Daily Circulation: 58

I'm going in tomorrow to give my notice. That's right, if my boss reads my blog he'll finally know something ahead of time. I am leaving, for greener pastures. But I seriously doubt he's readin' my blog.

In any case my ship has come in just a little bit, and I'm taking more money and more freedom and more responsibility starting in two or three weeks. I'll be back in home video, where I belong thank you very much. And did I mention more money? Plus god knows how much I'll save by buying my dvd's wholesale. That alone is probably worth more than the health insurance.

I'm pretty determined to make this work, too. From all indications I am getting one hell of a great boss, a smart, competent, funny woman who seems like she is on exactly the same wavelength as me. My interview last week ranks as one of the best first meetings I have ever had with anyone. (I hope she reads this, I'm really laying it on thick here.) I am really jazzed about being able to hire and fire, and I'm looking forward to being able to basically pick the people that I want to work with, something I've never been able to do. I am going out tomorrow to get my hands on as many books about interviewing and getting the right people as I can find.

The best part is I went out and did this completely on my own with no outside pressure at all. My job was totally secure. I wasn't in dire need of more money. I didn't have a huge moral quandary at work. I just knew I needed something better and I went out and found it.

Yay me!

Set your phasers on stun

George Takei came out of the closet today. That's right, Sulu is Gay. Not as gay as that black/white Frank Gorshin planet, not as gay as Wesley Crusher, but as gay as he wants to be all the same. No, but seriously folks, good on him. Way to hang out the big matzoh ball, Georgie boy. That sound you hear is hundreds of hyper-insecure 54 year olds tearing his poster off the walls of their parents basement.

"If Sulu's gay, and I love Sulu, does that mean I'm gay?!?"

Hands up if you want Paramount to produce a sitcom called "I Love Sulu."

I for one welcome our Google overlords

A brave new world, indeed.

I thought Hootkins was dead months ago.

We spent last night curled up on the couch watching A Dirty Shame on dvd. It's nice when a great festival movie actually holds up out in the real world. Best of all was kind of monitoring the reaction beside me on the couch, as it went from "this is stupid" to "yeah, but really funny" to "no, actually it's kind of serious in its own goofy way". Exactly the reaction I had to it a year ago, and why it wound up on my top ten for 2004. Not for everybody (I wouldn't recommend it to my parents, for example) but raunchy and sweet and probably a good idea for anybody starting to be engaged by the puberty monster.

Things have been churning away out in the real world for a while as well. I finally got to see Max in full on Karate action at his class. Leah points out, quite correctly, that just like her ballroom dancing experience he's got a little problem with remembering the "steps." Still, how cute is it to watch 20 five and six year olds all punch and kick the air in unison? Pretty damned cute, indeed.

I also took him out to see Body Worlds at the science centre. The actual exhibit couldn't be more fantastic, I highly recommend. Also, Max got bored and came out with his best line since "you're not talking". After asking to leave for the 10th time, he finally looked at me and said "Daddy, you're like Godzilla. You never leave!" No I don't know what it means either, and I'm also not sure Max knows who Godzilla is, but come on... That's awesome all the same.

I'm about a week away from announcing a fairly life altering decision... but I can't until it's for sure (background checks are being conducted as we speak). I can't wait to make it all public. It's weird when you know your life will change, that you'll be leaving some people behind and having to forge all new friendships. That you'll have to start thinking about things in a much more intelligent way again. I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and it really feels good to do that.

That is the steak.

The lost parade of ancillary silly nonsense continues. If Lindelof et al spent half the time writing the show that they are apparently spending screwing around with fake websites we might already know something more than we do. There are now even more loose plot threads dangling than there were when the season began. Hanso? Skinner? A race around the world? The tail section?

Why not start here. Keep zooming out, noticing the pathway between continents. It helps to hum the creepy lost music in your head, as Tederick suggests. At least we ought to know where to start looking for edu-tourism packages.

Then check this out. The original fake site gave up some pretty cool clues. Feel free to poke around, there's lots of pretty crazy hidden stuff here. Keep your eye open for that marked up page of script.

Then zip on over to here. What seems like an official lost site does have one neat trick. Click on the barcode at the bottom and type "theislandiswaiting" into the password field. Up pops another script page, this time with some pretty damn spoilery stuff about the true nature of things.

Hell, just put http://www.theislandiswaiting.com into your browser and you'll see even more fun. I have no idea what happens if you find all the numbers, or if anything happens. Let me know.

Curious about the Dharma Initiative? There's always this here, whilst not informative at least it has the air of official timewasting coming off of it. By the way the weird url comes from the numbers on the cans in Desmond's store room.

That's not even the half of it yet. In what is perhaps the biggest wank fest of all, the Hanso Foundation is out there, too. Check out their entirely fake website and get a load of the crazy projects they've got on the go, projects that serve only to complicate and confuse the possiblities even more than they are already. Plus you can click on the dharma initiative link and see the training video again!

Then really screw your brain down tight by going up to the address line in your browser and adding an s to the http part (https://thehansofoundation.org.)

Take what you find there and do what you think is best with it. What the hell do you make of that?!? I checked around, and at least part of what you're hearing is morse code. For what, you may ask? I'll leave it to you to find that out for yourselves. There's gotta be some mystery to this thing.

For even more (there's more?) goofy lost shit, there's always the blog:

http://flight815.blogspot.com

Now that's dedication.

catch up

Max started Karate this week. When I asked him to show me, he came up with a perfect looking punch, delivered with a lot of power for his small frame. He measured his stance, kept his fist tight and his arm came out nice and straight. If he sticks with it for a while, we've promised to buy him his own Gi. He also knows that karate is only for self defense, although he has no idea what self defense might actually be.



Starting next Friday, Canadians will finally be able to see Craft Corner Deathmatch, perhaps the greatest reality TV achievement in the history of the world. HGTV, Friday nights. Its host has already left the show to become the latest addition to the cast of the daily show, so I suppose that means there won't be any more craft corner deathmatches, but at least we can take the time to enjoy the precious few episodes we've got. If it wasn't clear from the name, CCD is a contest style reality show, in which 2 budding martha stewarts compete head to head in various craft based challenges. All in an atmosphere that is somewhere between Iron Chef and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The judges then pick a winner, who moves on to the bonus round, where that lucky person dukes it out with (and I wish I had thought of this first) the "craft lady of steel". Seriously, it's like crack mixed with chocolate.

The new TV season has otherwise been fairly hit and miss. I've added about 4 shows, Prison Break (enjoyable junk food), Kitchen Confidential, My Name is Earl, and Criminal Minds. I left behind Amazing Race & Numbers, a show which devolved into routine so fast it was scary. I'm hooked on Veronica Mars and Rescue Me. I'm hopeful that Lost will finally deliver a major chunk of the goods next week. I'm dangerously close to giving up entirely on The Simpsons, something that I didn't think was possible. House put together its first truly awful episode ever last week, a maudlin, boring example of a show that betrayed everything it used to be about. Let's hope it was just a one off anomaly.

I just realized that by February, I'll be finished collecting Film Noir for the most part. I'll have to pick something else to concentrate on after that. Westerns? Musicals? 70's Thrillers? Silents? 80's Teen Comedies? The choices are truly overwhelming. Maybe I'll just pick up every single criterion collection title. I can afford to get about 3 per month, so I should be finished by approximately 2013.