My cubicle mate just got laid off.

Just slightly unnerving.

I'm not sure if I've indicated my current position on the television show Lost since I referenced it back when it first began. I'll state it now for clarity: the show is a waste of time. It started off with the potential to be an interesting and compelling character-driven drama with an interesting mythos, but it squandered these opportunities, instead becoming a sluggishly-paced, poorly-written, nonsense-ridden primetime soap filled with characters you just wish would shut up and die already. I could talk about it some more, but the bitterness thread at the Television Without Pity forums goes through these arguments (dating all the way back to December 2004) more precisely and thoroughly.

Lost was initially touted as a show of mysteries where everything happens for a reason. Right from the end of the pilot, viewers were eager to speculate and ruminate about what this master plan could possibly be. Through the power of fandom, miniscule details in subsequent episodes were analyzed in excruiciating detail. And it was a lot of fun. People are curious creatures, after all.

Unfortunately, in the time since then, it's become more and more clear that Lost's producers are just making shit up. Or, more specifically, they're taking care to decorate each episode so that it looks like everything is part of a master plot, but said master plot is nowhere near as intricate as they would have you believe. (The producers have already indicated that the show's mysterious numbers don't mean shit. Google it.) I don't doubt that the overall explanation of what the island basically is was known at the start of the series, and that a few plot elements were also planned, but by and large, I believe that once it became clear that Lost would have to sustain itself indefinitely on the airwaves, the writers were forced to stretch out their frail skeleton of a plot far more than they had anticipated, and completely and utterly failed to flesh it out.

What we are left with in Lost, then, is a show where the mythos is still somewhat interesting, based on the original design for the series, with all the little touches about the animals and hatches and whatnot. But the stuff they threw in, being the characters, the day-to-day plots, the utterly contrived plotlines, it's garbage. I've stopped watching the show. I read recaps at TWoP because I'm still mildly interested in the mythos, but the show itself is too plodding, boring and ridiculous to endure.

This is the part where I give you a link. Here is one person's theory about Lost's grand mystery. (It contains spoilers up to and including the first half of the second season.) It's a fairly interesting theory, and it fits with a lot of the show's elements. Then again, as anyone who's taken a Forer personality test knows, it's easy to make shit seem like fate. If this theory turns out to be correct, then hey, kudos for the planning, but thumbs down on the execution. I'll say this much though; if the theory turns out to be wrong, then purely by virtue of this theorist having put thought into these explanations, it'll be better than whatever the real answer turns out to be.

(It's also worth noting that this theory, while somewhat scientific, incorporates some slightly supernatural bents, while ABC has mandated that Lost's mysteries must have some plausible explanations for fear of ending up with a -- gasp! -- genre show.)

UPN and WB to merge into one channel. (Link via Whedonesque)

For those of you not in the know, WB and UPN are American broadcast networks who are each others' direct competitors. That is, they each target a similar demographic, and they battle each other in the ratings -- for fifth place. You see, neither network has as much coverage as the big four (ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS) and because they target the younger audiences, they aren't really taken seriously, with the exception of a few critical gems they pick up every now and then that still fail to achieve widespread acclaim. The WB is the network that launched Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in the day and ran it for five seasons before they moved to UPN. People who've read my posts around spring 2004 know that the WB is also the network that launched and canned Angel. Nowadays the WB gets its ratings and remarks for Smallville and Gilmore Girls. UPN, conversely, gets its remarks and ratings for America's Next Top Model, Everybody Hates Chris, and, of course, Veronica Mars.

When you're a Veronica Mars fan who spends at least a moment each day worrying about the continued survival of the show, news like this tends to play Illogical Pong with your aorta. Suddenly we're compressing two networks' worth of programming into one, and gads of shows have got to get the axe. This is the fear.

But then there's the hope. The article specifies Veronica Mars as a show aired by the new network. But we haven't gotten an official renewal notice yet, so this might just be CNN's speculation. Still, Dawn Ostroff (a head at UPN who will be a head at the new network, "CW") likes the show. And although the ratings for the show might be low, they're fairly consistent (and seem to experience a 500,000 viewer surge every time Lost is in repeat that week) and CW's plan appears to be to combine the highest raters and critical darlings of each network, which easily includes Veronica Mars. So, I'll be optimistic, but worrisome out of uncertainty and habit.

The new network will have greater coverage than either UPN or the WB had before, stepping further into the playing field of the big four. Whether CW will finally gain some legitimacy in the eyes of the American public, however, remains to be seen. But if the CW does start picking up the ratings its ancestors have always coveted, then we could very well end up with another axe-happy network. Veronica Mars is safe for now given the lowered expectations of a smaller network. Would it find a large enough audience to still thrive in the big leagues? Or are smart shows destined to be underperforming regardless of their exposure?

Hope! Fear! Hope! Fear!

I brought a digital camera with me to Vancouver. This camera has the wonderfully astounding ability to record low-resolution 35-second QuickTime video clips with unsynchronized audio recorded from a crappy microphone. So, I figured I'd put up some video clips I made of the basement I'm staying in. Enjoy.

• Part 1: Introduction (3.2 MB)
• Part 2: Bathroom (10 MB)
• Part 3: Kitchen (10 MB)
• Part 4: Living Room (10 MB)
• Part 5: Bedroom (10 MB)
• Part 6: Bedroom, continued (10 MB)
• Part 7: Recap (10 MB)

The following is a vague description of something I saw while exploring downtown Vancouver today.

I was riding at the back of the bus on my way to the Firehall Arts Centre. Just ahead of me, on the right, were two young men. One had his back to me. The other was facing sideways, with curly hair and taped glasses, though with a sharper, colder look.

We came to a stop, and one of the passengers who boarded was a bald, skinny, older man who had a muffin with him. The passengers noticed him as he was pleading with the bus driver to let him eat on the bus. The driver relented, so the man thanked him and took a seat across from the two younger men.

The older man was kind of how you'd imagine a crazy street-living kook to be. He would eat his muffin, and talk loudly about how he lost his job and his wife, and how he had nothing. He would break into sobs so melodramatic you couldn't be certain that he was kidding, only to follow them up with jokes about his ex-wife. After a short bit of ranting, I see the glasses guy make a comment to his friend along the lines of "this is why they tell kids not to do drugs". The older man overhears, but nods and smiles, clearly missing the intent of the remark.

A few minutes later, the man is about halfway through his muffin, when he holds the remaning half out across the aisle, offering it to the guy with the glasses. Now, I admit, my first reaction was, "ew", as many people would if offered a half-eaten muffin by a crazy ranting stranger. I saw Glasses make a look of disgust and irritation, and expected him to tell off the old guy.

Then Glasses, in one quick motion, raises his right foot and kicks the muffin out of the old guy's hand. The muffin hits the floor and breaks into dozens of tiny chunks. The old man buries his face in his chest and somberly finishes chewing the food left in his mouth.

After a few minutes, the old man moves to a seat at the front of the bus. Someone else up there hollers "get a job!" to which the old man responds that he has one, with the FBI. More ranting goes by that I can't pick up. After another few minutes, I can hear him talking in sobs about how he's going to get off this damn bus with the scum at the back. Next stop, he exits and is quickly forgotten.

Where do these people come from? The ranting old men who inevitably cross our personal boundaries, and the arrogant youngsters who see fit to respond to them with purely malicious actions?

I can say one thing for sure; the old man at least has some shred of dignity left. Why? Because he wouldn't eat muffin crumbs off the floor of a bus. Where is Glasses' shame?

So it looks like Arrested Development has been cancelled. More specifically, its season episode order has been cut back to 13 episodes, and after that there will be no more. Ah, well. It's an anomaly that it managed to last so long on FOX as it is. So farewell, Arrested Development, for you were an excellent show with a real sense of love for your viewers. Though we may here part ways, rest assured that in FOX cancelled show heaven you will be in some good company.

...Veronica Mars!

I admit, the season two premiere started off a little slow. But by the end of the episode, I had to stop and count how many GUH?'s I uttered while watching. It's kind of like the first two Lost episodes that have aired so far this season, except with more plot than both of them combined, and with an actual promise of viewer rewards.

Veronica Mars season one comes out in October. Pick them up, check them out, and cruise on over to season two. You won't regret it.

• An entry on a menu in a Vietnamese restaurant:

  46. Bánh Flan au Caramel
  Crème caramel
  
  Custard cake

• How do you identify a non-Canadian? Simple. Overheard at Tim Horton's:

  "How much are those nuggets?"

  "Nuggets?"

  "Yes, those small little donut balls."

• The McDonald's signs here look the same, but the yellow text which usually says something like "Billions and Billions Served" instead just said "Hamburgers". And it looked weird to me.
• I went to a food court where there was a Lebanese food kiosk. The thing is, it was called "Aladdin", with a neon sign in the same shape as the Disney movie's logo, accompanied by pictures from said movie. Blatant copyright infringement, much?
• In the same food court, there was a place called "Café 3 Etoiles", or "Three Star Cafe". This struck me as a particularly lackluster name, especially since I later saw a truck on the highway for Ten Star Groceries or Bakery or something (I don't quite remember).