Saturday, May 29, 2010

Still More Unanswered Questions in LOST


58. Why was Locke alone at the Lamp Post Church in the finale? Where was Helen?

59. Are the mysterious "rules" between Jacob and MIB the same as those between Ben and Widmore?


60. If the Sonar Fence was meant to keep out the MIB smoke monster, what prevents the smoke monster from flying over it?

61. At what point does the Sonar Fence's vertical boundary stop?

62. If the MIB smoke monster cannot leave the Island, at what point is he unable to fly any further when he flies straight up?

63. And what happens to him if he tries it?

64. When the Freighter was very near the Island and had Minkowski's dead body on it, why didn't the MIB smoke monster fly over there and take on his form?


65. When the first hatch was discovered, why didn't more of the castaways want to go down there and take advantage of its air conditioning and other comforts?

66. How do the Barracks and all the DHARMA stations maintain electricity and running water?

67. How has the enormous amount of electricity needed to power the Sonar Fence been maintained for so many years?


68. The vast plumbing system that exists at the Barracks and in the DHARMA stations must lead to some sort of waste treatment plant. Where is it? Who operates it?

69. How is garbage disposed of at the Barracks? The amount of people that populate the Barracks would generate a staggering amount of solid waste in just months, let alone decades.

70. Why is there no sign of electric power lines or poles around the Barracks?


71. What was the significance of Locke handing Ben a copy of Philip K. Dick's Valis and suggesting there may be things in it that Ben has missed?

72. Why does Kate repeatedly see an apparition of a black horse, even before she ends up on the Island?

73. Why do Chang's pseudonyms all contain references to candles? ("Candle," "Wickmund", "Halliwax")

74. What was the significance of Locke's dream about Horace?


75. If pregnancies cannot occur on the Island without ending in death, how was it that Ethan was born there successfully?

76. How did Hurley and Sayid pick up a 1940s radio broadcast on the transmitter?


77. Was the project to keep people pushing the button a DHARMA hoax or not?

78.If it was, why did Desmond need to turn the key to prevent system failure?

79. And if it wasn't, why did all the reports that personnel thought they were submitting to HQ via pneumatic tube end up dumped in a field?

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

More Unanswered Questions in LOST


31. How can Jack just suddenly be told, "You don't have a son"? What happens to Jack's son from his own POV from that point on?

32. What did MIB mean by "You're too late" just before he dies?

33. Was it just a coincidence that Locke's words "It worked" echo that of Juliet's upon shunting everyone to the sideways world? Apparently not, since Juliet herself says it again in the finale.


34. What happened to the once-major subplot about the Hanso Foundation?

35. How necessary is the water-drinking ritual to anoint/appoint someone the island's protector?

36. Why was the "Magic Box" that produced Anthony Cooper never explained?


37. Ben says he has "some things I need to work out" at the end of the series. What are they?

38. How does the Sonic Fence keep out the smoke monster?

39. How was Sayid resurrected from the dead at The Temple? And why?


40. Who built the Watchtower/lighthouse, and how does it work?

41. Why did Kate change clothes at the Lamp Post church in the finale?


42. Why did Kelvin Inman draw the blast door map?

43. Why did Claire leave baby Aaron behind?

44. Why did Jin choose to die with Sun and leave their child fatherless?

45. What the heck was Ben's breakfast on the beach with Kate all about?


46. What was the significance of Jacob and the red herring?

47. What was the significance of Jacob reading "Everything That Rises Must Converge"?

48. Why does the statue, said to be Tawaret, not look as much like Tawaret as it does Sobek?


49. Will the whispering ghosts be stuck on the island forever? Is MIB one of them now?

50. Why is Hydra Island seemingly sometimes visible and sometimes not?


51. If Ben was originally working for Jacob, why did Jacob allow him to do all the reprehensible things he did?

52. Why did being a parent exclude Kate from being a candidate but not others like Sun and Jin?

53. If Ben was working for Jacob, shouldn't he have known that Oceanic 815 would break up over the island, and not been surprised about it?


54. Since part of Jacob's entire opposition to his brother was based in the conviction that there was nothing outside of the island, at what point did he realize differently? And why did that not change the way he treated his brother?

55. What's the story behind Michael Abaddon?

56. Why did one of Hurley's fellow mental patients start spouting "the numbers"?

57. How did Jacob get off the island to stalk, manipulate, and touch all the candidates?

Monday, May 24, 2010

Unanswered Questions in LOST


These questions may in fact be answered, but may have gone over my head or gotten lost in the shuffle. Feel free to refresh my memory.

1. What happened to Mr. Eko? Why did his spirit not reappear to Hurley or anyone else?

2. What will Richard Alpert do when he gets to America? Since he's originally from 1867, how is it that he has an legit legal identity in present time? (And we know that he does, because he appeared in modern-day America to interact with Juliet representing "Mittelos Bioscience", and to young John Locke to give him some sort of other-life-memory aptitude test.)


3. Will the truth come out about the Oceanic 815 wreckage on the ocean floor being faked?

4. How did Hurley and Ben get back to America?


5. Since Hurley left with everyone else inside the Lamp Post church, who's guarding the island now? Surely not Ben, because Hurley acted as if he had expected Ben to join them.

6. What happened to the whole subplot about Jack and the tattoo he received from the Asian prostitute?

7. What cured Locke's paralysis in the pilot episode, and why?

8. Why does Smoke Monster/Fake Locke/Man In Black keep saying Locke-like things, like "don't tell me what I can't do", even after he no longer needs to pass himself off as Locke?


9. What was so special about Walt, and why did the Others want him?

10. Why do Locke and Shannon see apparitions of Walt? He wasn't dead and thus could not have been a ghost nor a smoke-monster impersonation.

11. What was the significance of the real Henry Gale?

12. How does Mr. Friendly manage to go back and forth from the island to America?

13. Why was Smoke Monster/Fake Locke/Man In Black carving a staff similar to Mr. Eko's?


14. Why did Widmore have a huge painting of Jacob's scale with black and white rocks hanging in his office?

15. Whatever became of Faraday making a note to himself to remember that Desmond was his "constant"?

16. How and why is Eloise able to move in and out of different time-tracks and realities to keep tabs on Desmond?

17. Was Jacob responsible for Hurley's years of torment over the synchronicities about "the numbers" and his belief that they represented a curse?


18. Why does the show seem to state that, despite early appearances, neither Jacob nor his brother are particularly "good guys", despite having ostensibly noble motives? (Jacob is wants to save the island, but ruins a lot of lives in the process, and MIB simply wants to cease being held prisoner on the island, but ruins a lot of lives in the process of trying to get off it)

19. How did Eloise come to oversee the Lamp Post church, and why wasn't she present when the cast members congregated there in the finale?

20. Does sideways-world Widmore already know what will happen by sending Desmond to go talk to Eloise in person about her party?


21. Who was the "clever fellow" Eloise makes an oblique reference to, that installed the pendulum at the Lamp Post that allows tracking of the Island?

22. Who was still drop-shipping Dharma supplies to the Island, and how?

23. Why Tawaret?

24. Why has so much of the backstory of the Dharma Initiative and the Hanso Foundation been left unexplained?


25. How much time elapsed between Hurley and Ben talking on the Island about Hurley being the new No.1, and their subsequent conversation outside the lamp post?

26. When Christian Shephard appeared to Locke at the frozen wheel, was it really Christian, or MIB impersonating him?

27. Why was MIB's name never given?

28. Since Jacob said that the Island was literally like a cork that was holding back forces of evil beneath it, does that mean that the light energy uncorked from the cave is inherently evil? Or does it simply indicate further that Jacob, despite his powers, is actually wrong about many things?


29. Why was the whole subplot about Dogen abandoned? What power did he possess that kept MIB out of the Temple?

30. If the apparitions of Yemi were MIB impersonating him, how then to explain the times that Yemi came to Eko and Locke in their dreams?


Sunday, May 9, 2010

Mandrake the Magician


One of the best comic strips to straddle the style boundaries and timeline between Steampunk and Dieselpunk is Mandrake the Magician, which began June 11, 1934 and still runs to this very day.

Depending on how you define the term, Mandrake was the first superhero comic, arriving four years prior to Superman. He certainly has mental super-powers, and he wears a costume with a cape. (The same could be said for The Shadow, who debuted in 1930, but he was a radio serial character first, then a pulp-fiction hero, and not a comic strip until 1940.)


If you're not familiar with Mandrake, here's the Jeff's Notes version:

A man in a tuxedo and top hat runs around fighting crime and solving mysteries with his girlfriend Narda (a Princess from Cockaigne) and his African muscleman Lothar. Lothar, probably the first black crimefighting superhero in comics, was a Prince of "The Seven Nations", a federation of tribes. Mandrake's father Theron is the headmaster of the Collegium Magikos (College of Magic) in a remote Shambala-like kingdom hidden deep in the Himalayan mountains. Mandrake lives in a stately home called Xanadu. His enemies include The Cobra (whose face was scarred and disfigured in battle with Mandrake), The Deleter (an extraterrestrial hit man), and The Clay Camel (who leaves a small camel made of clay at each of his crime scenes.)

Monday, May 3, 2010

Professor X's Wheelchair, Steampunk Style


Just rambled across this here YouTube video of a Steampunked-up antique wheelchair by Smeeon, with all sorts of fascinating bells n' whistles - most notably, a series of tubes containing vodka-cranberry martini kept constantly filtered thru an icepack and connected to a dispenser on the side.

Seriously.

Now that's my kind of ride. In the future when no one walks anymore and we all lose use of our limbs and scoot around in machines operating computers hard-wired to our brains - like, say, in about six years - this is what I want my transport module to be.


See more of this mighty throne on Smeeon's Flickr.