Rounding Up Halloween

Today's Halloween, but
doesn't it feel over already? I love Halloween horror, don't get me
wrong. But I already woke up in my costume with a stinking headache and
flammable candy breath once this year -- doing it before work tomorrow
doesn't quite have the same appeal.

This little
video pretty much sums up the days following Halloween, if you ask me:




But even though the
reason for the season is crumbling in the leaves like so much beetle
food, we had some fun together, right? We sure as heck did at AOL
Journals, I tell you what. Here's a roundup:

Scalzi's Halloweeny
links


'Nosferatu' in its entirety

My Halloween Blog
Picks


J-Land's Happy
Halloween


A number of you dropped in more Halloween links in
my last post -- here they are, for the sake of greater coverage:

Pat's
animation


Dave the Sod's
Halloween video, and a pumpkin's murder.

A Halloween
'snag.'


Trick-or-treating
with Dan.

But
this -- this here is the weirdest, worst
thing I've
seen on the Web in months. Just keep staring at it -- it gets creepier
the longer you look.

Here's two
different versions of 'Thriller' -- both
Indian!

And finally -- the Make blog's DIY Halloween costumes, pumpkins and party
treats.

Did I miss anything? Let me know, and try and finish that
candy by Christmas.

Tags: Halloween, scary, AOL Journals

AOL Journals' Happy Halloween Links

I fully expect all of you to
be excitedly drooling a sticky syrup made sugary by candy consumption over the
weekend. "Why," you ask, "what should I be drooling about?" Why, the
much-anticipated roundup of J-land's Halloween
content.

If you can't eat candy, these sweet links should
get you up to
speed:

JmoranCoyle's got a
number of spooky Halloween entries over at My Way. She's got a personal connection to this ghost
story,
too.

Lucky Cowboy is running all sorts of country-themed Halloween
content. Be forewarned: there's embedded audio on the
page.

Kenny Hill wears a tiara
that says "Gayest Editor Ever" in a looping, glittery script -- it goes with the
territory as he is managing editor of AOL's Gay and Lesbian channel and blogs at
Worth
Repeating. He's got a few
Halloween posts up -- check out Dance With the Scissor
Sisters and his coverage of
D.C.'s annual high-heel
races.

Dirtygirl1616 seeks spooks in
Philadelphia, blogging photos and written accounts of her haunted hunts at
Haunted
Philadelphia.

Dan of
The Wisdom of a Distracted
Mind shares this link to a
blog chronicling Madison, Wisconsin's
Halloween
mega-blast.

An Analysis of
Life has several old
traditional ghostly folktales up this week. Have a look at The
Dullahan,
The
Banshee and
Ghostly Tales From the Ancient
World.


Rose of Wait, Not Yet has posted her own roundup of Happy Halloween
Happenings. Take a look,
and if you have any links of your own, leave them in her
comments.

Just because I'm winding this post up doesn't mean
that I'm done. Halloween isn't until tomorrow, and there's a great big Web out
there. If you've got links to your own scary stuff or just stuff you want to
share, leave it in my comments section. I'll be updating this post over the next
36 hours or so and I'll be sure to work your links in.

Don't eat any
poisoned candy apples ...

Weekend Blog Picks 10/27/06

I've said it before: Halloween is Christmas for weirdoes and the weather outside is frightful, if you get my drift. We'll be back to the Guest Editor programming next week, don't you worry. But this week, I just had to seize the spotlight and highlight some spectacular Halloween blog content from the weird wild Web.

I'm a pretty huge horror buff, but it hasn't always been that way. Horror movies used to scare the absolute whoopsies out of me. I read the 'Creepshow' comic book as a third-grader and bedtime was freaking cancelled that week, let me tell you. In middle school, I once drew a cross above my bed in pencil to ward off the concept of Freddy Krueger. When I finally did see 'Nightmare on Elm Street' for the first time, it was through the protective veil of my best friend's afghan. I was 17.

Now I wear a skeleton-printed T-shirt as a default, and I listen to the Misfits like whales eat plankton. It's an obsession that may be slightly prolonging my bachelorhood, but screw it. Like John Waters said, "Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." Around Halloween the Web erupts with stuff I just love -- weird music, creepy vintage art, and all the stuff that I crave year-round. So, without further ado, here are some blogs that make my inner Count cackle with garish glee:

Bruce Campbell is the contemporary horror fan's superhero. He's starred in 'Evil Dead,' 'Evil Dead II,' 'Army of Darkness,' 'Bubba Ho-tep' and had bit parts in both 'Spider-Man' films. It's even rumoured that he'll be playing a Spidey villain in the upcoming 'Spider-Man 3.' He's got a Web site that perfectly mirrors my perception of his personality, complete with blog page. In this post, he describes a 'Celebrity Death-Match, Horror-Style.'

Halloween are horror music is a huge part of my life, year-round -- here are a few awesome repositories of horrific tunes:

The Essential Ghoul's Record Shelf has all kinds of rare, kitschy and unabashedly crappy horror-themed tunes, including the theme to one of my favorite films of all time: 'Spider Baby.'

WFMU's Beware of the Blog is a superlative blog year-round, but this Halloween MP3 post really takes the biscuit -- it's got spooky kiddie records, cool mixes and awesome old-time horror radio. When I listen to this stuff I can feel my actually consciousness expanding with love, each pore in my skin widening into a tiny mouth that shouts "hell yes!" in unison. Is that weird?

When my uncle first bought his house, it was completely infested with fleas. We walked out of there with itchy black ankles crawling with ravenous fleas. See, when fleas are born in the absence of a food source (like in a empty house) they put all their resources into breeding so that even if they die of starvation, their nasty little bloodsucking bloodline lives on. And we all know that fleas lay like, a billion eggs at a time, so just imagine that -- a house full of nasty little vampires breeding and breeding and maybe eating each other for the strength to breed some more.

Now imagine if instead of fleas, that was how real human-sized vampires worked. The nastiness of that little image is in direct proportion to the awesomeness of Scar Stuff, another blog featuring spectacular Halloween music.

No Smoking in the Skull Cave is a pretty righteous blog in its own right, but the author's roundup of overlooked horror recommendations is pretty much exactly what I'm putting in my Netflix queue right this second. Content warning ahoy -- cuss words and occasional tasteful naked ladies abound.

DataJunkie's got a rockin' blog of high weirdness, spooky stuff and crappy pop-kitsch product galleries. He's taking a little break from blogging, but to tide his readers over he's packed this post with cover scans from all kinds of Marvel horror comics.

So there you have it, folks -- my weekend picks. Have a spooky, safe weekend.

**Update** I'm putting together a post of AOL Journals Halloween-themed content next Monday. I've gotten a few submissions already, but please send all you've got. If you have a Halloween-themed blog or blog entry, either mail me a link or leave it in the comments here and I'll be sure to include it!

Beta Bounced, Now It's Cool

Those of you that may have been blogging in Journals Beta may have noticed some problems this afternoon. It's all resolved now, and as usual, Stephanie BamBam! has the details. If you have any more problems, please let me know.

'Lost': Pacemaker? Stop Rattling My Cage

'Lost's' creators have to walk a real tightrope, maintaining mystery and suspense without making us feel too completely jerked around. This week, the rope started to wobble.

This week's episode didn't really go too far to explain much or advance the overall story. Sure, it was engaging in and of itself, but it kinda felt like we're on a treadmill rather than jogging ahead towards something important. I'm not the only viewer who felt that way, although some people are straight tired of it.

As always, EW does a solid recap of last night's events, and we've got a good 'Lost' page, too. It's late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning as I post this. All the good 'Lost' theories and Easter eggs always pop up throughout the workday on Thursdays as the rest of America gets to work and starts screwing around blogging about 'Lost' on company time. So check back into this post periodically for recaps, more theories, predictions, Easter eggs and links. But here's what I have right now:

Theories and Predictions

Juliet's a fertility doctor. This just fuels the Others-have-super-weird-kid-issues theories. After all, they kidnapped Walt, stole Claire to get to the baby, and there are all those tiny skeletons in the polar bear's cave. But how is it that the Others are infertile? Is the island's magnetism so strong that even spermatozoa can't steer straight?

Ben hates needles. He says it when they're putting Sawyer under. You just KNOW that's gonna come back somehow.

Desmond's becoming clairvoyant, as we saw last episode, and with the 5-iron lightning rod this week. His clairvoyance is not a glimpse at the hard-coded, inevitable future, though. He can see a malleable future that can be somewhat manipulated, i.e. the lightning bolt was going to strike at that time in that general spot on the island. But Desmond could draw it away from Claire and Charlie's tent. Will this power give the castaways the ultimate edge over the Others? Or do they have it too?

Juliet claims that they never needed a surgeon on the island. How is it that the Others lived on that island for at least 40 years without needing a surgeon? There are a lot of sharp sticks to fall on on that island, cliffs to fall from and hello, hungry polar bears roaming the jungle. Even if they did send people in need of care to whatever mainland, they'd need SOMEONE on the island, too. I think Juliet was lying here.

My man Shawn Schrager suggests that the island heals, a la Locke's legs and Rose's cancer, so they'd never need a surgeon. Possibly. But there's been a lot of fatal puncture wounds that never healed up in this series. Chalk this up to ongoing mystery.

**Update** There are massive rotten truckloads of fantastic theories being posted in the comments of this post as we speak. Make sure you read them and jump into the discussion.

Easter eggs

**Update** DarkUFO has an incredibly complex, well-thought-out post up now. I usually link out to this site, but this is exceptional work. Check it out.

Sawyer gets off a pretty classic film reference when he refers to his captor with the bandaged nose as "Chinatown."

The numbers on Sawyer and his fellow prisoner's prison garb are 840 and 248, respectively. And of course, if you add up the digits in each number, you get two numbers that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the 'Lost' numbers -- 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. What's happening there? Also, according to Schrager, since when does a prison only have three-digit ID numbers? All the prisons I've been in have had five-digit IDs at least, and believe me, I know.

At least one of the Others has seen 'Pulp Fiction,' saying "you've got to get it right through the sternum, like in that movie." Lotsa drugs and cussing in that last link, by the way.

Here's a screencap of that creepy guy with the eyepatch you saw in the preview for next week's episode.

Things you missed from last night's episode.

This isn't really an Easter egg, but check out Sawyer speaking Russian.

Why this guy is done watching 'Lost.' Overall, this guy makes some good points, with one majorly glaring exception. Dude, Jin is KOREAN. KOREANS ARE NOT CHINESE. What are you, from the '50s?

Total Crap

I didn't buy that pacemaker jive for a second. There's no way you can cover up heart surgery with a Band-Aid like that. Although, others disagree. Sawyer's got a highly tuned B.S. detector, and he shoulda seen right through that one.

What I REALLY didn't buy was that rabbit passing out while his cage was being rattled around. What are the odds that Ben timed the onset of the sedative that well, or that the rabbit's natural agitation at being shaken like a baby wouldn't overcome the sedative? No dice, 'Lost' people.

Got theories, links, or Easter Eggs? Leave 'em in the comments, and check back in soon.

Tags: Lost, LOST, 'Every Man For Himself', Sawyer, Others, Juliet, lost theories, lost easter eggs

Halloween: Bringing Sexy Back

I came across this hard-hitting piece of Pulitzer material this morning courtesy of Fark:

"Sexy Is the New Scary."

It reveals the shocking news that

"Looking sexy is now considered normal, feminine behavior for a woman, so on a day like Halloween, women will take it as creative license to wear revealing clothing and no one can call them a tramp that day," said Donna Gough, an assistant professor of women's studies at Cal State Fullerton. "And for men, it's a day where they can openly stare at and drool over women in such attire without being called a chauvinist pig."

On the one hand, I guess this story had to be written. Papers (and certain blogs) need filler material, after all. And I mean, this is kind of a funny angle.

But on the other hand, duh. Is this a legitimate problem? The article continues to quote Gough, saying

"The message being sent for a woman is that you have to wear these costumes to fit in and be normal and be considered attractive and appealing to men."

I'm a dude, so I'll be the first to admit that I might not exactly know what I'm talking about here. I can't exactly speak for women here since I've never been one -- but what if women WANT to tart it up on Halloween? Maybe the sexy costume thing isn't so much a social pressure as an unfurling of repressed id.

I've got three female friends who want to sass it up bigtime on Halloween, and not one of them has said to me, "Gosh, Jeff, I really wanted to dress up like a cardboard box for Halloween, but thanks to all this social pressure I'm practically forced to be G-string Catwoman."

One Farker makes a decent case for the contrary in the comment thread, however:

It's just kind of depressing to me, all the competing ... instead of having fun and being creative. I dunno, there's enough pressure on women to act like sex objects the other 364 days of the year. I got sick of it after a while, and I really didn't like the way I was treated when I did dress like that. So I stopped. And I still have no problem getting laid.

There doesn't seem to be any equivalent for men, though. I've never seen that many dudes dressed as the Sexy Plumber, Sexy Pizza Man, or Sexy Doctor Octopus. But then again, I may be at the wrong parties to see that sort of thing. According to my friend Kenny Hill, Managing Editor of Worth Repeating, plenty of guys dress that way ... they're just not exactly my target audience.

There's no trend toward sexy costumes in the gay world, dude, unless you call at least three decades a trend. Halloween is the gay national holiday, the epitome of which was Castro Street on Halloween before the straight gawkers and tourists ruined it. Sorry.

Whether we're dressing up or dressing down, gays push boundaries with costumes for Halloween. But it's nothing new. Butt-less chaps, guys playing nurse-sluts, women in cop uniforms with bulging packages ... We wrote the book. It's called having fun. Personally though, I think clever and timely costumes usually trump slutty.

In my opinion, the whole point of Halloween is to be something you're not -- to be either scary or funny as all hell. Among my friends, I'm kinda infamous for burying a suit in the dirt two weeks before Halloween, digging it up before a party and dumping fake gore over my head to be the nastiest zombie I could think of.

What are your most infamous or legendary costumes? Ladies (and gents), do you like to sass it up for Halloween or play it low-key? You know what the comments are and where they stay -- let it be known.

Journals Halloween Photo Contest

Hey folks -- as you all know, Halloween is Christmas for weirdos, and I'm pumped!

Journalers Matt and Betty asked that I bring their Halloween Photo Contest to your attention, and I'm more than happy to oblige. This prize sounds pretty nice, I'll say that much:

"Two first prize winners will 1 receive their photo blown (12 X 16) up and printed professionally on fine art paper and fully matted. First prize winners will also receive a signed copy of "Digital Art Photography for Dummies." Five second place winners will receive the printed copy of their photo."

 Click here for more details.

If you've got any Halloween-themed activities on the go in your Journal, please let me know and I'm happy to promote them, as always.

Spell Check Issues

Hey all -- just a quick update to complement Stephanie's at BamBam! Some of you have reported intermittent problem with Spell Check. And I've had intermittent problems with it my own self.

So I reported it to the people who work on Spell Check, and they're on the case. It seems that some (not all) of the machines that process Spell Check commands have, you guessed it, squirrels living inside them.

So they've been taken offline for the weekend until our squirrel wrangler comes in Monday and cleans them out. Not to worry: there should be plenty of capacity in the remaining machines to handle all Spell Check work this weekend -- and you shouldn't see any problems at all.

So really, it's a win-win: your Spell Check works, and the squirrels don't get evicted over the weekend.

As always, I'm in your corner.

Guest Editor Weekend Picks -- 10/20/06

Hi everybody... as posted to the
AOL Journals main page and the Message
Boards, here are the Guest Editor's Picks for October 20th, 2006:

Claire blogs about her life
all the way over in Cornwall, England at 'Bendy's
World'. She's this week's Guest Editor. Check out her
weekend picks:

* Adopting
Sveta
*
Sweet
Juniper (content warning)
* Brookston
Family Blog
* Tim's HIV
Blog
*
J9
Online
*
What's New at
Only Zuul

Check out Claire's blog to see these picks with her unique
description. Don't forget, if you want your own chance at being a Guest Editor,
or if you have a blog you want us to see for a possible feature, send me an
e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com.
Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

Have a
great weekend, everyone.

Thanks -- Jeff

'Lost': Psychedelics, Telepathics and Life on a Weed Farm

Now that's more like it -- that's what I want from 'Lost,' answers, action and more mysteries. As always, EW has a solid recap of last night's events. Check it out in another window while I fill you in on the theories, Easter eggs and total crap.

Before we get to the good stuff, though: I always hated sports. But talking about 'Lost', as it turns out, stimulates the same part of my brain that talking about sports would in other dudes. I've really come to value my friends'/fellow 'Lost' nuts Jamie Mottram and Shawn Schrager's input, both of whom work over at Sports Bloggers Live. A lot of their theories and observations are folded into my posts, and I've come to count on them for a 'Lost' postmortem every Thursday.

Theories:

The Others have some sort of control over the polar bears. During the last season, we saw nothing of them -- while the Others were running laps around the island messing with our heroes. Now that they seem to have what they want, the bears are on the loose. Are the Others done fooling with our people on the beach? And -- will a polar bear eat one of the Others?

Maybe this theory about the island containing the spirit of a powerful psychic has some legs after all. Desmond's been endowed with clairvoyant powers, which are only going to get stronger as the season progresses. Desmond could well be a powerful weapon against the Others, or at the very least, be able to predict the arrival of the Others' planes.

According to Jamie, Locke, Eko and Desmond may now have a telepathic bond. Think about it: Eko told Locke that he is a hunter. Desmond knew Locke's speech before it happened.

I told you that Locke and Eko weren't dead. And now that they are back, possibly linked telepathically, the spritual side of the story has gotten a lot stronger. The final battle on the island will be one of science versus faith -- and the faith side is getting its ducks in a row.

Easter Eggs:

After a dry episode last week, eggs is back like a brand-new invention. Here are some, let me know if you see more:

When Charlie comments about his guard duty at Locke's sweat lodge, saying "so you don't devolve into a monkey," he is making a direct reference to 'Altered States,' a fantastically psychotronic film from the '80s. The main character consumes huge amounts of psychedelics while suspended in a sensory-deprivation tank, which causes him to trip so hard that he turns into a gorilla, eventually reverting into actual primal protoplasm.

Charlie says that "trees can be good conversationalists." He should know, as he talked to them a lot in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy.

The undercover cop's T-shirt during Locke's flashback refers to the band Geronimo Jackson. The band has been mentioned all over the 'Lost' timescape, including while Charlie and Hurley are flipping through records in the hatch during Season 2.

Locke is whacked on the head by Eko's Bible stick, which has various verses carved into the end. One of the verses says, "Lift up your eyes and look north." Presumably, Locke does just that when he finds Eko.

One of the skeletons found in the polar bear's cave is wearing a Dharma Initiative T-shirt.Shawn thinks the skeletons are suspiciously childlike, and that the toy dump truck looks really familiar.

When Locke headed into the bear's cave with a torch and some hairspray, did you totally think he was going to chop Darth Vader's head off and see his own face inside the mask? That was JUST like 'Empire Strikes Back,' is all I'm saying.

The guy in the red checked shirt on the weed farm -- who is that guy? He looks like Other material to me.

There's a whole blog out there dedicated to 'Lost' Easter eggs, also. I've mentioned some here, left some out, just to preserve some pale semblance of originality on here. Check it out: Lost Easter Eggs

Total Crap:

When Hurley and Desmond got back to the beach, Desmond chose to stand there in Hurley's giant T-shirt skipping rocks rather than go score some pants. With his new clairvoyant powers, you'd think he could find a pair in his size pretty quick.

Locke finds some tore-up cotton balls on a stick, and we're supposed to think it's polar bear hair. Umm, no. Maybe if Snuggles the fabric-softener bear sprinted blindly through the jungle, MAYBE. Hair and cotton balls look pretty darned different, and I have a hard time believing that the show's prop budget ran out when it came time to decorate the woods with white fur. Maybe they blew their dough on all the fake blood in this episode.

Some people thought the polar bears looked fake as hell, too.

That's what I got this week. Anything else? New theories, new Easter eggs, new crap? Leave it in the comments ...

Stand and Be Counted -- AOL Journals Index

Hey folks -- Kate of An Analysis of Life is creating an updated index of AOL Journals.

Indexes are in need of constant maintenance, and the previous one fell into disrepair pretty fast after its keeper passed away.

Usually I try not to editorialize about y'all's efforts as it's your community and my opinions don't belong, but: this is awesome. If everyone pitches in and lists themselves, you'll have a handy directory of who blogs what and where, making things like Weekend Picks and finding new Journals a lot easier.

To register, just follow this link and leave your title and URL in a comment. Kate will integrate you into the index soon enough.

International Superninja Seeks Job

Joe (yes, that one) sent me this story last week -- we had a little "ha-ha what a pinhead" about it, and went back to work. Turns out the 'Today' show gave it a little airtime yesterday, so I'm obliged to share it with y'all.

To recap: Last week, there was an item in Obscurestore about a Yale senior by the name of Aleksey Vayner, who was making a sensation among the Wall Street investment banker community with his documentary/inspirational infomercial-style resume video making the rounds. 

As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly because Wall Street investment bankers were fighting each other to hire the guy.

Dealbreaker, "A Wall Street Tabloid" blog, was one of the first to pick up the story, along with the NY Sun, though the IvyGate blog picked up the story and ran with it, for full team coverage, including rehosting the original video on social video sharing site Veoh:

In the video, Vayner shows himself:

* Bench-pressing 495 pounds:

* Serving a tennis ball at 140 MPH

* Ballroom dancing with a scantily clad partner

* Breaking a stack of bricks with his bare hand:

He does all of this while espousing all manner of self-empowerment messages that may be true, but may also make you hate him with a white-hot fury. Sort of like Patrick Swayze's character in 'Donnie Darko.' (Language warning)

Various anecdotes allege that Vayner has claimed that he's killed two dozen men in underground Tibetan deathmatches, is one of four people licensed in Connecticut to handle nuclear waste, has his own charity and hedge fund and a whole host of other wacky claims.

Some of the terms being thrown around to describe him in the various news articles and blog entries include:

* Histrionic personality disorder (or maybe simply borderline personality disorder)

* Craaazy [PDF File]

* Outlandish



Anyway, Tuesday's 'Today' show ran the item -- Gawker's story [Warning: liberal use of the "d-bag" label] highlights the clip, which includes footage of Matt Lauer getting hit in the head by a racquetball.

The big question is: Is this guy for real (as in, delusional for real, not actually some sort of international superninja), or is he playing us all?

This video might not be the perfect resume for Wall Street. But it's a perfect advertisement for something, all right. What job DOES this qualify Vayner for? Who do you think would hire him now? Because the world is weird, and right now, someone somewhere is looking at that video and thinking, "The kid's got talent and moxie to burn. Let's hire him!"

After all, he's getting a lot of press, and they say all publicity is good publicity. Maybe he's looking for a career in entertainment.

If all the allegations are true, he's got an impressive record of plagiarism, possibly fraud, and likely mental disorders. Maybe he'd make a bang-up securities trader after all, or a high-level governmental figure. Donald Trump is worth squillions, after all, and he still has that weird hair and an ego to match -- people that live big make big targets. Maybe we'll all laugh Vayner straight to the bank.

Tags: Aleksey Vayner, resume video, Wall Street, job hunting, Today Show

Back in the Saddle

I'm back from San Francisco and jury duty, respectively. Here's a few random observations:

1) NOBODY who had any kind of home life is up and wandering around San Fran's Tenderloin after midnight. Everything that Giuliani squashed in Times Square is alive and thrashing around out West. I took a little walk near my hotel late one night and it was like 'Taxi Driver' out there.

 I love strolling sketchy neighborhoods after midnight almost as much as my mother loves me -- so maybe I was the exception.

2) I got to go on this awesome hike in a redwood forest with a bunch of old friends. We actually overheard a woman ask a park ranger, "Excuse me, could you tell me which trail has the freshest air?" We laughed about that the whole way. There's nothing like experiencing something new, hilarious and beautiful with good friends.

Especially when you sprain your ankle on the trail -- like I did -- and need to be helped to the car.

3) Kennedy's Indian Irish Pub is a pretty cool joint, an Indian restaurant nestled in the middle of an Irish dive bar with hundreds of beers on tap. I can't hold them responsible for the skull-cracking acid-sprayer of a hangover I experienced the morning of my friend's wedding. That was kind of my fault, but mostly the groom's. I do think the kitchen may have had an (unwashed) hand in the lower GI firestorm I weathered during the aforementioned hangover, however.

4) Part of Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' was filmed in my hotel. Very cool -- even cooler, I ran into Sally Kellerman in the elevator.

5) I'm pretty sure that if I were a lady and had a moustache coming in hard, I'd pluck, wax, or straight-up shave that sucker off. But in the world of the industrial cafeteria, the rules are different.

The lady who rang me up in the cafeteria in the D.C. courthouse definitely knew what it sounded like when the doves cry, if you get my drift. Still, there's nothing to make you feel right with the world like buying mashed potatoes and gravy from a lady with a neatly trimmed moustache who calls you "baby."

6) This potential juror sitting next to me in the hallway yeterday rapped along with his headphones for an HOUR. It was incredible. He made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and he kept rapping until he was out of breath. Instead of pausing to inhale, he just rapped right on through each massive heaving inhale, too, eventually rapping himself to sleep.

So yeah, that was my week, pretty much. Hope you guys are well, and I'm glad to be back ... 

'Lost': 'The Glass Ballerina' Tasted Like Fish Biscuits

I was underwhelmed by this week's episode. Maybe
that's too harsh. I wasn't overwhelmed, either. I was just kind of whelmed, I
guess. I seriously thought we were going to see some new characters this week,
but nope.

Finding out that Sun was a big fat lying cheat didn't rattle me much,
and don't get me started on the kiss. When Ben revealed that he had a connection
to the outside world, I had a brief flutter of "HA! Told you so!" which was
quickly replaced by disappointment at being able to figure out a plot point. If
this keeps up, I'm gonna start reading spoilers
online.

EW has a solid recap from last night, in case you need a
refresher. Me, I'm just jumping right into the meat of the
post:

Theories/Predictions:

1)
Clearly Sun's "disobedience" goes further than a little back-talk. There's a
chance that Jin didn't father Sun's
baby after all.


When the Others find out the Sun is pregnant, I'll bet
they're going to get pretty freaking fascinated with her. And the're set up for
a big weird devastating reveal, too. Imagine if one of them tells Jin, in
perfect Korean, that the baby is not his. I'll bet Jin raises up his pimp hand
again and slaps the whole island silly.

2) Sawyer may meet his untimely
end this season, as all
those who find romance on the island do.

3) It seems like there is, or was once, a romance between
Ben and Juliet. Something about Ben's "You never made soup for
me" and the way Juliet
smiled just, I dunno, tingled. Then the "Am I interrupting something?" from the
soon-to-be-gut-shot Connie made it seem like there really WAS something to
interrupt once.

And it makes sense that she'd have a problem with his air of authority
if they'd broken up and he was still technically the Others' boss. Kinda hard to
take orders from someone once you've seen them in their underpants, is all I'm
saying.

4) Is Ben trying to create an heir? It may explain
the fraying romantic tensions between Ben and the women in the above theory ...
and could explain all the child-napping. It could go a long way to explaining
his peculiar "romantic" overtures towards Kate, too.

5) When
Ben showed Jack the tape of the World Series, he killed a lot of popular wacko
theories in one swoop. They're not in purgatory, a time warp, all dead, nothing.
Everyone is really on the island and living in real time. Believable, yes.
Disappointing, too.

6) Ben is trying to turn Jack and
dangling freedom in his face, as I predicted last
week. It's not actually fun
so much as it is disappointing figuring this stuff out ahead of time, actually.
My smugness is a facade for a mouth full of ashes.

7) If Ben
has lived his whole life on the island, with no trips to the world not even
once, there must be something pretty danged fascinating about that island. Even
Manhattanites go to Jersey sometimes. Does Ben need the island to stay alive, or
is he tied in some other inextricable, sinister
way?

Easter Eggs:

This
episode was pretty short on Easter Eggs, near as I could tell. Any of you have
some from this episode, let it be known in the
comments.

However, I do have
this:

Do you people remember this from last week? Did this even
happen? Speculation on the web has been that it's a Photoshopped fake, a
fan-created image. I'm not saying it's not, but I will say that if that's the
case, said fan works at ABC and leaks things like this with official photo
releases. My photo editor and I scratched our heads long and hard over this
image yesterday ... and neither of us recognized it.

It's
got to be from a deleted scene and either released by accident or just to jerk
us around. Media jerking media around ... has the whole world gone mad? How are
we supposed to promote our rigidly defined liberal agenda if other media types
keep playing practical jokes on us?

Michael
Whalen

This isn't exactly an Easter Egg, but it's pretty hilarious.
Apparently these two dudes were just doing a bit of spring-break beachcombing in
Hawaii and stumbled on an unguarded 'Lost' set. Check out their photoset on Flickr
here.

The Tail Section has a good roundup of the Eggs from last week's Season
Premiere,
too.

Total Crap

Kate
and Sawyer's kiss in the rock yard was the steamiest pile of televised crap
since Nancy Reagan guested on 'Diff'rent Strokes.' Sawyer's been making eyes at
her since they both crawled out of the ocean, and he makes his move in front of
armed guards and passes it off as a test? There's flies buzzing around that
excuse. I don't buy it.

If Evangeline Lilly is held captive
in a sundress ten yards away, you don't wait until rock-breaking time to go for
the smooch. Any sane straight man would have gnawed through the bars on his cage
and kissed her around his mangled tooth stumps.

I feel
tricked. There's the opportunity for a lot of intruigue and genuine heat there,
and it's been kinda squandered.

So what's next? Any ideas,
any theories I missed? The hunt for Easter Eggs is long and slow. If you find
any, have any ideas, etc., just dump it all in the
comments.

Tags: Lost, Sawyer, Others, The Glass Ballerina, lost theories, lost easter eggs

New Journalers and a Goodbye for Now

Well, folks, I'm about off to foggy San Francisco to see one of my best college buddies get married. He's a brilliant sweet loving guy who talks a lot like the bus driver on the Simpsons and has a natural gift for getting bouncers to put him in a headlock. Something tells me that's going to happen a few times before the wedding on Saturday, and may even happen to him at the reception.

A guy can only wish the best for a buddy on his wedding day.

But before I go, I wanted to call your attention to a few new journalers that I've unearthed from the message boards, my mail, and various comments sections. If you want me to take a look at your blog, I'm always happy to -- just mail me a link.

I'm going to write as little as possible about them here -- I'd like you to see each blog through your own lens and give 'em a big welcome to the community as only you know how.

So here goes:

Tanya of Poetry About Nature loves nature, and when she's not writing poems and essays about it for her blog, she's outside drinking it up for herself. [Update: This Journal no longer exists.]

There's not getting around it: Missy of Missyzstuff has it kinda rough. She uses her blog as a therapeutic tool and welcomes your input and advice.

Terry is a 43 year old grandmother who raises two small grandchildren. She's just started a new blog about her life called This Grandma's Life.

Farley blogs about astrology, metaphysical, and spiritual topics at Astrology Explained.

Those Eyes That the Cherubim Drew is by a 44 year old man who's taking another shot at life.

This may seem like a bit of a cheat, butI wanted to re-mention Plittle's CarnivAOL. Basically, you send him your best writing and he encapsulates it and promotes it every two weeks. Other new journalers, take note: this is a good way to get people to read your work.

There you have it, folks. Have a great weekend -- and a great rest of the week. I'll see you after jury duty -- the selection process is Monday, and I'll let you know when I'm back for real sometime Monday night.

Lonelygirl15 Fights Poverty

LonelyGirl15 is back online,
but this time she's not clowning with her creepy crush.


Those of you that went on vacation this August may have
missed the unravelling of the whole LonelyGirl15
mystery ... and those of
you that followed the cycle through may be wondering what Web darling
Jessica Rose is up to now.

It's
really difficult to follow her story on YouTube by
searching "lonelygirl15" now, as the site is clotted with
clips using that keyword.
And it's also really difficult to distinguish Rose herself from "Bree," the
character she plays from the young lady who keeps showing up on television.

The real news is that the "LonelyGirl15" team
have been recruited by none other than the United Nations to help fight
global poverty. Check out
Bree's plea
here.


In my view, this is pretty cool for two reasons:


1) It shows that the U.N. is willing to try any method they
can think of to advance their cause.

2) It's a
serious validation for a new art form. Short homemade videos aren't just the
province of internet goofballs and grandstanding teens -- they have power and
relevance beyond just goofing around in the dorm room.

While
the dawn of the serious side of this medium is breaking, its day may not have come
yet, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Of course, relying on user-generated content poses
challenges, the U.N. learned. One of the amateur producers turned in a ribald
video that showed three men sitting around a table eating, while discussing in
colorful detail the after-effects of eating beans. The conversation turns
serious when one of the men turns to the camera and says: "Some folks don't even
have a bowl of beans to
eat.

The thought of a bunch of U.N. reps reviewing that particular
submission cracks me up, although apparently they handled it well:

The incident didn't worry Y&R's global chief executive, Hamish
McLennan. "We went into this knowing there was stuff that is unconventional but
we are OK with it, if it means that we will have more people
engaged."

Tags: Lonelygirl15, YouTube, United Nations, poverty

Magic Smoke to Smoke Less This Week

I'll be out of the office for a while this week, spreading into next. I'm heading to San Francisco for an old college friend's wedding, then straight into jury duty when I return on Monday.

I'll be leaving the office Wednesday night and on a highly restricted posting schedule until I get back.

Just keeping y'all posted ...

Check Out CarnivAOL

Blogger
Plittle of Aurora Walking Vacation is hosting a Blog
Carnival for
the AOL Journals Community. It's called CarnivAOL, and it's meant
to be a showcase of the very best writing the J-Land community has to offer.

From Paul's
submission guidelines:

The purpose of this journal is not to highlight journalers,
or their journals, as a whole. That's what the weekly editor's picks are for.

What a blog carnival does is highlight specific journal posts. Journal
posts that you have written that you think you did a great job on. Posts that
rise above the general level of discourse on your journal. Posts that address a
sensitive or important topic in a thoughtful manner. Posts that you want more
people to read than have so far.

And remember, this is a carnival of vanity. Don't wait for someone
else to recommend you (although I have no problem with third party submissions).
Submit your own work. Blow your own horn. Say, "I wrote this, and damnit, I
think it's pretty
good."

Go nuts, people! If I understand this correctly, the next CarnivAOL
post comes out October 17th. Get cracking and start your keys clacking
... and if you have your own Blog Carnival, or collection of Journals content going, please let me know.

Kong's Band-Aid Colored Saliva?

Really, 'Toy Story' could have been a
documentary. 'Pee-Wee's Playhouse'? Practically historical fiction.

We all know that toys
get up and have lives of their own whenever nobody's looking. It's why you
should never have too many Mcfarlane
toys in one place, and a
very good reason to be creeped out by those old ladies that collect dolls.

Like any self-respecting
balding Web geek, I've got a few toys littering my cube. And sure, I expect a
certain amount of monkeyshines among my desk's plastic denizens in my absence.
But when I got in today, I saw evidence of some behavior beyond the pale.
Something horrific must have happened right before I showed up and everyone had
to freeze.

I was able to
snap a few shots for evidence, which you can see below:

So now I have to ask your take, J-Landers: what exactly do
you think is HAPPENING here?

Guest Editor Picks 10/06/06

Hey folks. I posted this entry earlier,
then caught a few mistakes. I deleted the whole entry hoping you wouldn't catch me
scurrying around and cleaning up. So: If you clicked on the earlier Alert and
got a Page Not Found or other error message -- it was me, not the Alerts.

But NOW: As
posted to the AOL Journals main page and on the Message Boards, here are the Guest Editor's Picks for
September 29th, 2006:

Dwana is a bartender who loves horror.
She's picked her favorite spooky, scary blogs as this week's Guest
Editor. Check out her weekend
picks:

*
The Groovy Age of Horror
* Mystery of the Haunted
Vampire
*
Supernatural
* Spread the Good
Word
*
Walking With the
Spirits
* The Ghostly
Scoop
*
Bonus Pick!

Click
here to see Dwana's Guest
Editor post with her own unique descriptions and additional Bonus
Pick. Don't forget, if you want your own chance at being a Guest
Editor, or if you have a blog you want me to see for a possible feature,
send me an e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com. Please don't forget to include a link to your blog. Have a great
weekend, everyone.

Thanks -- Jeff

R8 Install Pushed Back

Well, folks -- the R8 install has been
pushed back again. There's a concern with QA (quality assurance) testing, and
we'd rather wait a week than put something flawed out.

So. That's
where we are with all that. Stephanie said she'd post about it in further detail
over in her blog, but she is out in California, three hours behind me.
Check her out
this evening for more details, but otherwise ... everything's fine.

'Lost' Season 3 Premiere: The Others Have It Together

So 'Lost' kicked off its third season last night -- and man, I had no idea I could hold my breath for a whole hour! I thought the show was great in predictably unpredictable 'Lost' fashion: It offered some answers but asked apeloads of questions, and the rabbit hole just got deeper and deeper.

The folks at EW and 'Lost': the Tailsection have excellent recaps of last night's episode up. And if I dare say so, ours isn't too shabby either. No sense in my reinventing the wheel here.

Theories and Predictions

The real fun with 'Lost' is in the armchair commentary the day after. This must be what winter is like for football fans -- talking shop around the digital watercooler with friends and strangers.

So here's some stuff that I've compiled from a peek around the Web. If any of you have theories of your own -- or better yet, your own blog entries about 'Lost,' please drop a link in my comments. I'd love to get some discussion rolling here.

What the Web says:

1) The Others are much older than they look and have discovered a "Fountain of Youth."

2) There's a little dissent between Juliet and Ben, and Juliet's a bad cook.

3) We may have missed a big hint.

4) Some folks think that the Others expected our heroes on the island.

What I say:

1) The Others have a connection to the outside world. They were totally surprised to see the plane breaking up over the island and managed to compile a dossier (within two months!) that detailed Jack's life down to career and marriage issues.

No doubt they know about Jack's daddy issues, and I would not be surprised if those sick suckers stole Jack's father's corpse out of the casket in the cave back in Season 1. One thing is certain: They didn't learn all that stuff about Jack from his Myspace page. Back in the world, the Others' folks are meticulous.

2) Connection to the outside world = potential for escape. While I doubt our intrepid antiheroes will be consuming any in-flight meals anytime soon, you best believe they're going to have the possibility dangled before them.

3) The Others are not 100 percent cool with being on the island either. Petula Clark's 'Downtown' (a loathsome tune if there ever was one) coupled with Juliet's tears in the mirror during the opening moment hints that maybe she's not too stoked on island life. She's certainly no fan of Ben, AKA Henry Gale, who left her to drown when Jack turned on the waterworks.

If any of the Others are going to turn, it's gonna be her, although she's not to be trusted. Anyone who lies and plays trust games -- like her little game with Jack and the food -- and then demands to be trusted is a broken soul capable of monstrous evil.

4) The fact that the Others are obsessive psychological scientists reinforces 'Lost's' central conflict: science vs. faith. I bet we'll see a titanic inner struggle as the rational Jack find himself drawn to the Others' science, while his emotions keep him with his friends. He may be the first to find the good in the Others' way of life.

5) There is a pattern to the Others' lies. They do not lie 100 percent of the time, but they sure don't tell the truth all the time either. If we can figure out why they lie, we're a long way to figuring out what they're hiding.

6) Man, was the music during Sawyer's escape a 'Planet of the Apes' reference or what?

Total Crap:

Every TV show's got it ...

Have you noticed that everyone on the island has a knockout switch located above their neck? Striking someone in the back of the head, on the temple or jaw is equivalent to pressing ctrl-alt-delete on your computer. It kinda reboots them. I'm not the first guy to notice this, either.

Seriously, knocking someone unconscious like they do EVERY DAY on 'Lost' is way harder than it looks. My best friend's little brother learned that the hard way after we conducted a few "experiments" on him one unsupervised afternoon in the early '80s.

Also: I did NOT appreciate that Wrangler commercial that showed the hawk attacking the buglike Wrangler. It looked so much like 'Lost' that I watched the whole damn thing with bated breath. That's 30 seconds of my life I'll never get back ...

Again, if you have a 'Lost' blog, a blog post or your own theory, leave it in my comments or send a mail to me at : journalseditor@aol.com ...

R8 ReInstall

Journals R8 re-installs tomorrow morning,
which means the usual 4-6 AM EST outage. It seems the edit/add entry button
bugs have been fixed, so
you really shouldn't notice many changes at all, especially if you were
monkeying around with Journals in Beta over the last week or so.

As always,
Stephanie at BamBam! has more.

And
-- if you notice any problems, please let me know via mail or in the comments
here.

Thanks
again ...

We've Resolved the Intermittent Alerts Problems

Some of you have reported
issues with your Alerts over the past few days --
both "Comment Added" and "New Entry Added." I finally got to the bottom of it,
and the problem should be fixed
now.

Here's a quick summary of what
happened:

Information can only travel to and from AOL Journals' back-end
machines from certain computers with specifed IP addresses. This is an essential
security feature. The Journals team recently added new machines on
their end, and had not yet added the new machines' IP addresses to the 'okay to
talk to' list for Alerts. This was not causing a dramatic problem for all users
-- like a system outage -- but was making it so that some users were not able to
see alerts reliably.

We should be good now. If you see any other problems by this
evening, please let me know. And thanks again for keeping us posted.

Journals Now Less Slow

Hey folks ... you reported slowness in the Journals product last night, and we got on it. As I understand it, there was a server problem at the banner ad end, and that has been fixed.

Everything was fine this morning, and now some of you are reporting some more slowness issues. I'm talking to the ad people some more, and they're looking into it. Again.

While I have your attention:

A few of you have emailed me, asking who exactly the hell is Stephanie Bergman, Product Manager? Well, I'd tell you -- but Stephanie is great at talking about herself, and I'd hate to rob her of the pleasure. (She knows I like her as a person, and can take my trash talk.)

So check out her bio post ... AOL Journals community, meet Stephanie Bergman.

Journals is Sloooooow In Case You Hadn't Noticed

Hi all ... Journals is moving at an absolutely glacial pace at the moment, in case you hadn't caught that already. It seems that one of our advertising partners is having a server error that is dragging everything down to a molasses crawl.

They're aware of the problem and working on it as fast as they can. Until then, sit tight and breathe easily, everything's gonna be okay.

Take this opportunity to get some fresh air, I say. I'll let y'all know everything I can just as soon as I know something else myself.

Take care ...

Ejected From the House of Boing Boing

Jesse "The Devil" Hughes, BoingBoing contributors Mark Frauenfelder, David Pescovitz, John Battelle, Cory Doctorow, and Xeni Jardin

BoingBoing is more than just a blog. It's a mecca, a shining golden temple in the sky for pseudo-hipster geeks like me ... its blend of tech activism, great digital art and high internet weirdness is more than a little addictive to web content creators and consumers worldwide. Maybe addictive isn't the right term. Shrews aren't exactly addicted to eating, are they?

Apparently I'm enough of a BoingBoing fan and Web geek that the site has wound its delicate digital tentacles around the folds of my brain and crept into my subconscious. Here's the dream I had the other night -- what do you make of it?

*****

All of BoingBoing's contributors lived in a crumbling wooden house on a cliff overlooking the San Francisco Bay. The house was shaped exactly like the Hall of Justice from the Superfriends cartoon, but showed signs of serious termite damage on the front porch.

I walked up the gravel path in front of the house and knocked on the sagging screen door, but nobody answered. I called out a few times, but nobody answered -- so I gingerly let myself in. The interior of the house was decorated with all manner of spectacular original paintings by Shag, Coop and Robert Williams. The overwhelming decorative theme was a homey retro- futurism -- a stylistic mashup of Kubrick's interiors in '2001' and the Jungle Room at Graceland.

I tiptoed up a set of iridescent orange shag carpeted stairs to the second floor. On the wall at the first landing there was sky-blue cloth hanging on a hook next to a large glass porthole covered with thick condensation. Water dripped from the edge of the porthole, but boiled into mist before hitting the carpet. A small placard next to the porthole said simply "Tomorrow Evening."

 I could hear muffled voices from further up the stairs and tiptoed up to investigate. Cory Doctorow sat in the middle of the room, reclining in a large easy chair. He was fast asleep with his laptop open, resting on his gently moving chest.

 Cory had a shiny, robust handlebar moustache just like Jesse "The Devil" Hughes, singer/guitarist for the Eagles of Death Metal. Although I couldn't see them through the walls, I knew that 1) Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz were up there as well, and 2) they also had Hughes-style moustaches.

I could hear a sizzling hum from a back room. "Cool!" David shouted. "Mark, you've really done it. Using old Kleenex, a USB port and Starbucks coffee grounds, you've invented a device that reverses global warming AND cracks DRM codes! Let me try!"

With that, Cory jerked awake. "Who the hell are you?" he asked. "And how did you get in here?" I stuttered and stumbled. Coolest house in the world or not, I hadn't been invited.

"Err, ah, Xeni's little brother is an old friend of mine, and I just thought ..." It's true, though. My friend Carl's older sister is Xeni Jardin. That held as much water with Cory as it does with anyone else I've told: zero.

He aimed a small laser pointer at me and pressed a button. Suddenly I found myself out in the oyster-shell parking lot, completely intact except totally barefoot. With a giant inhaling *pop* sound the house closed in on itself and vanished completely. I crept carefully across a field of broken oyster shells to the nearest intersection, raising a hand to hail a cab and preparing myself for a very long wait.

*****

Do you have any idea what this means? Let me know in the comments ...