questions of identity, updates

I've been thinking about this for some time now, about identity as ethnicity. I thought of ways of putting it that might get people up in arms, and then I realized no one reads this blog, but I think I'll attempt delicacy anyway.

Who is more Japanese? A child who is not ethnically Japanese but is, say, through adoption, raised by Japanese parents in Japan, speaks only Japanese, and has no contact with members of their original ethnicity? Or a child who is of Japanese ethnicity but is raised by non-Japanese in a place where they have no contact with Japanese culture or that ethnic group? These are the most extreme examples that come to my mind when I think about adoption, mixed-race and culture marriages, and this sort of thing. Because I think that, no matter what, first impressions are tied up entirely in what they can see genetically. Our sight comes first. Second would be language. Then environment. We would think of someone who looks Japanese as more Japanese than someone who doesn't look "Japanese" (or any other distinct ethnic group). I should go back to anthropology to study this.

Sigh. Anyhow, onto other things, I wrote a short that is going to be produced by some friends of mine. Hopefully, filming will happen in August. It's a fun little gothic musical. More details to come.

Am reading Hotel Honolulu at the moment. Pas mal. Saw Wristcutters and loved it. Very Slavic feel. Rec'd.

Lost recap: postscript

I guess there's another possibility: divinity working within physics. Everyone who Jacob touched is outside the norm physics-wise. They come back, safe and sound, memories intact, but everything DID change. Just not for them. They're like their own little bubbles/islands. The plane never crashed...for everyone else. The reset happens for everyone but the main, living cast--and this includes Ben because he got touched at the last second before Jacob "died."

Lost--the end begins (spoiler alert)

Ha, okay, so I stole that from Salvation, but who cares?

Okay, so how crazy was last night? I have physics issues with the way this time travel is working. I figure there are three possibilities, two of which assume time is linear. In the first assumption, there is a single line, and if you can jump back in time, you always jumped back in time, and you can't change the past because the past is immovable. However, this would set up a looping issue and preclude free will. I don't like that.

The second assumption, time is linear, but a new ray can start. From the moment, Sawyer and Juliet and the others went back, they started a new branch, an alternate future, where everything changes and they can, possibly, stop the plane crash. However, since we've been watching the non-time traveling Losties, this makes this impossible because they're on the same ray (because of the picture Sun saw). They're still following the original track where nothing in their history has altered--or maybe it has, and we just haven't been able to perceive it. I don't know. Anyhow, both seem unlikely.

The third assumption is that, like Farraday said originally, they didn't just travel in time--they traveled in space. Which seems more physics-likely. That means the past they went to wasn't the past, but a past, maybe a parallel but non-intersecting past. But the photo of them in the 70s that Sun found kind of ruins that too because it shouldn't directly affect her present unless when she and the others crashed, they crashed into that same alternative reality as the 70s Losties, but that reality's future, so she still remembers her past, but it's not the past of the reality she's in. That seems unlikely, though.

So all of those logical possibilities are tossed out the window. We haven't seen off-islanders since they went back, so maybe time and space and consequences differ between the island and the rest of the world. Maybe things change off-island, but not on, or vice-versa.

Next, Locke isn't Locke! Obviously! How did we not figure that out? The actual Locke would not want to kill Jacob. Duh. Is Jacob really dead? Is Locke the permanent realization of that guy on the island with Jacob when the Black Rock approached? What is Jacob? Clearly, he's some kind of divine entity or an extension of the island...but he seemed to bleed like your average guy.

And then, Juliet. Is she going to be like Desmond now? Was that her eye in the promo for 2010?

Let's say it does have a pure reset, which seems impossible. Are we gonna see the people from the plane who died in the first few seasons?

I have more thoughts, but...mostly I can't believe we have to wait to 2010 to see how the writers turn ALL THAT into a satisfying final season.

blogging is so--wait, what year is it? 2009? are you serious?

Honestly, I've fallen for Twitter in a bad, hard way. It's that instant gratification thing. You have a thought and no one to speak to (and who actually engages with people in real life anymore?), and, boom, suddenly, everyone--and by everyone, I mean the 27 or so people who follow me--knows it. It's great.

Disney Fellowship opened earlier than expected (re: Friday) and will be open till the end of June. I have nothing worthy of it yet. So the next two weeks, I'm going to be buckling down. I wonder where that phrase buckling down comes from. Does it mean buckling myself down? Because that would connote some kind of a safety issue, wouldn't it? Or is buckling down like forcing yourself to stay in a seat for the duration of your task? And you're finishing will unlock you like coming to your destination?

Crap, I wouldn't give myself a job either.

Okay, back to work.