We're three months into Into the Mantle activity on Twitter, and, already, the writing is on the wall. Id Est, Twitter can be used as a communications tool for our purposes in exploding certain topics and really getting to the meat of subjects and ideas directly with other responsive, and, occasionally, like-minded users.

The story so far: 218 updates since October 9th, 2008. That's ten twitter pages of updates from us. We're now following 393 while being followed (however scrupulously) by 179.

First Impressions? Twitter is developing into an environs where a user may create a microcosm of socialization entirely tailored to their tastes. News feeds, celebrities, and pop culture news sources all comingle and can be chosen to enhance this Web 2.0 room of one's own (Insert obvious cautionary reference to the dangers of an insular lifestyle and narrow scope on a person's good judgement [Try Silent Running on for size?])

Think of it as a pinball game. The Twitter universe is the pinball playing field, and you're the ball. You plunge headfirst into activity, whether using the popular search.twitter.com feature to find discussion activity, or simply check out who from your email addressbook has already begun the game. You add some friends or colleagues to start rolling. Maybe you tag someone with a greeting, or brush against a favorite celebrity blogger like hitting a bumper just long enough to take in a few details. But, because of the nature of the streamlined interface and character limit, you're off again in another direction just as quickly. Retweets and links are the flippers, sending you right back into the mix. You discover someone follows you, and you spend some time in ball lock, reading their past tweets and finding out more.

That's usually what happens in ball lock, you familiarize yourself with your new followers, and pretty soon you're in a multiball situation.

As exciting as it can be to successfully interact on Twitter, there is also the dread that occurs when the ball launches square in the middle of the board and you know it's just going to drop straight inbetween the flippers, resulting in a lost ball. The twitter equivalent? The dreaded unfollow.

We have noticed that our follow/follower numbers fluctuate, as we often find a user we follow to be sometimes overzealous in the frequency of their tweets [many would unfollow simply because of this, but there scripts available to filter out those you may not want to offend with an unfollow], just as those who follow us out of curiosity or interest in one topic we address may be dismayed that we move onto others, and
this may irk some into choosing to unfollow.

We've talked about our little Twitter victories on our podcast, in a segment called Twitteraction. The short yet charming exchanges, a knowing nod from a stranger, mutual pleasure in a common interest. Lately, Blake's Lost write-ups have been all the rage on the Twitterverse, and we've discovered a LOT of cool folks just by addressing some of the ideas from the show. Of course, we've had some less than stellar interactions with some (very few) who would rather spew poorly formed opinions as facts without the necessary bed of knowledge to support their statements. In those rare cases, it begins to feel like you are freefloating in space, in someone else's Mars Attacks pinball game.

Ever feel like you're inside someone else's game?

~dm

Note: As stated in previous entries, this article is written with the understanding that you have seen the episode. Therefore, no summary and spoilers abound. Warning: reading the following may cause nosebleeds.

Wow, plenty to cover, this season's momentum has been incredible. Can you imagine what would happen if we ever went back to the slow pacing of Stranger in a Strange Land? At the time it was definitely a slowdown, but compared to these, it was a complete stand-still.

I didn't get to watch the replay of Jughead with extra comments, did anyone see that? Anything crucial get mentioned in the pops? I also missed "Lost Unraveled", but I heard that was nothing more than a recap of life off the island. I ended up watching the ep early in the morning hoping to get an all in one experience:

• A fresh first viewing
• Immediately following, having 10 worth of feedback already available to me on the internet
• Enough time to spare to write this all up.
• Note: the plan almost didn't work when I couldn't get to bed and almost caved.

The plan worked pretty well, though one unforseen side effect is that the sun, no matter how much I closed my blinds to block it out, seeped through took a little away from my otherwise preferred pitch black viewing conditions. I had to up my tv's brightness from Standard to Vivid. I'm scheduled to get HD this Friday, though I still haven't received the receiver which, for whatever reason, is being shipped separately from the installation scheduled for that AM. It's pretty exciting though, I heard a lot of the nighttime Lost scenes are much clearer with HD. During this ep, I had to rewind to make sure the man washed up on the beach was actually Jin.

The Island Flashes. Weren't the flashes supposed to take longer and longer? These seemed to be pretty rapid fire. I've been keeping track of where they end up in these flashes. I'm curious if there's any path or pattern they're following, or if they just end up at crucial Island moment's for the writer's convenience. In this one, there was:

• 11/1/2004, seen in Do No Harm. Boon dying, Aaron being born, Locke at his worst (he "needed the pain"). This made me happy, I'm still hoping the flashes fold the show in on itself a bit and refocus on specific events from the first season or two.
• After the O6 left. They see evidence of other people there from Ajira airlines. Then they get shot at. We'll probably find out this season who those folks are; currently everyone's guessing they're the O6 returning.
• 1988, with Rousseau's team. Yaay! Ever since Rousseau got offed last season, I was hoping to see more of her, even a Rousseau-centric flashback. Looks like we'll get the full story of the entire French crew now. Hopefully the flashes lay low for a while, I want to see more. (More on the doomed French crew later)

Pretty random flashes. Also, there's a lot of talk about what inanimate objects jump with them and don't; something to keep in the back of your mind, but we'll gloss over that for now.

My take on moving the island. Moving the island is like having a party while your parents are out of town. You can do it, but you better get everything back exactly to how it was or there will be consequences. Also, while you're doing it, the place takes on a whole new form than what it's usually like. In this case, Ben moved it, but he's in charge of putting it back. Ms. Hawking telling him the parents will be coming back in 70 hours. Now, just who are those parents....

Rousseau's team. Some good dramatic irony, we know all but Rousseau is toast, and that she'll have to watch her crew go crazy and have Alex taken away by the Others. Coming up, we'll see Montand lose his arm (which Carlton and Cuse joke about frequently).
• It was pretty cool them looking for the numbers transmission. So they all go ape as a result of the island. I'm not sure if that means nosebleeds or something completely different. I wouldn't think nosebleeds because they're not jumping around in time, they just arrived at the island. Maybe it's a result of extended exposure to Jin from the future. If it is a nosebleed situation, something must be special about Rousseau. Either she has a Constant present (Alex? the music box she showed Sayid?), or just being pregnant makes her special enough.
• Mira Furlan asked to be written off the show which makes sense of the new younger Rousseau. I think too, that the difference between young and old Rousseau shows just how much she went through these 16 years, and how different her plight is than unaging Halpert.
• No, I don't know French, though those that do said the French redshirts weren't saying anything of consequence.

Jin's return. As I've said before, if you don't actually see someone die, they're probably not dead. And even if it seems like someone's dead, they may not be. Given that and the fact that Daniel Dae Kim's name was still in the credits, it was only a matter of time til we see him again. Still... what a way to come back! Found washed up by Rousseau's crew! A few questions this raises:

• Wait, wasn't he on the ship that was outside the radius of the island? It did appear that way. Perhaps he got thrown inside the radius by the explosion? Or is there a more intricate explanation? This will need to be addressed.
• From the preview for next week, we see Ben telling Sun that Jin is still alive. There are two ways this could happen: a) when the Others meet Danielle, they meet Jin too. Ben remembers his face. b) when Locke goes off the island and talks to Ben, he mentions it. (b) makes much more sense.

Kate-centric episode. The shows this season haven't focused on one character as much as Lost's traditional one-character flashbacks. Still, even though this episode was fast-paced, it did a good job of focusing on Kate's life and her relationship with several different characters.

• Kate and Jack. In the first scene, we see Jack controlling Kate, agreeing to keep the secret about Aaron only if Kate agree's with Jack about maintaining The Lie. Three years later, he appears helpful to her, but ultimately for his own gain - to bring her to Ben.
• Kate and Aaron. Through the flash format, we see a) Kate assist Claire in Aaron's delivery on the island, b) Kate insist that she keep Aaron on the boat off the island c) Kate struggle to keep him in LA d) Action movie Sun kidnapping Aaron.
• Kate and Sawyer. We see Kate saying that Sawyer is "not dead, but gone". Most of this relationship we see from Sawyer's POV - asking Locke how he'll convince Kate to come back, seeing Kate with Claire only to have her taken away once again, this time by a flash. "What's done is done".

The O6 showdown. Looks like if Dan Norton can get Hugo "Oh Yeah his last name is Reyes" Reyes out of prison, the O6 will be reunited, though completely at ends with each other. There's a lot of different relationships/loyalties working against each other, interesting to see how they play out. Sayid/Ben, Jack/Ben, Jack/Kate, Sayid/Hurley. And in other corner there's Sun and her gun.
• Boy, the action moves fast off the island. We know how LA works, but we don't know how the island works. Either a) the writer's understand this and pick up the pace so we can get back to the mysterious island, or b) the island's action takes longer to explain. Or both.
• Also interesting is Ben's quick cut to Kate "He's not your son." art of his harshness is on account of him losing Alex - he has to tell himself she wasn't really his daughter to cope with it. An ongoing theme with the show is that Ben isn't naturally cruel, his cruelty has developed from the harsh conditions of the island.
• How will Hurley react if he gets released? He seems desparate enough that he could go on a crime spree just to end up right back in prison.

The nosebleeds (aka "really bad jet lag"). First of all, I'm glad they're happening to more people than just Charlotte. It's gonna be a while til these guys even have a chance to get saved, and we know bad things happen as a result of the O6 leaving the island. It's not often we see a show/movie showing a group of people slowly suffer because of the squalor they're all going through. (Can anyone think of examples of this?)
• So first there was Charlotte, then Miles, then Juliet. Any pattern? Daniel says it might have something to do with being used to the island. I'm currently thinking it has to do with each of their Constants: as they jump in time, they're somehow further away from their own Constants. Note that each of these three first suffered from their nosebleeds in different flashes... though as far as plotting goes, it might be a little laborious to go through and discover each character's Constant.
• Another hint that Miles might be Marvin Candle's son: When Miles states he's never been on the island, Daniel asks "Are you sure?"
• After Daniel keeps asking Charlotte if she's okay, she says he doesn't need to "baby" her. Another question for the backburner: What is their relationship after all?

Claire's mom, Carole. Within minutes, we think Carole wants custody of Aaron, that she knows The Lie, and then find out she doesn't know anything and is just getting her check. There has to be more, right? On a mission by Christian Shephard? Or does LA somehow eventually attract every secondary character?

Locke's voyage to the Orchid. Typical Locke to base an entire adventure based solely on a feeling he has. Is it Fate? Is it just that there's nothing better to do? Is there a difference? Also if he turns the donkey wheel, there's a whole new set of effects to the people still on the island - who knows how the needle on the record will behave.
• We know Locke gets off the island and becomes Jeremy Bentham, so it looks like turning the wheel is how he'll do it. Now I did get some advanced info on what S05E06 will be titled. Some people consider this type of information a spoiler and some don't. If you'd like to know, hover over this, okay?

The numbers They're everywhere! Kate lives at 42 Panorama, Marina 23, Sayid's been unconscious for 42 hours. Of course, they have to put numbers in these places, so why not put The Numbers. Still, I like the repetition. It shows that even now, three years later, they can't escape the island, it's part of their universe.

Where's Widmore in all this? The henchman that tried to tranq Sayid - all signs point to him being employed by Widmore instead of Ben. So why would Widmore want to tranq him instead of offing him? He could want him alive just in case, or he could be trying to get them all back on the island on his own terms. Does Ms. Hawking give a prize to whoever can get the O6 back on the island first? Interesting, too, the relationship between Widmore and Hawking, given that they're both tied to Faraday.
• Maybe he's tranq'ing them because he knows about the Michael effect - sometimes these Island folk just refuse to die on the mainland. He doesn't want to risk any oddity of trying to kill them (the gun exploding, what have you), so he hedges his bets and sticks to kidnapping.

The Little Prince. One of my favorite childhood stories. Plenty of parallels I don't want to address here - I'm distributing my spoilers one story at a time. I might write a separate entry, but for now, check out Doc Jensen's breakdown of the Little Prince themes. Also, as always, there's lostpedia.

Misc. thoughts

• Lostpedia noted an odd movie reference: "Dan Norton's license plate is 4PCI382. This is the same as the plate worn by Ironhide in this 2007 film [Transformers]."
• AV Club commenter Chrissy did a great job with this anagram: Sayid and Ben are in a van "Canton-Rainier". Jumble that and it becomes: Reincarnation. Cool!

More later.