What I don't 'get' is how you're managing to make comments online, if you don't get this digital crap. Is there a telegraph-to-internet service I'm unaware of?

I'm with Bonzob - season 4 of Angel is one of the best seasons of television ever made, and I still do not understand how people can complain about it. Perhaps some of the speeches were a little on the nose, but that season went balls out to address some fairly complicated issues. That was the one that made me believe…

I'm a month into my seventh or eighth quitting attempt, so all these comments about the cravings still hitting you years later are not helping. But the Wellbutrin is.

Diamond CENTER! That's why I've never been able to find these on YouTube. Thanks, Hipster D Bag.

Paul from the Diamond Factory!
Growing up in northern California, I frequently saw ads for the Diamond Factory, featuring Paul, the porn-star mustachioed proprietor. They were all pretty cheesy, with typical local ad over-acting and goofy Paul appearances as a bus driver or what have you. The best ever, though, was…

Re: Ciardi translation

I still think Farraday was lying about his goal. I think he knew that the incident was caused by the combination of the drill and the bomb, and he somehow realized that he had to make the bomb be there (perhaps because he got the bomb put away safely in the first place). All that crap about humans and free will being…

Sorry - I didn't see any replies for a few days so I assumed we were done. I am not saying I can explain all of these things, but I am saying they are ultimately explicable. Emergence theory, like post-modernism (in re: science) and fundamentalism, all claim that some things will forever remain mysteries, and we will…

You're absolutely right. I should have said "Muddle-headed supporter of emergence and self-organization hypotheses."

A check so big and fat, that to deposit it you first have to remove a wall from its house, then use a crane designed to transport unconscious zoo animals to the vet.

@P.D. - Fair points about the Buddhists, et al. My point was really about materialism in general, and not atheism in particular, and given Whedon's existentialist musings, who knows where the hell he ultimately come's down on that question - maybe we're all brains in a vat. I have gotten the impression he was fairly…

Someone has gotta show some appreciation for that joke.

Along those lines, I really really enjoyed the fact that they turned the climax into a 70s-style thriller chase (complete with Echo's outfit). It felt like all that running-around-an-industrial-setting and precariously-climbing-support-beams was a very specific effort to evoke a genre. Which I think they kind of did…

I thought that was a big theme throughout the Alpha flashbacks. NOONE in the dollhouse was willing to take the blame for what happened, and all agreed to refer to it as a freak accident, when actually all of them contributed to it: Adele for experimenting on potential serial killers and approving the Mickey and…

I think you're kind of wrong on that last point, La Pipe (if indeed that is your real name). Both authors actually have exactly the same idea of what constitutes a "soul" - nothing. In that both are atheists, and neither believes there is some kind of immortal essence that exists before and/or after us. (You are right…

Also, just before Eloise lead them all to the radiation-leaking bomb, Widmore pulled her aside with a concerned face and patted her lower abdomen. I thought that was pretty clearly indicating that a) she's pregnant, b) they all know (probably including Richard), and c) Farraday's a mutant.

Aaaarrgghhh!!!
Now I'm gonna have to print out the crossword puzzle every week.

That's true, but given the glyphs are on the level of the television show, and not the story inside the tv show, I thought it could be referring to the number of episodes featuring ZFT-based incidents. Obviously "Midnight" would be one, and probably "Pilot", "Same Old Story" "Ghost Network", and "In Which We Meet Mr.…

One other thing - I was thinking the 8 might relate to all of the numbers Olivia rattled off about how many people have died since she started working on the fringe operations. Obviously not the number of deaths, but maybe of incidents.

What if it's the number of times we've seen ZFT "show off"? Maybe not the number of episodes involving ZFT (which I think exceeds 8), but the number of times ZFT has done something that led to news reports. Off the top of my head, it seems like that is a good deal less than 8, but maybe this would mean we should…