Alone time. Precious alone time. I’d looked forward to having a weekend by myself for so long that my list of things to do was as long as my arm. Still, it was the To-Do list of my dreams. Finish unread magazines. Empty bottle of wine. Organize box of chocolates according to which should be eaten first.

Nothing was going to ruin this weekend for me. Not even a ghost.

Especially not a ghost. I didn’t believe in them anyway. Silly see-through apparitions. The paranormal couldn’t manage anything scarier than the see-through specter I’d once viewed in the dressing room mirror at Victoria’s Secret.

So there I was, stretched out on the couch, finishing off a box of KFC extra crispy with a George Clooney movie playing, wine chilling, and the animals patiently awaiting their scheduled lap times, when it began.

Tiny white feathers drifted down from above.

“What the . . .?” I said out loud as I held out my hand, where a few brilliant white feathers soon settled.

I looked around to see if perhaps a bird had sneaked in and had an unfortunate encounter with our ceiling fan. But there weren’t any birds and the fan wasn’t on.

What was “on” was George Clooney, looking so fine I soon forgot those strange feathers. I cracked the seal on my wine (I’m too cheap for real corks) and organized a few of those chocolates. Somewhere around midnight, I must have drifted off.

I was awakened by a strange thwacking sound–a wet sounding crash-crunching that seemed to come from all sides of the house at the same time. Flashlight in hand, I cautiously stepped onto my front porch. It was littered with egg shells, the walls dripping with yolk.

“What the . . .?” I found myself saying again.

That’s when I first heard the crazed cackle–a sound so insane I rushed back inside. I slammed the door closed and fastened the locks. Then slipped on the yolk-slick floor. I plopped down in the puddle of broken eggs and was still sitting there, stunned and confused, when another batch of white feathers began to rain down. Followed by that crazed cackle.

Heart pounding, I found my footing and raced up the stairs, my terrified terriers close at my heels. We passed our three cats. Each appeared poised and ready to pounce–tails twitching, eyes glowing. Licking their lips.

I wasn’t sure where to go. Nowhere seemed safe. As I searched wildly about for the phone (which was, as usual, not on its base), the bad odor began. Within seconds, the whole house smelled fowl. Then again, the crazed cackle.

I began to tremble and cry. The mad cackle then changed to a taunting, “Bawk! Bawk!”

Whatever it was, it was cruelly egging me on. I began to get angry. My house was a mess. I was a mess. Sticky and smelly and covered with feathers. Egg on my face.

Then it hit me. I knew what it was. Our house was haunted. And it wasn’t just your average ghost. No, what we had was a poultrygeist.

My fear quickly turned to frustration. The last thing I needed was to have to shell out for an exorcist, especially one abreast of hauntings like this.

There was only one man to call: The Colonel.

Luckily, I had a coupon, so not only did the Colonel rid my house of the demon, but I got my choice of two sides. And let me tell you, that Colonel really delivered. He gave that demon chicken took a good lickin’. In the week since his visit, I’ve not heard a peep.

Although I suspect that right about now, I might hear a few groans.

I just finished listening to the audio version of Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. When I read the back cover blurb, I thought it seemed like such an intriguing idea for a book. “Diary takes the form of a ‘coma diary’ kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt.” The husband, while remodeling the vacation homes of rich people, had begun “hiding” rooms in the houses he worked on, closing off linen closets and bedrooms and even a kitchen. Early on in the book, there are answering machine messages left by the rich people that go something like, “I know I don’t spend much time in this house, but I could’ve sworn it had a kitchen.” Ha!

Anyway, inside these closed-off rooms, the husband left bizarre messages written all over the walls, and Misty tries to find out why he wrote what he did. Then Misty, a former art student, suddenly begins painting again-compulsively painting.

I loved the surreal feel I had the entire time I was listening to this book (read by one of the best readers I’ve encountered so far, Martha Plimpton). He does dark humor well. There were times when the repeated phrases annoyed me (the third-person to second-person references to Peter, the facial muscle descriptions, the weather forecasts, the “for the records”), but most of the time, I liked how it sort of pulled me back to home base. The drinking game reference went on a bit too long, but when it was brought back in a single line chapters later, it was very effective.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The ending went on a few paragraphs longer than it should have. I don’t like endings that leave the reader totally hanging, but neither do I like them to be over-wrapped, as this one sort of was.

The author of this book also wrote Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby, none of which I’ve read, but I’m curious enough about this author’s style to want to read more.

Aside from having given birth to its queen, I’ve had little involvement with drama.

But the end of this month, I’ll be onstage at the Clay Center as a lip-synching, yodeling townsperson in the Children’s Theatre production of “Hansel & Gretel.”

Before anyone tsk-tsks me over not singing–trust me, I do so with the public’s best interest at heart. As one who can’t manage to walk while just thinking about chewing gum, it’s not likely I could make it from backstage to front, waving my arms like windshield wipers while singing “yodel-a, yodel-a-he” without injuring some innocent cookie or causing great pain to many innocent eardrums.

My 9-year-old daughter is one of those cookies. And she’s also responsible for getting me (a lifelong sufferer of stage fright) up on the stage.

At one of the first practices, the play’s director, Kelly Strom, asked for parent volunteers to stand in as townspeople. Kelly worded her request in such a way that many of the parents believed she needed us just for that night. I’ve come to suspect Kelly worded it that way for a reason. It was no accident. She’s a sly one, that Kelly.

But she and her assistant drill sergeant–I mean, stage manager–Donna Venable-Thompson, are impressive to watch, adeptly managing the 58-person cast, made up mostly of children ages 6 to 16.

They start off simply–teaching stage terms, explaining the parts, showing each cast member where to stand. Once those details are mastered, more is added–a dance step, a hand movement, a facial expression. Great gobs of guidance aren’t doled out at once, but a bit at a time. When the children are ready. Corrections are done with just the right mixture of humor and seriousness.

There are numerous songs and movements and expressions for the children to remember, numerous attitudes and inflections to perfect. Early on, it seemed like too much. But I’ve learned you should never underestimate children. They’re capable of more than we can imagine.

And then there’s us moms. The yodeling moms. It’s not a large group, but the women are fun and good-natured. Sadly, though, they’re not easily corruptible. Instead of just waving our empty hands back and forth over our heads, I tried to convince them to all hold up lighters, but no one was game.

Most of the moms, myself included, seem determined to blend into the background as much as we can, to not call attention to ourselves in any way. When my daughter came home from practice without me one evening, she filled me in on the general details of rehearsal, then as an afterthought, mentioned that Kelly announced she was going to put microphones on all the moms.

“She’s going to do what?”

“Microphones,” Celeste said casually. “On all of the moms.”

Up to that point, I’d actually been singing during rehearsals. Granted, I didn’t sing loud. I’m a responsible citizen, aware of the pain my voice box is capable of inflicting (it was once suggested I have it registered as a lethal weapon). But the thought of having a microphone attached to my body

in close proximity to that which has brought me both ridicule and shame was mortifying.

At the next practice, as soon as one of the other yodeling moms was nearby, I asked if she’d heard about “the microphone thing.” When she said she hadn’t, I explained. She paled visibly. Together, we approached another mom to see what she knew. Her eyes soon grew wide.

“Surely not,” she said, sounding distraught.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She said it so casually and with such authority. No way could she come up with a prank like that on her own.”

But, like I said, never underestimate children.

Especially an apple that not only didn’t fall far from the tree, but rather traveled straight down.

The Clay Center performances of Hansel & Gretel will be at 7 p.m. Oct. 27, at 7 p.m., and at 2 and 7 p.m. Oct. 28.

It’s been an exhausting but mostly fun week. Monday I was terribly sick with a fever that reached 104 and made me feel pretty bizarre at times. Celeste and her friend Jordan were so nice to me, bringing me wet rags for my forehead, ice water and aspirin. (Geoff was in Morgantown.) Whatever bug this is has now moved to my throat, where it’s making my voice alternate between sounding like a long-time smoker and a 13-year-old boy whose voice is changing.

The rest of the week has been a wild mix of book promo things and play practice.

On Wednesday, Celeste and Geoff were on Good Morning West Virginia, then later that same day, she and I participated in the “Meet the Press” event at the Town Center Mall. There were reporters, photographers, circulation staff, our NIE director and other staff members on hand to talk with students interested in a newspaper career, as well as those who just wanted to stop by and say hi. They invited Celeste to come, too.

And then there’s play practice. Every single night. I know the reason they only do two shows a year–it’s so we parents can have time to forget what a pain these last two weeks can be.

This picture above is of Jordan Holmes, who plays a troll in the play. He lives across the street from us and I absolutely love this kid. He’s hilarious. Born to be on the stage. He has the most powerful singing voice (which is not always a good thing, especially when you’re in a small call with the windows rolled up).

Saturday and Sunday we’ll be at the Book Festival. Geoff and Celeste are sharing a booth along with Keith Estep, who has written this fantastic book about growing up in Nitro. And then on Sunday, the set for the play will be moved into the Clay Center and we’ll have our first practice there from 6 to 9.

Well, I did it. I broke down and went to ABC’s LOST website and read their message board to see if anyone could explain how the hatch could’ve imploded without killing the men inside.

When Desmond awoke in the jungle, he was naked–-so the implosion blew his clothes off but it didn’t kill him. (WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN SAWYER?!) And the loud boom and earth shaking wasn’t something that would scare away a hungry polar bear? That’s a weird looking bear. Wonder what’s up with that? The one in the Coke commercials at Christmas are more realistic looking.

Anyway, that implosion bit was nagging at me so at lunch I hopped on the internet to visit the board. Here’s how it was explained:

“…imploded is correct, and it is well thought out. Have you ever heard of the sun imploding in the future? You know, where it expands to the point that it ‘implodes,’ or collapses on itself. An implosion means it would actually expand first, sending everything flying out, and then it would quickly collapse on itself. The hatch would do the same. Thus, an implosion sent the door marked ‘Quarantine,’ Eko, Locke, Desmond, and Eko’s ‘Jesus Stick’ flying into the sky. That’s how they all landed in the middle of the jungle.”

I guess it’s kind of weird for me to get hung up on the implosion rather than the polar bear’s cave with the old Tonka truck and skeletons or the whole Locke sequence, since it once again showed him in a wheelchair. There was also Boone’s reappearance during Locke’s vision. Thank goodness that in the Better Place where Boone has gone, someone took a weed whacker to his wooly worm eyebrows.

Oh well. A so-so episode. I’m not sure what I keep hoping will happen. I like having a mystery to try to solve and clues to look for, but I’m also ready for more of it to be resolved.

Sometimes, I have to look extra hard to find something about which to feel proud. Luckily, I have fairly low standards for what qualifies.

Most people, after having worked more than a year on a challenging endeavor, would require more than a mere purr as reward for their labors. But for me, it was enough.

Sully is, in most ways, a strikingly handsome cat. He has long and shiny black hair and bright yellow eyes. But he also has a perpetual scowl.
If recognition were given for the most continuous disgruntled days, Sully would have a room full of trophies. He’s the Andy Rooney of felines. The Dick Cheney of cats.

But for some reason, his seemingly impenetrable dour mood amuses me and I’m not really sure why. I guess some might take this to mean I’m not very nice. What does it say about a person who finds hilarity in an unhappy cat? Yet it seems adorable much the same way as a small child standing with arms crossed, knees locked, brow furrowed and bottom lip sticking out. Sully forever looks and acts like a Terrible Two who someone’s told ‘No!’

Or it could simply be that I like a challenge, and Sully has provided me that from Day One.

We already had two indoor cats and a dog when Sully claimed our front porch. Although his full domain consisted of a six- or seven-house region, our porch was his base of operations. He was wild and frightened at first, but I’d sit on the step and talk to him while he cautiously ate his dry food. In the early days, my efforts at conversation with the grump were met with hisses (the cat equivalent of cursing), and he’d glare at me suspiciously, ears flattened and back. When winter came, my daughter and I added warm towels and bits of ham to our list of attractions. The ears stopped turning back. The hissing decreased.
Eventually, Sully began worming his way indoors, a development the other cats didn’t like. A long power struggle ensued, finally decided after my clawless cat, Squirt, gained enough weight that he could flatten the snaggle-clawed Sully by dropping onto his back like a cinderblock.

Once Sully accepted his position in the hierarchy of cats, things were better. He began following me from room to room, and seemed smitten with me for a while. It was a brief honeymoon, though. Soon he was back to whapping the dog on the forehead, attempting to swing from Gypsy’s tail whenever it dangled, and refusing to budge from the highchair where Squirt eats his meals.

Sully quickly went from treating me like the love of his life to treating me like his automatic door and can opener. Outside, he was the self-designated wildlife control expert. Inside, he specialized in sour looks and hair relocation.

We entered a frustrating phase. Having Sully around was like having all the expenses and labor of owning a pet with none of the perks. While my other two cats were often so clingy I referred to them as “lap fungus,” Sully rarely gave me the time of day.

And then a month or so back, I was standing at the sink when I noticed a blouse slowly disappearing through the crack beneath my bathroom door. Once it was gone, a black paw appeared, feeling this way and that, hoping to snag something else. From my side, I began handing him things–a sock, a hair band, a belt. When I peeked out at him, his eyes were glowing with mischief rather than wrath.

It’s become our routine. Every morning I shut the door, and he shoves his paw underneath.

It wasn’t food or warm towels or a dry place to sleep that crumbled his wall, but a simple game. One that belonged to just him and me.

The other day, a good hour or more after we’d played, I was walking past Sully to pick up some clothes when I heard something I’d not heard before. Sully was purring. I wasn’t touching him–I wasn’t even looking his way–but he had begun to purr loudly anyway. He’s done it many times since.

In the days since then, he’s reduced his scowling to maybe 80 percent of the time, has not hissed even once, and has permitted a few belly rubs without causing me to loose that much blood.

To most, they’d be milestones too minor to mention. But for me, they count very much.

I wish I could draw more LOST fans here so we could get a big conversation going about the show. I get so confused by it at times, especially this episode with the flashbacks on Sun’s life.

At the beginning, it showed Sun breaking that ballerina statue, then telling her dad the maid did it. The dad said, “If the maid did it, then I will have to fire her.” He knew Sun did it, but he asked her again, I guess hoping that by knowing the maid would lose her job if Sun didn’t tell the truth, that she’d fess up. Instead, she still blamed the maid.

I’m thinking that scene was to let us know that Sun isn’t so nice after all, and now I’m wondering if it wasn’t Sun that pushed her lover off the building.

Did Sun accidentally or deliberately shoot the woman on the boat? (The actress she shot plays my favorite character in Deadwood.) I’d looked away from the TV for just a second and all I heard was the shot.

I still like Sun and don’t want her character to end up being bad. Flawed is fine, but not evil.

I got such a kick out of Sawyer watching Kate digging. His facial expressions were perfect. And when he kissed her–I love how he figured out a way to do that while at the same time feeling out the fighting capability of the Others.

Juliette is bizarre. Something about her seems kind, but she also has this evil-ness to her.

OK, so the Others obviously have contact with the outside world. They have CDs and camping-style folding chairs and weapons that weren’t around 20-30 years ago. Yet Ben said he’d never been off the island. Hmmm.

One thing I have trouble with . . . Remember Danielle? (I think that’s her name.) The French woman who was shipwrecked on the island ages ago, killed the rest of her crew because they were infected? She’s been there all those years, been all over the island, yet she’s never tripped over this big ol’ village the Others have right out in the open? I hope the writers have explanations for all the clues and twists and unexplained things they keep throwing at the viewers.

It’s been SO hard for me to keep quiet about Celeste’s book, but I had to wait to officially anounce it until after the story appeared.

Click here to listen to Celeste’s interview with Anna Sale on WV Public Radio. She sounds a little unsure of herself in this interview, but it didn’t last long. By the time we went over to V100 for the Thursday bit I do there on Ric Cochran’s show, she was a different kid–confident and funny and well-spoken. She put the headset on and pulled down the mic like she’d done it a hundred times before.

She’s going to be on Good Morning West Virginia at 7:40 on Oct. 18, then appear that same day at the Town Center Mall along with a bunch of us from the Gazette and Daily Mail in our “Meet the Press” event from 11:30 to 1:30.

Here’s the story about her that ran in the October 08, 2006 Sunday Gazette-Mail

YOUNG WRITER PUBLISHES FIRST BOOK

By Susan Williams, Staff writer

Although 9-year-old Celeste Vingle stayed calm as she explained her writing career, she said, “I screamed,” when she saw her first book in print.

“When Good Babies Go Bad” tells the story of what can happen when seemingly good babies decide to throw food or feed an older sibling’s homework to the family pet.

Even though she competed with adults, Celeste’s book was selected in a children’s book competition at last year’s book festival. She was a mere 7 when she wrote the book during a family vacation. She won the contest when she was 8, and now she is a published author at age 9.

The name Vingle frequently can be seen in the pages of The Charleston Gazette. Celeste’s father, Mitch, is the Gazette’s sports editor, and her mother, Karin Fuller, writes a column in The Sunday Gazette-Mail. Celeste’s stepfather, Geoff Fuller, is also a writer.

All the writers around her influence her, Celeste said, but she writes about different subjects than they do. She is presently working on three screenplays at the same time. She enjoys seeing plays performed, and currently has a part in a play, the Children’s Theater production of “Hansel and Gretel.” She plays a cookie and a towns-person, and is a member of the chorus.

Two years ago, Celeste was in the car on her way to a family vacation. She was listening, more than her mother realized, to what her mother had learned at a writing retreat taught by children’s author Cheryl Ware. While her stepfather drove, her mother started suggesting ideas for children’s books. Celeste had some ideas of her own, and quickly began jotting them down. By the time they reached their destination, she had the first draft of her book.

For winning the contest, Celeste’s book was professionally edited, and then a professional illustrator did the drawings for it.

The books are available for $9.95 in the Gazette newsroom or online at Amazon.com. Some local bookstores might offer the book soon. Celeste will be signing her books during the West Virginia Book Festival Oct. 21 to 22, where she will be sharing a booth with her stepfather.

With her friend Jordan Holmes, Celeste also won third place in a writing contest sponsored by the West Virginia Writers for a story called “The Cat Lady’s Revenge on the Purple Bean Man.” They split their winnings. ($12.50 each.)

When she is not writing, the Rock Branch Elementary school student likes to hang out with her friends and play with her two dogs and three cats.

In the Gazette, Celeste’s parents wrote about a tragedy that struck their family after Celeste’s baby sister, Camille Gabriella Vingle, was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. The baby girl died in November 2002. Celeste dedicated her book to her sister, and part of the money Celeste will earn from her book will go to research into finding a cure for the disease.

For other budding writers, Avantgarde Publishing Co. of Ashland, Ky., is holding a new Great Kid’s Book II contest with a deadline of Oct. 30. For more information about the contest, visit www.avantgardepublishing.com.

Her mother said she tried to explain to Celeste that she was facing stiff competition in last year’s contest. Having some experience with writing contests herself, Fuller said she tried to prepare Celeste that she might not win. Now that she’s won both a first and a third place in the two contests she’s entered, “She now thinks this writing stuff is easy,” said her mother.

Most of the time, when I share a story about a sleep-deprived, pet-owning mother, it’s myself I’m talking about. But not this time. This time the sleep-deprived mother was Koral Midkiff of Barboursville (formerly of Charleston), sharing the story of her night in an email to her mom, Kathy Canonico. Who shared it with me (with her daughter’s permission).

It seems Koral was having trouble getting her 11-year-old daughter, Taylor, to bed. “I can’t get her to settle down and go to sleep, and I have to get up for work at 4:30 a.m.,” Koral writes. “She keeps coming into my room asking for silly things, like wanting to wash her hair, even though it’s well after midnight.”
Taylor has a pet hamster, Potato (”a fitting name for a round, tan ball of fur”), that usually lives in a habit trail, but thanks to Taylor’s constant state of motion that night, the hamster has somehow come to be roaming the hallway.

“I’m yelling at Taylor to GO TO SLEEP and she’s yelling back at me just as loud,” writes Koral. “The cat jumps off the bed and a few seconds later, we hear this piercing ‘Eeek!’ We both realize what the sound is: The cat has Potato.

“Taylor screams. I hear panic and tears in her voice, so like any good mom–in spite of how frustrated and tired I am, in spite of knowing that at best, I’ll only have three hours of sleep (if I ever actually get to sleep)–I take off flying downstairs after the cat.

“About the same time I’m slipping on a pile of dirty clothes at the bottom of the stairs, I catch a glimpse of the cat and I realize where it’s headed–through the cat door, Potato in tow.

“Of course, I’m not wearing my fancy matching pajamas. Oh no. Instead, I’m barefoot and wearing my ‘git-r-done’ pajama bottoms and a non-matching purple tank top (with no bra). But I know if I don’t get this hamster back, there will be hysterical tears all night long and I’ll never, ever get any sleep.

“So out the front door I go. At 1 a.m. Chasing after a cat with a screeching hamster in its mouth. Yelling, ‘Drop it! Drop it!’ as loud as I dare.

“The cat tears around the corner of the apartment parking lot across the street and I’m right behind him. Finally, I get close enough to scare the cat into letting go of Potato, only now I realize that instead of chasing the cat, I’m going to be chasing a still-screeching hamster. I know he’s so traumatized that even if I do manage to catch him, it’s probably going to cost me a chunk of my hand, but catching him doesn’t seem very likely as he shoots off across the grass.

“I sprint across the lawn and manage to stop him by trapping him under my bare foot, then carefully reach down and scoop up Potato and head back to the house, all the while trying to verbally soothe the trembling rodent.

“The bottoms of my pajama pants are soaked from running through the wet grass, and I’m out of breath and panting, but I feel good–picturing how happy and grateful my daughter will be when she sees what I’ve done.

“I walk in the house and look up to the top of the stairs, holding Potato up victoriously.

“‘I got him!’ I say proudly. ‘He’s alive!’

“Taylor looks at me, blinks and yawns, then says, ‘That’s good, Mom. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’ Then she turns and goes to her room, closing the door behind her. Leaving me and Potato looking at each other at the foot of the stairs.

“You know, I’d been thinking about asking the doctor to run some tests to find out why I’m so tired all the time, but if I really stop and think about it, it would be a waste of money.”

And trust me, Koral. There are many other pet-owning, sleep-deprived mothers who have thought that same thing.

Do you have a story as funny as this one you’d be willing to share? If so, PLEASE send it to karinfuller@cnpapers.com.

I LOVED how the episode began. It was totally disconcerting. Absolutely perfect beginning. This seems like a promising start, but so many questions . . .

I’m sure many male LOST fans were cheering the writers for finding a way to get Kate into that dress. (I love how Sawyer looks at her. He’s so tough and cocky the rest of the time, but the way he softens when she’s around-I’m a sucker for that.)

What’s up with Sawyer being in the cage, Kate being in the dress and dining on the beach, and Jack being in that glassed-in room? Am I understanding it right–is Jack’s “cell” some kind of underwater aquarium? (That would explain the water coming in when he opened the hatch.)

I’m guessing the way the Others are treating each of them is supposed to mean something, but I’m not getting it. Do they see Sawyer as an animal? Kate as a lady? Jack as a shark?

Speaking of Jack, he was thoroughly annoying last night. The way he was so stubborn with yanking on that chain hanging from the ceiling; the way he insisted on opening that hatch; the way he leapt to the conclusion that his father was sleeping with his wife even though he watched her sort of nuzzling some other man in a school yard. I was sort of cheering Juliet when she slugged him.

Back to Sawyer. When the kid helped him escape, was that some kind of psychological test? I mean, the kid opened that cage so easily that he could’ve left any time, right? Sawyer didn’t tell him which direction to go to find the other camp, and after he released Sawyer, he told him which way to go—the complete opposite direction from him. But Juliet was right there waiting for him, dart gun at the ready. It seemed like something designed to frustrate Sawyer and put him in his place.

Ben told Kate the next two weeks were going to be terrible, and she came back with her wrists all bloody, plus she was hungry, even though there was all that food at the beach, so something must’ve happened there between her and Ben.

OK, here’s my theory. The island used to house a research station where they performed some pretty serious tests on electromagnetism and psychology. Maybe even testing of psychic abilities. After a few years of these tests, there was some kind of incident that caused something awful (similar to radiation poisoning) that forced the island to be quarantined and the scientists and test subjects have either been abandoned or are being protected from the outside. Not sure which.

Just thought of something–remember the polar bear from the first season? And the horse? Maybe they used to be in those cages, part of the study.

I have so many questions. Why do the Others want the children? What were the monsters (mostly seen in the first season)? Hurley once referred to the monster as a “pissed off giraffe.” Could it really have been a giraffe that has mutated because of whatever it was exposed to? Still, it had a mechanical sound, didn’t it? What are the whispers? Is that some kind of hallucination caused by whatever it is that contaminated the island?

The song “Downtown” feels like some sort of a clue (Juliet was playing it at the very beginning). I think it played on the show before. Every time there is music–even in Jack’s flashback–it’s something old, not current. But was it on a CD or a record or what? Did they show that? I missed the first few seconds where they might’ve shown that.

C’mon someone. Talk LOST with me.

Oh yeah–did anyone watch “The Nine” that came on right after “Lost?” I liked it. The only part I didn’t much care for is that starved-looking woman from 24 is part of the cast. She plays the District Attorney.

(If you do a head count, there are ten shown here, but one gets killed in first episode.)