know I'm not counting the Eastern Orthodox Church, disregard for now). That's at least 1300 years!


So then I began wondering (out loud sometimes), "If the Catholic Church has been THE Church for so long, how can we so easily pass off all their teachings as heretical?" Especially regarding birth control, I wondered why without any effort or discussion we simply say, "Oh, that's a stupid belief!"

Enter Conor.


Between my first and second year at CBC my sister started dating Conor. He's Catholic. This should be interesting...

End of Part Three.

I'm Getting Crafty

If you recall last Christmas, I was ranting something about presents. So one of my conclusions was that I would start making gifts for people rather than buying things for them. So I had Conor's name for our family gift exchange so I decided I would make him something, but what???

Well, Conor used to make twig furniture all the time, so I thought, "Why not make him a piece of furniture?" But instead of twigs I decided to use pennies. And that was because he had just moved home from Australia, where they have no pennies. And I despise pennies. So what better way to get rid of my pennies than to make a chair for Conor? Well here it is:


You'll notice it's not quite big enough for a human to sit on, but many of Conor's furniture pieces were miniature also. This chair I made happens to be just perfect for Spongebob Squarepants!


Upon opening his present, Conor wasn't too thrilled with it, and then it proceeded to break. The smell from the metal glue I used on it was REALLY strong and Conor hastily threw it behind the couch so the fumes wouldn't poison his newborn son. I guess I can see why he wasn't too thrilled.

Well after that experience, I realized penny furniture really wasn't a highly anticipated present. It was then that I discovered something much better. 8-bit Perler Bead Art!!! So far these are my creations:


I make them with Perler beads and then fuse them together with an iron. Then I put a magnet on them and voila, video game fridge magnets!!!

Unfortunately today I discovered the magnets I bought are crap and can't even hold up a piece of paper on the fridge. Oh well...trial and error I guess.

So, what video game characters do you like?? The best ones for me to make are old school NES. Anything else makes for much bigger designs. But whatever, it's your present!

How Much Longer?

This blog is dying. I don't know how much longer is has to live. I want it to keep going, but the motivation just isn't there like it used to be. It's like msn. I never use that thing anymore. 2 years ago I was on it all the time.

So I don't see me writing on here much longer. Maybe it will go longer than I think, I don't know...

But I still have to write all those posts I promised but didn't get to while in Italy. And of course I'll write all about my trip to Italy (a post for every single day!).

Oh yeah, I'm back from Italy!!!! Got home yesterday afternoon. It sure is nice to be back for many reasons. But yeah, you'll hear all about it very soon.