Puzzles

The Stephen King Illustrated Companion made the preliminary ballot for the Stoker Award. This is not a nomination. The active membership of the HWA will now vote on this ballot to produce the list of nominees (with some help from the additions jury where necessary). I’m not sure exactly what the schedule for that round of voting is. Once the nominees are produced, there is a second round of voting to determine the winners, who will be announced at the Stoker banquet in Brighton, England at the end of March. Here’s a new interview from the local newspaper arising from news of my Edgar Award nomination.

The weather guru is predicting that we may get another blast of winter next week, with the possibility of sleet and/or snow. This really has been an unusual winter.

We usually start a jigsaw puzzle during the Christmas vacation. It’s something to do around the table while we’re visiting. This year’s was a 1500 piece challenger that featured an Italian trattoria with the rest of the colorful city visible in the background. Because I’m partly colorblind, I tend to go more by shape than by what’s actually on the pieces, so it takes me a while to finish a puzzle like this. Last night I finally put the last pieces into place. Quite a marathon.

Okay, here’s where we break away to talk about Lost. On LiveJournal, this will be behind the cut. If you’re viewing this on my blog and you don’t want spoilers, look away!

The long wait was well worth it. What an episode! Instead of the two possible outcomes from the white screen at the end of Season 5 (it worked — Oceanic 815 makes it to L.A. | it didn’t work — they’re still stuck on the island), the writers found a way to have their cake and eat it, too. Except the Oceanic 815 that makes it to L.A. is not the same one that we saw in 2004. It’s mostly the same, except it has Desmond on board (albeit briefly?) and Shannon’s still in Australia. Hurley is now charmed instead of cursed, and Rose is the one consoling Jack through the turbulence instead of t’other way around. With a few notable exceptions, they’re a grim lot. Charlie’s suicidal. Kate’s still in chains. Jack’s distraught. Locke’s depressed and lying about his adventures. Not exactly the most brilliant outcome to their problems on the island…and things only get worse. Missing casket, missing knives, Kate on the run with Claire as an accidental hostage, Jin under arrest, Sun still lying about speaking English–or maybe she really can’t.

My assumption is that whatever happened at the end of Season Five (and there’s a chance that it wasn’t a nuclear explosion) caused a butterfly ripple effect around the world. Small changes that accumulated to cause the differences we saw–Hurley’s good fortune, for example. So it is entirely possible that Charlie isn’t a successful musician and that Sun can’t speak English. Most things are the same, but enough is different that we shouldn’t take anything for granted.

And then there’s the other timeline, which is now in 2007 on the island. Fake-Locke, who I’ve taken to calling Esau for Biblical reasons, finally shows his true colors, which means it’s time to go back and scrutinize every previous appearance of the smoke monster. What we assumed to be a mindless guardian with special powers proves to be something else altogether. And there’s still no guarantee that Jacob=good and Esau=bad. Esau wants to go home–but where the hell’s that? I’m also a little perplexed by the visionary people who have appeared on the island. Some of them were perhaps Esau’s attempts to connect with someone to do his bidding. Hurley’s imaginary friend. Eko’s brother. But what of Christian? Though Jack saw him briefly, he never approached Jack, and we actually saw him in Jacob’s cabin when it still had its protective ring of ash, which should have kept Esau at bay.

Plenty to think about. Is Sayeed himself after his resurrection? I knew he was going to come back to life, partly because he had to, and partly because Miles didn’t read anything from him after he was supposedly dead.