I Made CK Do It, So Shouldn't I? or, Eating My Own Dogfood

So when a friend asked for a post topic, I piped up with "If you were a character on 'Lost', which character do you think you would be?" It popped to mind because I'd just spent my daughter's nap that day reading theories on how 'Lost' "works", how it will end, and what it all means, so I had the show on my brain.

It's sort of an obnoxious question, really. "Please pigeonhole yourself based on characters on a television show who are in an extremely extraordinary situation." But I asked it, so I'll answer it too.

I cribbed this list of "players" from a March Madness-style bracket game the Washington Post presented. There's 64 of them in the bracket, but I eliminated the ones who are total stretches, like one of the flight attendants from the plane who never made it to the island, people obviously added just to pad out the bracket.

Jack, Jin, Sun, Sayid, Michael, Locke, Walt, Aaron, Kate, Claire, Rose, Bernard, Hurley, Sawyer, Charlie, Ana Lucia, Daniel Faraday, Mr. Eko, Arzt (the guy who went boom with the dynamite), Shannon, Boone, Libby, Ben, Juliet, Mr. Friendly, Jacob (ha), Penny, Desmond, Rousseau

Okay, here are a list of characters I don't particularly think I'm like: Jack, Jin, Sun, Sayid, Michael, Locke, Walt, Aaron, Bernard, Hurley, Sawyer, Charlie, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Shannon, Boone, Libby, Ben, Juliet, Mr. Friendly, Jacob, Desmond.

That leaves: Kate, Claire, Rose, Faraday, Arzt, Penny, Rousseau.

Yeah, mostly women, but I don't really identify with the male characters on this show.

Kate is in the list because if someone hurt my mom, I can see myself being driven to an extreme reaction. I don't think I'm particularly Kate-like otherwise. I'm certainly not as blindly brave as she is, for one.

Claire parallels are slightly less slim, as she sort of twisted around in her life until she had a child and found a direction for herself. I wasn't quite as shiftless and purposeless as Claire was, though, so I think I'll have to eschew Claire as well.

Rose is in the list just because she's the married lady. She's pretty set, she understands where she is and what she has. She wants to help out but has reservations and worries when Bernard is in harm's way. Some of that reminds me of me, but not much else, in the final analysis.

Faraday is weird and spacey. He has strange ideas and pursues them, usually not connecting with most of the people around him unless they intersect with the ideas he's pursuing in his own mind. I've been like that at times, but I don't think I'm quite the misanthrope that he is.

Rousseau is in the list solely because I know I'd be completely crazy if someone took the B from me, especially if I knew where she was but just couldn't get her back. Other than that, though, I don't think I'm that similar to Rousseau. I would never have taken the chances that she's taken, and I don't know if I have her savagery in me.

Arzt is included because he was sort of on the outer orbit of things. He wasn't right in the center of stuff, but interjected himself when he felt he had something relevant to do. I'm frequently more of an outside observer who sometimes sticks her nose in to say something relevant and then skitters off to be more on the outside again. And of course, he had horrible luck, which is the way I've felt many times as well. There's another character on the show who can sort of be described this way, though, but with some important differences that I think I'm more similar to.

And that's Penny. I'm the one who's usually close to things without being directly involved. I think I have her capacity to get angry and act on it, to become tired of someone's shenanigans and hold a grudge, but I think I also have something like the determination it's taken her to keep looking for Desmond.

But I dunno. Maybe I'm totally off. Maybe the characters on 'Lost' are too strange to resemble anyone in the real world.

Idle Wondering

If there was an alternate system of airports and airlines that did the sort of screening that was being done, say, in the 1990's and not the type that is being done now, and assuming that the safety rating of the airlines themselves (working equipment, competent pilots) was adequate, would you fly that one instead of flying within the system that the U.S. has now?

Seriously, think it through. Would you fear that someone would sneak through with something really dangerous like her nipple rings on, or with their sterile feeding tube still in its wrapper, or would you believe that your trip would be within a reasonable, acceptable "safety" range?

Mind Blown...Would Have Made Me INSANE Before the Prequels

So, go to this thread on rebelscum.com, whose emissaries are going to present the results of this poll (about which new figures to make) to Hasbro. CK, note the Tonnika Sisters winning the ANH poll. Ha. Now scroll down to the second post, tallying up votes for ESB, and note that there are a measurable amount of votes for a Lt. Sheckil figure.

Those of you who know where that name came from, a story probably best not retold in its entirety, can probably figure out why I think this is pretty funny. The rest of you, I swear, unless you already knew how the name came about, retelling the story of it would make the whole thing unfunny. It's one of those things.

Stickers

Let me tell you an odd little fact—my daughter seems to be afraid of stickers.

Sometimes when you go into a store that caters to kids, like a children's shoe or clothing store, they have stickers stashed behind the counter to give out. However, I noticed her aversion to them first when I went to vote in the last primary. I put the "I voted" sticker on my jacket, and then the nice lady behind the check-in table offered one to the B. She took it, but resisted any attempt to put it on her jacket like mine. It was funny at first when it stuck to her finger, but then, once we were in the car, she wanted it off of her.

Ever since then, when she waves and says "hi" to the employees in the store and ends up getting a sticker offered to her, she might giggle a little, but we have to take the sticker from them because she won't touch it. It takes too long to explain that she doesn't seem to understand what the stickers are all about, so we take them and move on. Any attempts on our part to get her interested in the sticker are met with a well-practiced, two year-old's "no!"

Considering the fact that modern bathroom learning techniques seem to be focused on using stickers and sticker books as rewards, I realize now that we're going to have to think outside the box where that is concerned. I don't see this sticker aversion going away anytime soon.

Mall Madness

This game, Mall Madness, came up on my RSS feed for Amazon deals.

Funny thing about this game, from when it was published when I was a kid. Now, we didn't have allowances, nor did we save up for the things we wanted. We pretty much asked for things, and if there was any reason at all for us to have them, we'd get them...sometimes right away, sometimes at the next 'gift holiday' like a birthday or Christmas. If there was no reason for us to have them, or if my mom and/or dad thought the particular item was without virtue for us, we obviously didn't get it.

There were just a few times in my childhood that I look back on and think, "Oh, that's where I found out what sort of stuff annoyed my parents." Wanting the game Mall Madness was one of those times. I can't remember which one of us asked for it, but I distinctly remember the tirade launched into about the subject matter of this game. The gamer in me wonders what the engine behind the subject matter is, and whether it's a good game or not, but I think, regardless of whether the B ever wants the game or not, I'll never be able to buy it. I think I'd always hear my mom in my head telling me she didn't think I should play it.

For the curious, I was also not allowed to see the movie Xanadu as a kid...not because the subject matter of the movie was deemed too 'adult' for me, but because my mom had seen a commercial for it and thought it just looked dumb.

I think this is why subject matter in things tends not to bother me, but if something is just straight-out dumb, I tend to shun it.