Added Labels, Blogged 4 Times in 1 Day

Enough said.

Lost fun!

Top 10 signs you're obsessed with Lost (courtesy of Letterman, of course)

10. After each episode you do an all kitty re-enactment in your basement
9. You refer to your in-laws as “the others”
8. While visiting New York, you stood over every manhole and screamed, “Good God, a secret hatch!”
7. You are halfway to your goal of licking every cast member
6. Your friend phoned during Lost. The next day you beat him to death with a hot poker
5. You pitched NBC a show about 12 people stranded backstage at Saturday Night Live
4. Co-workers affectionately refer to you as “that loser who’s obsessed with Lost”
3. Renamed dental practice “flost”
2. Your wife is getting sick of playing the bedroom game “find the castaway”
1. You sat through all 10 of these lame jokes


Why have the ratings been so bad lately? (from EW's resident Lostaholic, Doc Jensen)

So if Lost's lost viewers haven't been sucked into the mindhole that is Criminal Minds... where have they gone?

Here's my theory: I don't think they're watching anything at all. Not really. I don't doubt there are some former Lost fans who've become Lost haters — who believe the show has ''lost it,'' who seriously doubt the producers know what they're doing. But what I do hear from those who've given up watching Lost on a weekly basis — and I know more than a few — is that Lost has let its urgency slip away, most likely as a result of what TV writers call ''The Stall.'' The Stall is what happens to ongoing TV shows that are trying to tell a story that has an ending when the storytellers don't know when or if they'll be allowed to actually ever end it. Lost has definitely moved into Stall mode, atomizing storylines into tiny bits and strewing them across manymanymany episodes (like Jack/Kate/Sawyer's stay in Othersville) in order to fill the time. Kinda like a football team that's jumped out to a big lead, then adopts a prevent defense that allows an opponent to gain yards and maybe put up a few points, just to burn off the clock, which can be risky, because you also allow your opponent to gain momentum or wrest control of the game. Or something like that.

Tortured sports analogies aside, for people irritated by The Stall, Lost has surrendered its must-see status. For them, the watercooler conversation has lost its boil. At the same time, what I've noticed is that these people are still invested in the unfolding story of Lost. Yet they also know that there are other options available to them that would allow them to experience the show without having to put up with its glacial pacing and its ''answer a question with new questions'' tactics. They can bank a bunch of episodes on TiVo, then watch 'em all at once, to get the kind of full-meal deal they wish every episode could deliver. Or they can just wait until the entire season comes out on DVD and binge. In fact, I know of two people who just recently became fans of the show via the DVDs. They loved what they saw and decided to become weekly watchers when the show began its third season. By the third episode, they were burned out. One of them popped into my office and said, ''How can you stand to watch the show this way? It's so... slow.'' He decided he was going to jump off the riverboat and catch up with it downstream, when it docks at his local Best Buy. (Again with the tortured analogies!)

What Lindelof thinks about the new time slot

''I personally am thrilled. Now I can watch American Idol without feeling guilty.

''Oh. Wait. I still feel guilty.''

Depraved enough to watch some clips?

If you were paying good attention at the end of the fall finale, you'll remember ABC's promise to show some new Lost scenes in a desperate (and unsuccessful) attempt to make you watch Daybreak. Here they are:

Lost Moments 1-3

Marijuana is Fun

Did I scare you with my title? :) Don't worry I haven't, and never will, become any sort of crackhead.

I've just started watching the critically acclaimed Showcase series Weeds. In fact, I'm all the way through season 1 and will be starting season 2 shortly, seeing as I have little to do today with all the snow.

And let me tell you, it's pretty great! If you don't mind the premise (suburban housewife is widowed, turns to selling weed to support her family and standard of living), there are a lot of things to appreciate about this show.

1) The acting is pretty phenomenal. Mary Louise Parker at her best. After seeing the results of some bad parenting, she breaks down in front of her source; a great scene.
2) Tight dialogue. Couple of examples:

Nancy Botwin: You listen, you stay away from my customer base, you don't deal to kids.
Josh Wilson: They're too young to bleed, they're too young for weed, no grass on the field no grass will they yield.
Nancy Botwin: You're a poet.
Josh Wilson: You know it.

Heylia James: Serious shit calls for serious cash and your cash got a sense of humor.

3) It's kind of vulgar, like what you would expect from Showcase or HBO. But it does a pretty good job of walking the line between funny/interesting and just plain gross. Kind of like Six Feet Under, but less depressing.

4) Perhaps what I love most about it is the business aspect. Ivey has trained me to think this way, and really it's just a profit venture, regardless of what is being sold. Nancy (MLP) figures this out too and expands geographically, implements somse product diversity, experiments with target markets, wrestles with the competition, and gets political with the DEA.

Anywho, that's my little synopsis of a pretty good show. A solid 8.4 out of 10, methinks. I'm excited to see what the second season brings, because it reportedly "turns it up a notch."

SNOW DAY

This is particularly exciting for me as I was scheduled to have an exam at 8am this morning. Actually, funny story.Last night around 8pm we get an email from our accounting prof saying we may have to cancel the exam because the heating system is broken at Western. Hopes up, I became quite apathetic about studying. But alas, not half an hour later they got the heat up and running again.I wake up at 6:30 this morning (after an unfortunate 3 hours of sleep for the second night in a row) to the radio saying all schools, UWO, and the bus system is closed today. The first snow day in 4 years! My theory is that someone at Western was praying really hard to not have to write their exam today. 7,000 of the 32,000 UWO students were schedule to write something today - that's a lot of happy campers.

My exam has been rescheduled for January 19th ... talk about some extra study time! Good thing too, cause I definitely started studying for it yesterday.

Um, Do I Still Have a Job?

I shouldn't be blogging, I shouldn't be blogging, I shouldn't be blogging .... sigh. Ok now that that's off my chest (exam at 8am tomorrow btw), on to more pressing matters.

Today it was officially announced that Deloitte lost it's biggest client, Nortel. This represents over $80 million in annual revenues for the Toronto office, and over 2000 jobs. One of which, because I am specifically employed by the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications group, may be mine.

Deloitte had been Nortel's auditors since 1914. The file will be going to KPMG, which reportedly drastically under bid the Deloitte audit fee rate.

To make matters worse, Nortel shareholders are suing both the company and it's auditors (Deloitte) for all the accounting trouble (endless restatements) that have occurred in the last 5 or 10 years. Fortunately, I know enough about the audit to know that the trouble is with their control systems, not suspected maliciousness. In other words, they are ridiculously disorganized, not trying to hide something. Nevertheless, depending on the findings of the court case and outcome, Deloitte could potentially go under like Arthur Andersen (Enron's auditors). Now isn't that something to look forward to with your first full-time employment?

Some clarifications on last night's episode of Heroes

I was confused, so I did some research on the internet and I'm here to present my findings.

1) Sylar didn't kill Eden, Eden killed Eden. Sylar revealed his intention to take her power, so she made one last heroic move and took her own life, making little pieces of her brain. So Sylar will thankfully not have the power of persuasion.

2) Sylar could use his powers because either Haitan or HRG can deflect others' powers, and both were MIA during the Eden visit.

3) Peter was sick because Matt's powers are making Matt, and hence Peter when he's in the vicinity, sick.

Other thoughts:

- Overall a fairly decent episode.
- Still LOVE Peter + Claire, despite the fact that this has been laughed at by Milo in the press because of the age difference (12 years in real life). I think he just personally finds it incestuous, plus Hayden is quite the annoying little brat.
- Other heroes who should bite the dust soon: Matt, Nikki/Jessica and family.
- Peter is so not dying, I am not worried. Consider this: if he was really the bomb and did he exploding thing, wouldn't all the other heroes around him immediately perish and then there would be no more show!

My Future Roomie

I'd say it's 90% settled. I mean, it's still 10 months away so who knows what could happen in that amount of time, but we've agreed to room together. Who is this you ask? One of my lovely co-workers at Deloitte, Azadeh Alemi. She sounds foreign, and she is, but in an "I've lived in Canada my whole life" way. She's the one on the far right in the 2nd picture. The first picture is kind of strange because of the effect of the camera on her eyes (very cat-like).

She's really nice, and quite social, and not very particular about anything. She'll still be in school (co-opping at DT in September for 8 months, than an extra semester of school at York), so probably won't be able to afford as much of the rent as I will. This actually works out well, because then we can get a 1 bedroom+den or a master bedroom+ small 2nd bedroom, and she can have the smaller room.

We're looking to live in the Yonge & Eglinton area because it's located on the subway line between my work (North York --- Yonge & Sheppard) and downtown. In fact, I made a whole list of what I'm looking for in an apartment:

Requirements:
- 2 bedrooms or 1+ livable den
- $1600 budget (including utilities)
- 700 square feet +
- cats allowed (?)
- washer/dryer en suite
- on the Yonge subway line
- safe neighborhood
- close to grocery store, shopping

2^nd tier requirements:
- hardwood flooring
- indoor pool
- exercise room
- 24 hr security
- close to the highway, but not too close
- fairly new building / recently renovated
- balcony

Would be nice:
- 2 bathroooms
- walk-in closet
- fanciness

Lost's Loose Ends

Find a fairly comprehensive list here: http://tv.ign.com/articles/745/745595p1.html

Cancun for Spring Break 2007

Yep, that's about it. Staying at the Oasis Cancun, with a good girl friend from Ivey. Group of at least 10 Ivey people will be going.

$1500 all inclusive (coming from my europe money). Last spring break ever! Excited.

Update on the status of the Buffy comic

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1562057_3_0_,00.html

The people at EW have always been very kind of Buffy, championing it throughout, and well past, its run.

There are a couple of minor spoilers, namely the whereabouts of Buffy which is learned in a Season 5 episode of Angel, as well as a very brief mention of the nature of the Angel series finale.

Heroes ep 9 review (spoilers)

Save the blah blah blah...

I was a little disappointed, but still thoroughly involved in this episode.

What I liked:
- How Peter headed out to save Claire's life even though it was likely that he would die. No hesitation.
- The absence of Hiro - it made me miss him, and made us depend more on Peter.
- Peter and Claire's chemistry: let's go slightly pedophiliac love!
- Eden's power of suggestion (which never really seemed that important) getting the job done.
- Death of bitchy cheerleader, who died because she pretended to be Claire .. ha!

What I didn't:
- Sylar was decidedly less than scary, not seeming to put much effort into things
- Peter was decidedly less than scary, leading to a very blase conflict between these two snore-fests that consisted of 2 seconds of wrasling, followed by a short fall and quick thud. Oh come on, couldn't they have come up with something better than this? At least a little more of the wrasling.
- Too much Mohinder.
- Micha is starting to annoy me. I kinda like DL, but overall that family is pretty dull.
- Adam from 24 as Sylar. I prefer the rumor (that didn't pan out) of Sean Bean.

What I'm interested in:
- How they expect to hold Sylar in the paper factory which happens to also be holding the ticking time bomb without disastrous consequences!
- How Hiro will save the waitress and somehow not be back in the present when she "dies"
- Sylar's backstory
- The season finale, which I suspect might resolve this tie between Peter and Sylar. If they can gather all the little heroes together in New York and srategically place them near Peter, he basically becomes god, and an easy defeater of Sylar.

Reviews in 5 words or less

Borat: social commentary parts are best
Hannah & Her Sisters: no manhattan, but classic allen
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: if no expectations, great fun
The Ice Storm: good dialogue, interesting, albeit depressing
Fast Food Nation: discussions, not easy answers

Gandy Pearhol

Freaky: http://movies.aol.com/movie/factory-girl/25513/trailer

To Netflix or not to Netflix?

Don't know the impetus for this latest choice - perhaps conversations with Matt and Mom about DVD rentals. So I did some research today and found out that you cannot get Netflix in Canada (I physically could not sign up without a zip code). So I looked on Epinions.com and they recommended either Zip or Starflix. Zip has a much better selection, and their website looked more professional.

Pros:

1) make a list of movies you are interested in and they'll automatically ship them to you when you return your outstanding ones. This is more convenient than having to be all proactive about going to blockbuster.
2) could catch up on all my classics watching (I've somehow never seen the Godfather!)
3) lots of different plan pricing schemes (not just the $28.95 a month that most people seem to have)
4) month-by-month committment, not locked in - can cancel at any time. Means I could give it a try for one month to see if it's actually worthwhile.
5) fairly extensive selection. Zip claims to have 51,000 dvds as compared to 65,000 at Netflix (who say they have nearly every movie that's available on dvd). As an example, I searched for the 7 up dvd series. Netflix had all of them, and Zip had 42up and 49up. Starflix (and all the others I looked at) had none.
6) Zip has the feature similar to Netflix about being "on the honor system" that Matt mentioned one time.
7) speaking of the parental units, they could probably benefit from this too! i forsee dvd bonding.
8) good tv selection as well

Cons:

1) costs money, duh :)
2) not entirely sure how much I would use it, especially with my busy schedule. I would definitely get one of the cheaper, more limited use packages.
3) you can't prioritize your list (of 20 movies) - they'll just send you whatever they have. You can pay a $2.50 "gotta have it" fee and they'll ship it within 24 hrs.
4) if you go over your shipments/month limit, it's a $2.50 fee (but at least it's not impossible to get more).

So ultimately I'll think about whether or not I would use it and probably at least give it a try for 1 month if it will fit into my budget!

Editor's Note: I lied, Zip DOES have the 7 up series! (It's just boxed together as "The Up Series", so when I searched for "7 Up", no results.)

Lost: Post- Fall Finale Post

Thoughts:

1) the fish biscuits are laced the fish biscuits are laced! pregnancy scare in the flashback is classic foreshadowing. however, i don't necessarily think she'll have the baby - perhaps a miscarriage mishap? intentional, forced, or otherwise. speaking of that, good job with the sex scenes. and the post-love was ridiculously cute.
2) i knew jack would come through for kate and sawyer despite the rage over now being the third wheel. he still wouldn't/won't let ben die. why didn't she tell him they're on a different island? i bet she will as one of the first few lines in episode 7
3) no eye patch :( not much of anything in the way of developments to the mythology or big unknowns
4) alex is sooooo a set-up!!! didn't everything about her scene in tonight's episode reek of fakeness? and apparently she's also ben's daughter/protege, which helps explain the set-up. I mean really, if she was taken from Rousseau as a baby, she grew up with these people. Her loyalty is to them, no question. crazy french lady will be mighty disappointed.
5) i still think ben will do a switchy swappy but not for a long time probably. end of this season at the earliest?
6) oh jack will get off the island he's on at the moment! tricky!!
7) "sheppard wasn't even on jacob's list" .... ah .... did I hear that right? so jacob is....?
8) NO MORE FLASHBACKS please. LIMITED USE only, not every episode. Not that I particularly disliked this one, but in general I'm so over them. I'd rather watch Hurley and Charlie gather fruit or Desmond skip his rocks for half an hour than sit through another Charlie/Jin/Sun/Hurley/Sayid flashback. The others are acceptable.
9) have i mentioned that I would give anything to have jin & sun dead and boone & shannon/eko back?
10) juliet needs to be dead by the end of this season. she's walking a very thin line with me. she makes a better villain than heroine. and she should stay the heck away from jack! he doesn't want any of that!! there's no one for him right now, and that's fine. he can use some alone time.
11) 16 episodes in a row will be mighty good. 13 weeks off, not so much fun. but we'll get used to it. i think i like this arrangement.
12) "look north" ... don't mind if I do, dead eko!
13) lame ending. oh well.

Lost: Pre-'Fall Finale' Post

I'm awfully excited for this, probably because it keeps being referred to as a finale. And it rather is: 13 weeks without Lost will follow!

So in honor of this memorable occasion, here are some pre-epsiode speculations/predictions/ramblings:

(some are/could be spoilerish)

1) Kate and Sawyer will do it - because they elude to that in the previews. The fish biscuits have fertility drugs in them to make Kate pregnant.
2) Jack will operate on Ben, and save his life. He took the hippocratic oath, after all.
3) We'll get another glimpse of Eye Patch.
4) Alex is a setup.
5) Ben MAY switch over to the "good" side.

The one where Tammy sees movies by herself and gets her photo taken

- This is an interesting article from EW.com about Heroes and the comic book world. Complete with bonus references to Alan Moore, Buffy, and Babylon 5! Actually I only read the first page because that's all I thought to cache before class.

- Had my grad photos taken today, with robe, fake diploma, hat, fake flowers, and everything! One exciting technological development that has occurred since the last time I had these things taken (high school grad) is the green screen. Now instead of having to choose a background before the shoot, you can go online and play around with all the different ones to see what you like best. 2 of my 12 proofs turned out great, so I'm happy with that.

- Killing time until my 5:20 tax class. A very large boo to night classes. No more of those next term. Speaking of which I will tell you my 2nd term schedule right now:

Mon & Tues:
11:20-12:40 --- Advanced Corporate Financial Reporting
2:10-3:30 --- Value Investing
3:40-5:00 --- Business Law

Wed & Thurs:
9:40 - 11:00 --- Global Strategy

I've gotten most of my accounting courses out of the way this semester, so it should be a fairly light 4 months.

- I saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest all by my little old self last night. I actually really enjoy seeing movies alone so that wasn't a big deal. It was playing at Rainbow which is exactly 1 block from my apartment (and only until Thursday), I had been meaning to see it since the summer, and on top of that it was only $3.00!! Hard to turn down.

In the end, I really enjoyed it. Sure it was ridiculously long, did not adhere to any of the laws of physics, and ended with a complete cliffhanger... but darn it, it was good! I had low expectations because nearly everyone has been disappointed with it so far, and I knew to be prepared for the unresolved conclusion. But I thought in general the villain(s) were well constructed, the action scenes were near the top of any I've seen in the last couple of years, and I was thoroughly entertained for the entire 2.5 hours.

- Speaking of Rainbow, they're going to begin showing first-run movies starting this weekend. Of course, prices are going up but they'll still be the cheapest in London: $6.50 for evenings and something weird like $4.24 for matinees and Tuesdays. So if anyone wants to see The Departed with me next Tuesday ... I'll pay!! I'll probably see Borat too. One of the advantages of being a student is that it's really easy to get errands done/see matinees during the week.

EA Games helps keep me unsatisfied

Say what you will about my generation and our tendencies towards instant gratification and selfishness, but consider that this behavior is really just a construction of the changes in our society as a whole. I do not think it is theoretically possible for billions of people of the same age to willingly change their attitudes all at the same time. So, really it's not our fault it's yours (not you, specifically) for encouraging the shifts in values that have in turn changed the structures that influence our behavior.

Anyways, that little social-psych babble is really just a prelude to my real beef which is with The Sims. I recently purchased an expansion pack which allows your Sims to play with little kitties and doggies (and budgies and hamsters and fishies). Upon excitedly tearing open the packaging, I noticed a small one-page flyer drop out. For a change, it was advertising something actually related to the game I had just purchased, and not Metal Men 3 or some other nonsense.

However, it was an advertisement for the NEXT Sims expansion pack. Not the current one, not one that I can go out and buy in-stores already, but one that doesn't even have a name or a set release date. But the colorful advertisements promises dozens of new key features that guess what - I want now! My satisfaction of the game, even with my new Pets expansion pack, has been greatly diminished by my new ability to imagine in precise detail what these new features will be like. Argh.

Peace the spork out, Eko

Hopefully you've watched it already, cause clearly I'm assuming you have.

I'd heard beforehand that someone was going to bite the dust in last night's eppy, and had actually pegged pre-show that it would be Eko. My logic: the last 3 deaths have been female, Eko was in a vulnerable position, and after the hatch incident it felt like he didn't have much to do on the island anymore. I wasn't by any means sure.

And by jove, he expired around 9:59pm last night (well, 2004). I'm thrilled it was at the hands of the smoke monster; very fitting after how he stared it down last season. It seems to me this implies that the monster has been the cause for everyone's hallucinations throughout the first two seasons (Jack's dad, Kate's horse, DAVE) and that maybe it judges you and if you repent your supposed sins, you live - otherwise you die. I'm trying to think about how this applies to the other hallucinations but I'm too tired.

In other more exciting news, Benji has a tumor and Jack is gonna save him (oh he so is, you know it). Benji will find out about Juliet's plot, and possibly defect to the Losties, or at least shake up the island dynamics. Hopefully Juliet will die as a result... she deserves it. Or maybe it's all just a big set-up to see if Jack is worthy... of something.

Halloween

Here are some pictures of a couple memorable nights recently. On the top are my Deloitte friends that visited me when I went to Toronto this past weekend. In case you care, which I don't know why you would, we have: Alex, Adam, Chris, Aviel, Liz, Sapna, Me, Steve, and Mona (yes the infamous Mona!).

On the bottom is a picture from last night's Halloween events. The three girls are dressed up as fire fighters, and the boy looks like he's not wearing a costume but he actually has brown paper bag sayings taped to him with stuff like "My ex girlfriend broke my heart" and "My brother always got better grades than me". Any guesses as to what he was?? Emotional Baggage! Lol. Anyways they are called: Serena, Ksenia, Lauren, and Matt. Ivey peeps.