Lostpedia to interview two key actors

Well after a recent lack of any kind of Lost-related news, Lostpedia can finally offer everyone a little something that is sure to get you excited!

You all know Lostpedia has had lots of great interviews with cast/crew of the show, and it is with great honor that we can reveal that we've managed to obtain upcoming Q&As with two key cast members.. First up is Yunjin Kim, who of course plays the lovely Sun, one of the most loved castaways on the show. And second, we have Nestor Carbonell - who plays Richard Alpert, a character introduced in Season 3 who quickly garnered a huge fan following with his mysterious backstory. It's definitely an exciting time, and after a string of former interviews with the likes of Jorge Garcia, Rebecca Mader, François Chau, and the soon-to-be-published chat with Michael Emerson, to name but a few - rest assured the interviews will be thrilling reads when they are released.

We are now taking questions for these fine acting folk, and hope to publish a full transcript in the near future. If you would like to submit a question, either head on over to the Forums or see the wiki submission pages HERE for Yunjin or HERE for Nestor! Hope this has lifted Lost, or shall we say disillusioned, moods (you know what I mean ;).

Books for free

First of all, this is my first LP blog. Please be kind.

But anyway, November's book for the Lostpedia Literary League is the Alice in Wonderland title. Unfortunately when announcing the book Nick left out a very good source to find the books.

The Wikipedia partner, Wikisource, has completed texts of both Alice's Adventure in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass which are completely free to access.

Lewis Carroll died over 100 years ago, so his works are in the public domain. Unfortunately, I believe this is possibly the only text in the public domain the LLL will cover.

Hopefully, anyone who has been trouble accessing books can participate in November with this source.

Also, this is NOT the beginning of reading Alice. The current book is still Slaughterhouse Five, which is still being discussed on the forums.

Sour Dharma grapes

Well today finally marks the end of the Dharma recruit testing procedure, and unfortunately the big bang we were hoping for was a little anticlimactic, with all that awaiting us was a brief Dharma message summarizing the last few weeks and clueing to December 15th. The only small message they included to tempt us was "patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet" - so the end will make up for this two-month ARG gap?

Do you believe them though? We've all had a lot of faith since the staggered start, are we at the point of the hair that broke the camel's back, where we no longer believe there'll be a cool light at the end of a testing tunnel? Or are you still remaining a little Dharma trooper, confident that the end will be satisfactory for all who played?

Instructor email

Just a quick ARG post today - new email out to instructors asking them to confirm their email addresses so they can get their T-shirts. See the message here. There is a bit of interest about the following line:

"While the shirt is principally for identification purposes at official Dharma Initiative events, you are welcome to wear it in public at other times. Wear it with pride."

Official DI events, eh? I would think this is just a bit of 'canonicity' to explain the giveaway, but I may be wrong - maybe there will be future Dharma events coming to a city near you? Anyway, you lucky instructors should get your T-shirts soon then it seems. Are you an instructor? Will you be selling your shirt or keeping it as a momento?

What will Tuesday hold?

The Dharma recruitment drive officially ends October 7th, but will this conclusion also be the close to the ARG? We assume that the December 15th release of individual results is due to the large number of registered users, and the amount of time it'll probably take TPTB to wade through it all. But will the meantime bridge contain a new chapter, or will next week be a full conclusion and then cyber silence?

The test 7 email certainly clues to a finale, mentioning Hans Van Eeghen's superiors again, the "executive board of the Dharma Initiative". I wonder if we'll learn more about them... will their faces be familar perhaps?

Would you like to see a new development after next week? Or would you prefer a little relax time? Whenever the official end, let's hope Tuesday will be a great climactic end to the testing procedure!

"Slaughterhouse-Five" read starts now!!!

The new month has finally arrived, and with it the start of the Lostpedia Book Club's latest read, "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut, hailed as a fantastic science-fiction novel showing an insight into the human condition. Hopefully by now everyone should have their copy, but the read is on for a full 3 weeks (or whole month if you want to it unofficially during the cooling off week), so there is still time. For Amazon US, go here.

The forum thread to discuss the book can be found here. As I mentioned in last week's post, no live chat discussion this month, but the IRC feature can still be used informally to chat about the book, by all means.

Quick reminder for November - we're reading both Alice in Wonderland titles (most new editions combine the two anyway, so it shouldn't be too hard to source). You can buy the book on Amazon here, or see here for a list of libraries in the USA. I would actually recommend buying this time around, not that I don't want you to support your public library, as the book appears to be under $4.... bargain!

Black Swan's Identity Plucked

In picture - Evil has a new face: Hans Van Eeghen, aka Hack Swan, Black Con, etc.

Does anyone recall the Family Guy episode where Peter complains to his teacher about the difficulty of his test, and the teacher replies "you stood up to me... that was the test!" and then Peter smiles and has a lovely 80s style cheer outside. Tried finding it on YouTube, but to little avail. The idea is always amusing, that the test is not the real test - and we're all guilty, particularly if you take Psych like I do, of thinking that you're being played and that the real test is something more covert. Well, apparently, this mind-**** has been used with Dharma Wants You, as we move into the final test.... The integrity, honor and honesty assessment!!! *Gulp*...

So what do you have to do for Test 7... well, nothing. Click it and all that happens is this lovely Dharma video where Hans effectively throws us back into kindergarten, scolding us for cheating. It turns out that HE is Black Swan, and this whole testing procedure has included home-made cheats so he can gauge how honest we all are in the face of corruption. As you can probably guess, the results are undoubtedly not so good amongst our peers from what I can gather. However, recruits caught cheating will not be expelled, but this will be considered in the final dossier (to be released no earlier than December!! - so does that mean ARG cyber silence after the recruitment time ends on October 7th?). Rest assured, I imagine justice will be swift with Hans the sociopathic social scientist in need of some ethics at the helm. Wonder if we're all going to end up as Work Men like I theorised last week....

Anyway, groups are pretty quack and dry this week (an audible groan at that lame attempt at a pun) - you're either a white swan for not cheating, or a black swan for being dishonest (good to see TPTB don't care for silly political correctness). I found it interesting that Hans talked about how the Dharma Initiative had been betrayed before - finally a little bit of Lost crossovering to get us geared up. Will next week yield any other big revelations after today's surprise? A mention of the big betrayer that is Ben? Could Hans be lying in the face of sheer embarassment over a hacker making cheats for all his tests, thus incorporating it as though it were his plan all along - out there, but hell it wouldn't be a Lost ARG without a similar "is Persephone actually Rachel" double-bluff debate!!! I don't understand why Hans would, as Black Swan, give us all his voicemail account, diss himself in source code, etc etc. As seems the theme this year and for the upcoming Season 5 of Lost, time will tell.