(UPDATE, April 4: Hey, sorry for the lack of updates here lately; I just haven't been feeling very inspired to write, to tell you the truth, plus am going through a super-boring period of my life right now where I have literally nothing to talk about either. Anyway, I'll hopefully be getting something new up here soon; thanks for your patience.)

(UPDATE, March 31: Okay, only 9 a.m. but the day's already shaping up to be a busy one here, so I don't think I'm going to have the time to get a new entry up. I did, however, want to point you to a guest essay I recently wrote for another website, in case you wanted to read something new by me today; it's for a new website called PostRef, and is basically my advice for beginning bloggers. Enjoy, and I'll speak with you again on Monday.)

Why yes, as a matter of fact, my friend Jude has once again gotten called out of town by her new employers, the Feds, and so I am once again spending the evenings up here at her place, watching over her old and lonely dog and taking him out for occasional walks. I'm writing this entry from her place, in fact, on Wednesday night, getting ready for the new episode of Lost which is on in like an hour.

For those who don't know, Rogers Park is the northernmost neighborhood in Chicago that you can reach, before hitting the city limits; the neighborhood with the "Howard" el stop, that is, which gives the red line its end-station name in the first place. Rogers Park also happens to be the home of Loyola University, one of the larger full-time colleges in the city; so add all the undergraduates, plus all the cheap apartments by the lake, and its close proximity to Evanston and Northwestern University, and you're presented with a neighborhood that's much like an enclosed slacker collegetown, despite it being within a larger city of three million other people. In fact, every time I'm in Rogers Park myself, I'm always tickled by how much it reminds me of Columbia, Missouri, the slacker collegetown where I myself went to school; and what's more, how unchanging the "slacker collegetown" makeup is, too, how it seems to have been perfected around 1961 or so, and since then simply imported whole into new environments. (In fact, this is a running joke among my friends and I who still visit Columbia from time to time; how the stores featuring t-shirts, skateboards and drug paraphernalia never close, simply change owners and names every three or four years, as well as which hipster cartoon character is being featured on those t-shirts, skateboards and drug paraphernalia.)

I just walked by this pizza place a little earlier, for example, a block north of the Loyola el stop; dark and quiet on the outside, a warm yellow glow within, three impossibly young and good-looking undergraduates sitting in the window, laughing over a pitcher of beer over a joke I'll never be privy to. What an enduring image of undergraduate life that is, I think; the pizza place across the street from campus, warm and full on a cold, empty night, packed with shiny, happy 21-year-olds with lots of disposable income, old enough to understand the world but not old enough yet to have to deal with it. I mean, not that I'm pining for my undergraduate days, not by a long shot; I dealt with too much shit then as well for me to ever seriously do that. But still, I have a lot of really, really wonderful memories from my undergraduate days as well; and since so many of them are so universal to collegetown environments, all it takes is a little time in that environment again to get all nostalgic for them.

Anyway, Jude's dog (Rey) and I are doing just fine, just having a boring old time up here in Rogers Park in the evenings. We have discovered, by the way, the solution to the problem we were having the last time I dog-sat; of the dog howling in the middle of the night from loneliness, that is, every 20 minutes all night long, leading me to get no sleep and to be completely frazzled the entire next day. And the solution's real simple, too - take him out for a walk right before bed, then actually sleep in Jude's bedroom (where Rey usually sleeps as well), with the door closed. And I guess once the light's off, this tricks Rey into thinking that Jude's there, or at least enough that he isn't howling all damn night. So that's been a relief, frankly, to find a way to both dog-sit and get a decent night's sleep.

And of course the big benefit I get from it all (well, besides the 20 bucks a day that Jude's paying me) is that Jude's as much an obsessive movie collector as me, so I get to watch just a whole ton of movies, both on VHS at her place and on DVD back at my place during the day. (And this, admittedly, is also why journal entries have been sporadic this week, and I haven't been getting back to emails very quickly either, because I've been too busy watching movies since I have access to them this week.) So let's see, so far this week I've seen: 28 Days Later (which was much better than I was expecting, given how many bad reviews it got); and Donnie Darko for the second time (which was just as goddamned confusing as the first); and the special edition of Dogma (which was great, just so great); and Gosford Park (which was okay, but man, that "Altman Style" really drives me crazy sometimes); and Gangs of New York for the second time (which includes all these really amazing DVD bonuses, including a walk through the sets with Scorsese which occasionally turn into 360-degree QTVR panoramas); and Pirates of the Caribbean (which, again, was much better than I was expecting; and am I legally allowed to say now, by the way, that Keira Knightley is hot?). And then today I'll be watching Moulin Rouge and The Anniversary Party, both of which I've seen before; and then tonight, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I haven't.

So anyway, that's the scoop on how things this week are going; and I have a whole bunch of work I need to get done, too, before I can get around to watching these movies, so I guess I better wrap things up for now. One more item below, for all you fellow obsessive Lost fans; and other than that, I'll see you again tomorrow.

(WARNING: Spoilers below! If you haven't seen last night's episode of Lost yet, stop reading now!)

Okay, so do you need it? Do you need a screenshot of that crazy-ass black-light map that was suddenly revealed during last night's Lost? Well, here it is, nicked from one of the discussion boards I frequent; just right-click on the thumbnail above to download the insanely large version. This map, by the way, holds just a wealth of new and confirmed information for obsessive Lost fans, including: that the polar bear seen throughout season 1 actually was a scientific experiment by the Dharma Initiative, as was the shark with the Dharma tattoo on its belly; that the medical station was actually abandoned by Dharma in 1985, leading credence to the idea that the "Others" are in actuality a rogue group of infected scientists, left behind after 'the incident;' that there are at least four "remote viewing" stations on the island, which for those who don't know is this bizarre real-world experiment in seeing telepathically, using a combination of strong electromagnetic forces and eastern religion; that there are definitely six bunkers on the island (with the "Swan," the one they're in, being the largest), and that they all used to hook together underground to something in the center of the island, although the creator of the map doesn't know what it is; that these tunnels were eventually all blocked off, due to some sort of "catastrophic occurrence" in the '80s; and that the "smoke monsters" so integral to the show might actually be referred to by Dharma as the "Cerberus System" (Cerberus, of course, being the three-headed dog who guards Hell), and might actually be controlled by a 1970s supercomputer on the island known as Dharmatel, that might or might not be controlled by humans anymore, meaning that those smoke monsters might not be answering to anyone at all these days, but in fact are artificially intelligent and evil. Yowza, what a lot of information in one damn episode!

Oh, and how cool is this? Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the two producers who are featured on each episode of the Lost podcast, announced in their last episode that they're starting up an alternative-reality game (or ARG) on the web this summer, for all those people who can't stand another summer full of reruns. And apparently it's going to work just like the old Evan Chan game as well, the one in 2001 that really kicked off the entire ARG industry; that is, the producers aren't going to officially confirm that the game exists, once it starts, and that it'll be up to a group of fans to communally work out very complicated puzzles, that lead to more and more secret information about the Dharma Initiative and the Hanso Foundation (the shadowy groups behind the show's entire plot), inserted into various fake websites all over the internet. (Hmm, do I smell 42 Entertainment at work here?) And what's more, Damon and Carlton said that last night's episode was going to give a big first clue for all the people who want to play the ARG this summer; so obviously this creepy black-light map that was discovered has to be it.

Wow! Wow, wow, wow! I'm so excited about playing the Lost ARG this summer, I have to admit, and hope that it's going to be just as fun and complicated as I would expect, coming after all from the people who reference "The Third Policeman" and Dosteyevski in their television show, and are always leaving tiny little clues for TiVo owners within the episodes in the first place. Maybe you'll want to join me as well; and maybe we can all help each other solve the puzzles!