The Newbies Guide To LOST

So you’ve never watched LOST, you're thinking about starting this season, but you’re a little scared by the “complexity” of it all? Or maybe, you don’t watch regularly, caught a couple episodes, and just couldn’t figure out what the heck is going on? I have good news for you… it’s amazingly easier to grasp then you may have been told.

Sadly, ABC’s TWO attempts to summarize the show that has become the poster-child for “confusing” in anticipation of its third season debut have been, well, confusing. As one of the more visible LOST nuts, (blogging for TheTailsection.com), I’ve always been a little annoyed by the description of LOST as a complex, difficult-to-follow, show. Let’s face it, LOST is a little on the purple side of the spectrum, but it’s no Fellini or Greenway; maybe a pale shade of David Lynch, but hardly in the spectrum of impressionistic deconstructive symbolism.

LOST is a very good action-adventure/drama hybrid with some very interesting multi-genre twists. Why are we told it is confusing? In general, the mysteries of LOST are told over time with tantalizing bits of information that sometimes span the histories of characters that before they became “LOST”, had never met one another. Sound frustrating? Don’t worry! The writers do an excellent job of introducing new material for us to wonder on while they are back filling the mysteries of the past. Worried you can’t keep track of it all? Again, they have it under control! When a mystery is solved or a question is answered you will find the writers of LOST to be very gracious with bringing you up-to-date. LOST is only as demanding as you make it. There are enough self contained sub plots within the show to keep casual viewers happy.

So what is this LOST? What is the fuss all about? Can I really start watching season three if I’ve never seen an episode? Absolutely! What might be compelling you to ask these questions is that overwhelming amount of Easter eggs and freeze-frame reveals the show is so well known for. Don’t worry! Not only is that stuff of little consequence to the overall story, the assumption by the writers is you will never even see it! So none of the little easter-egg thingies are even required to follow along! And with that frame of mind, I segue into part two of this article:

PART TWO: Everything you need to know about LOST to start at Season Three

There is this weird island, nobody knows it exists. Several people have arrived there by calamitous means over the years most recently Oceanic flight 815 which broke in half in mid air. Inexplicably, several people survived in two groups, the tail group and the fuselage group. They are all pretty interesting people with twisted backgrounds. (They must have been attending an “interesting people with twisted backgrounds” convention in Australia.) Some people are miraculously cured of ailments ranging from cancer to paralysis. For some reason, they decide to keep this secret.
The tail group have a rough go of it, being picked off by mysterious island inhabitants. The fuselage people meanwhile run into polar bears and live in fear of an anonymous “monster” that tears up trees at night. Some of the fuselage people find a hatch into the ground and try to open it, with little success. Meanwhile a semi-friendly indigenous personality warns the survivors of a mysterious group of “others” who steal children and generally wreck havoc; she also informs them of a mysterious sickness that killed her mates. The others, which wind up being the same guys that are antagonizing the tailies, kidnap one of the fusies kids in the season one finale when they try to take a raft off the island.

Also in the finale, they open the hatch, with the help of a little dynamite they retrieved from a mysteriously land-locked ship, and find this Scottish guy living inside. Now initially in the finale, they didn't reveal what was in the hatch and it pissed off a lot of people; feel lucky you weren't watching cause you would have had to wait all summer to meet this guy. He too crashed on the island, and was conscripted to “save the world” by entering numbers into a computer every 108 minutes. The numbers have meaning to some of the other people there too, one guy won the lottery using them, the semi-crazy chick that warned them about the others was drawn to the island because she heard the numbers being broadcast on shortwave. Still no idea why these connections exsist, so we'll just move on for now.

We find out there is a complex research labs on the island built by “The Dharma Initiative” which we know precious little about, other than the fact that somebody is STILL dropping food for them.
The “Others” show up again in the guise of an imposter who convinces the father of the missing kid to lead a select group of fusies to the others camp where they are captured. Some guys who are hip to this guys double agent status track them from the ocean and inadvertently discover the remains of a four toed statue. Apparently, the place has some history.
Meanwhile, the people in the hatch struggle over whether or not to continue pushing the button after finding a video in another lab that says the numbers station is just an experiment. When they break the computer, there is a big magnetic phenomenon (which apparently, under similar circumstances, also crashed the plane) . The Scottish guy whips out a fail-safe and the sky fills with light and there is a strange whirring noise that sounds suspiciously like the starter motor from a Ford Festiva. Parts of the hatch fall from the sky on the beach and we wrap up not really knowing what happened to the guys in the number station. Poor scottish guy.

Meanwhile, Benedict Arnold delivers his payload of four fusies to the “others” and three of them are taken captive. One is let go to “warn” the remaining survivors to keep their distance. At the very end of Season Two we find out the Scottish guys girlfriend has been searching for them all along. Somehow the magnetic anomaly thing revealed their position.
And that is it! Purists will notice that I messed with the timeline a little (the tailies were not revealed until season two) , and didn’t give a detailed character synopsis (which have expanded this to novella format), but hey… why are you reading this to begin with?

And there it is… not that foreboding is it? Now if you’re saying “That’s much less than I thought it would be.”, well… you would probably enjoy the hundreds of items of minutia that I left out like the orientation films, glass eyes, branded sharks, vacuum tubes, tree frogs, fugitives, tattooed surgeons, evil doctors, rafts, etc., etc., you people I recommend go buy the LOST season one and two DVDs! You still have time to catch up if you watch two or three episodes a day!

-BuddyTV

So, if you want to find out more information about Lost, please visit this link BuddyTV Television; You will find more details about Lost

Related Information of Interest:

Iraqi Insurgents In Secret Talks; Admit May Be Fighting Wrong Enemy
Iraqi insurgent groups, in secret talks with resourcefully pacifying President Jalal Talabani, admitted they may have been fighting the wrong enemy. Upon hearing the admission, President Talibani slapped his forehead so hard he fell over backwards and was unconscious for approximately three days.

Upon being resuscitated, he continued the talks. Apparently, the insurgents, most of whom are Sunni Muslims, have slowly begun to realize that American and coalition troops, who they have been making their best efforts to kill, may not be the real enemy. It seems they are also growing disenchanted with the practice of blowing up a dozen or so of their fellow countrymen every day.

While it is far too soon to expect them to realize that coalition troops are actually the helpful heroes who liberated their country from murderous despotism and will be delighted to depart their sandy realm as soon as they can get their act together and run their own country, the groups have indicated a marginal willingness to consider giving up their various armaments and roadside explosives.

Behind the change in their sentiment seems to be, not only their longtime-overdue displeasure with dismembering their own nation, but the realization that they are dangerously bordered by their traditional enemy, Iran, as they have been for quite a few thousand years, and that, because of the continuing discord, Iran has managed to increase its influence in the country, particularly among their uneasy Mosque fellows, the Shiite contingent of the legions of Mohammed. This perception is especially upsetting to the insurgents, because, as noted above, most of them are rival Sunni “Mosque-ovites.”

Their infuriatingly slow realization of the error of their ways is likely to elicit hardly more than ironic displeasure from the many families, coalition and Iraqi alike, who have lost loved ones during their misguided rampage.

But at least their willingness to talk and to consider mending their detonative ways is a glimmer of hope for the families whose sons and daughters are still in Iraq, attempting to do the right thing by the Iraqi people, Sunni and Shiite alike.

May the day soon come when enough of the knuckleheads realize the error of their war so we and the other nations that are in the hot sands we’ve gotten ourselves into can finally get our much underappreciated troops the heck out of there.

Tom Attea, creator of NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway and has written comedy for TV. Critics have called his writing ""delightfully funny" and "witty" with "good, genuine laughs."

Movies: What Would Life Be Like Without Them?
Have you ever thought about how your life would be if there were no movies? You probably haven't and that is because we all take them for granted but lets think about movies, both the good and the bad a little, shall we?

Movies are one of the most common forms of entertainment there is in our world. This is because they allow us to escape our world and enter into another world for a couple of hours and gives our immediate concerns a rest. They allow us to travel to worlds we will never be able to experience otherwise. They bring excitement and intensity of emotion that we would not have otherwise. These are all pretty good things right? And probably some of the main reasons that they are so popular.

On the flip side movies create unrealistic expectations and make unhealthy lifestyles and choices look appealing. This is especially true for those of us who have grown up in this age of technology. You see back when movies were simpler it was easier to separate them from reality. Now however the special effects and computer animations create such realism that it is confusing our kids. You've heard stories in the news about a child being killed or seriously hurt by another child because they were acting out something they saw in a movie. The other thing is that our children are being exposed to hyper intense scenes of violence that it is surprising that more Columbine's haven't happened really.

And what about Hollywood's portrayal of sex? Well lets just say that we all were really surprised the first time that we had sex. It wasn't nearly as smooth and well coordinated as we had seen every time on the silver screen was it. What if sex was portrayed realistically as something that can be extremely good and fulfilling given that the two people are committed to each other for life and are willing to work at it? What if the fact that there is a lot of responsibility that goes with the pleasure what dealt with? Well lots of people believe that we would have far less trouble with sex at its root. Teenage sex wouldn't be as rampant. Unwanted pregnancies would be a far smaller issue. STDs would not be spinning out of control, and on and on.

So are movies good or bad? Well the answer is both. Now the question remains, does one outweigh the other?

When not writing about movies, author Boyd Troublerr is most definitely watching them. To learn more about this wonderful form of entertainment go to www.moviesdeal.info.

Acne Review Treatment - The New Face Of Benzoyl Peroxide
One of the problems with benzoyl peroxide topical acne treatments is that they can be quite irritating, particularly to sensitive skin. Those fans of benzoyl peroxide will thus be pleased to learn that one skin care company that supplies prescription acne and skin care products is releasing a treatment with a delivery system that reduces benzoyl peroxide's irritating effect.

Called NeoBenz Micro, this acne treatment will be available only by prescription, which is one drawback. On the plus side, it should mean that the acne sufferer is given the appropriate strength to their particular needs. It is aimed at helping people with mild to moderate acne, and comes in three strengths. These are 3.5% benzoyl peroxide, 5.5% benzoyl peroxide, and 8.5% benzoyl peroxide.

The difference in this treatment as compared to regular benzoyl peroxide solutions, is that it is a time release product. The method designed by SkinMedica, NeoBenz Micro's developer, uses very small 'sponges', called microsponges. These hold the active ingredient, in this case benzoyl peroxide, to be slowly released throughout the day. It means that though acne is kept in contact with benzoyl peroxide for the whole day, only small amounts of it are released onto the skin. These amounts are enough to be effective but far less irritating.

The side effects that this benzoyl peroxide acne treatment aims at reducing are rashes, skin soreness, and irritation. Aside from the unpleasant feeling these effects create, they unfortunately also reduce the effectiveness of benzoyl peroxide in clearing acne.

NeoBenz Micro is one example of a new trend in the pharmaceutical industry. It aims at taking existing products and developing new ways to package and deliver the active ingredients, thus effectively modernizing many treatments. The emphasis in the past had been more research oriented - finding new and more powerful treatments rather than fine tuning existing ones that were proven to work.

Other examples of this phenomena include converting treatments into sprays, with the effect of increasing absorption and convenience. MedPharm, a research contracting firm, is turning one eczema treatment and two acne treatments into sprays. These are still in the development stage, however.

References:
1. in-pharmatechnologist.com/news/ng.asp?n=65831&m=1IPE215&c=qgtqmovbyiaxdub
2. outsourcing-pharma.com/news/ng.asp?id=64465

Discover more information on acne medicine treatments categorized for mild to severe acne in this article. These are traditional acne treatments, but if these frustrate you, check out these alternative natural acne treatments. Rebecca Prescott runs the website Acne To Health, providing information on both conventional and alternative acne treatments.

Diabetes And Your Diet
If you are like me you probably thought diabetes is one of those things you have or don't have; nothing could be further from the truth because diabetes is now the biggest threat to health in the developed world and we are eating ourselves into it because of poor diet.

First question is how prevalent is diabetes?
Using Australia as an example that has a total population of around 20 million inhabitants, in the last full year official figures show 70,000 people were diagnosed with diabetes during the year. That is equal to one extra person diagnosed every seven minutes 24/7.

At present 700,000 people are diagnosed with having diabetes and a conservative figure indicate that for each person diagnosed there is another that is not diagnosed but does suffer from diabetes. that is 1.4 million sufferers out of a total population of 20 million. - More than 5% and growing by the day. The organization Diabetes Australia forecast that by the year 2010 the number of sufferers could be close to 10% of population. This rate of increase is happening throughout the developed world and is caused by lack of exercise and poor diet. We could be quite cruel here and say that people are queuing to shorten their lifespan because diabetes does reduce your lifespan.

The answer to this epidemic is in the hands of each of us. We must exercise more and be more conscious of what we eat. Attention to diet should start from a very young age; in particular we should concentrate on serving sizes and avoiding fatty foods. Yes that does include every child's favorite burger and fries. Once a month does little harm if the children are active, once a week causes damage even if they are active.

We all need to be conscious of seven servings of fruit and vegetables each day in our diet and also the need to back a good diet with reasonable exercise, like walking. People most at risk of type 2 diabetes, the most common, are overweight and do not exercise. They may have high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol, if you fit this category ask your doctor to check for diabetes next time you visit.

I saved the scariest fact for last: The total number of people in Australia with diabetes or "pre-diabetes" is 3.2 million or 15.1% of the total population. Each of these people will have a reduced lifespan.

This article is (c) copyright David McCarthy 2006.

David McCarthy writes articles on the subject of the effects of food and diet on your health. This article could be the most important he has written when you read the scary statistics. His work can be viewed at: www.recipesmania.com/articles.html