Just when I think I waste my time reading Fortean/ufological stuff, something like this happens.
I was catching up on Lost. In the episode "One of Us", Jack allows Juliet to go alone to a cache of medical supplies that Ben stowed somewhere near the caves (Claire is suffering withdrawal from the serum Ethan was administering to her). Juliet finds the cache by a symbol carved into a tree. I recognized this symbol immediately. It's the UMMO sign. I think it's also an alchemical symbol for something, but if so I can't recall what. Venus, maybe?
Knowing that Vallee discussed the UMMO hoax(es) in his book Revelations, which I haven't read in its entirety yet, I dug out my copy and thumbed through it...only to find that in the section on UMMO, Vallee starts off describing (!!!) Borges's story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius. This is the story I referenced when I first wrote about Lost! Rereading the story, I noticed another parallel with the show...
On the fictional-but-real planet of Tlon, anything a group imagines becomes real. Remember when Ben talks to Locke about a "big box" that manifests anything you can imagine inside it? I don't know if Ben was being literal or figurative, but it sounds an awful lot like the stuff on Tlon. It also sounds a bit like the black box in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policemen (mentioned by the writers of Lost and featured briefly in the episode "Orientation"), and/or the blue box in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (both boxes are vectors of unwelcome reality). Also, every object on Tlon has a double. Twin imagery and references (most notably Jacob) abound in Lost.
I was catching up on Lost. In the episode "One of Us", Jack allows Juliet to go alone to a cache of medical supplies that Ben stowed somewhere near the caves (Claire is suffering withdrawal from the serum Ethan was administering to her). Juliet finds the cache by a symbol carved into a tree. I recognized this symbol immediately. It's the UMMO sign. I think it's also an alchemical symbol for something, but if so I can't recall what. Venus, maybe?
Knowing that Vallee discussed the UMMO hoax(es) in his book Revelations, which I haven't read in its entirety yet, I dug out my copy and thumbed through it...only to find that in the section on UMMO, Vallee starts off describing (!!!) Borges's story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius. This is the story I referenced when I first wrote about Lost! Rereading the story, I noticed another parallel with the show...
On the fictional-but-real planet of Tlon, anything a group imagines becomes real. Remember when Ben talks to Locke about a "big box" that manifests anything you can imagine inside it? I don't know if Ben was being literal or figurative, but it sounds an awful lot like the stuff on Tlon. It also sounds a bit like the black box in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policemen (mentioned by the writers of Lost and featured briefly in the episode "Orientation"), and/or the blue box in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (both boxes are vectors of unwelcome reality). Also, every object on Tlon has a double. Twin imagery and references (most notably Jacob) abound in Lost.
Then there's the rabbit. Ben once showed Sawyer a white rabbit that had been implanted with a device that would kill it if its heartrate exceeded a certain limit, and when Ben shook its cage and screamed at it, the bunny did indeed keel over and appear dead. Later Ben whipped an identical bunny out of his bag of tricks and assured Sawyer it was all an illusion. Well, now that I have a bunny I realize that you can't really train them to play dead. They'll play possum, sure, but they keep their eyes open. So either Ben was manipulating Sawyer with matching rabbits, or the island is home to Schrodinger's Bunny. Whatever the case, some people can cheat death on the island.
In my first post on Lost, I asked if there could be a "man behind the curtain". An episode I haven't watched yet is titled "The Man Behind the Curtain."
6 comments:
I just saw tonight's episode, but I won't give anything away. I noticed the symbol, too, but I don't have enough frame of reference now. I'm downloading seasons 1 & 2, so hopefully I'll be in the loop soon. Next week is the season finale and I think it's a 2 hour episode.
Cool, you finally get to see season 1. The finale of that one will blow you away...TV at its finest.
I didnt watch it last night. We watched the last million dollar spectacular with Price Is Right last night. Bob Barker is finally retiring.
Wow, that guy must be ooooold! ;D
Hes in his eighties at least. They are having his goodbye show tonight.
I saw part of it tonight. Bob Barker hasn't aged much since we were kids! He could easily pass for 60ish. And all the pretty young things who stepped on down were giving him kisses.
It's funny you mentioned Price is Right, 'cause a few days ago I came across a blog called "The Last Angry Young Man" (www.angryman.ca/blog/angryblog.html), and he wrote something really funny about the show in his post "Blatantly Unprepared Gameshow Contestants." It made me giggle.
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