Day 397: LOST in Kenya

As Claire may or may not have mentioned at some point, she loves the show LOST. I made the mistake ONCE of scoffing at her all-absorbing obsession last year, and never did it again as she got all snarly.

But now she has dragged me down into the pit with her. Or should I say dragged me onto the island…

Anyway. On this show there’s all kinds of crazy things happening all over the place, everyone acts like 4 year olds with a revenge problem, and for someone reason they are all constantly falling over on their face somewhere inopportune in the jungle. One of the weirder themes is that people seem to think the island is constantly out to teach them something, and to show them important sides of themselves.

Claire and I have recently decided that this orphanage is just the same way and in the last couple of days we have learned some important lessons…

Our LOST addiction has become a problem in the land of temperamental computers and power failure. For unknown reasons, the DVD always skips on my computer, and for well known reasons, Claire’s computer dies after 10 minutes if it is not plugged in. Whenever the lights go off, our first thought is that we cannot watch our nightly LOST episode. The next is that we probably have work to do, and now have to strategize how best to use the remaining phone battery and how to allocate my few hours of computer time.

Last night was a disaster for just these reasons. Safaricom phone lines were down for the second time this week, meaning that our internet was down anyway. But there was no power, and with three assignments between us, the two hours remaining on my computer were precious. So Claire sat in the back with a headlamp on, and kept turning the phone on long enough to curse Safaricom’s unreliable cellphone towers, as she worked to finish her orders. She got the work done, the internet remained off, the cellphone/modem ran out of batteries and once we found the telephone card, located a landline, and dialed the 27 numbers, we discovered that the work number we had was not functioning. So we began calling friends and relatives to have them call our employers, when the internet peaked for just two minutes, a short time, but enough to send in the work. We were saved!

We went downstairs, washed up for bed in the dark with no water but the buckets we had filled earlier, and began reminiscing about simpler times before internet and computer dependence. As we crawled into bed and turned on the candles, the lights went on.

Okay. We get it. Don’t procrastinate with work anymore. Don’t save everything for the last minute. Thank you, mysterious forces that control such things. I get it, you’re there, and I am a foolish mortal to ever think I have control.

But then tonight, it was not something as silly as work. Tonight, I suspect the same evil mysterious forces went too far. The last few scenes of the LOST season finale mysterious skipped when the rest of the DVD played just fine. This we did not find funny. We rewound it enough times to watch 80 percent of the clips in slow motion, backwards, and out of order. Surprisingly, not at all as satisfying.

We expected another magical LOST-like redemption at the last minute, but none came. Turns out we do not live in a TV show. But while I may know this, I have to say that last night made me a bit more pessimistic about the island dwellers chances.