Infinitive Splitter

Spoiler alert: I’ve never seen this show, but everything I’ve overheard about it makes it sound like an experiment conducted by ABC to see how much nonsense a really devoted audience will tolerate. I haven’t heard anyone say a good thing about it in months, apart from a lot of “Watch it from the beginning and you’ll see.”

Well, I don’t think I’ll ever to do that. I’m just going to watch the 150-minute series finale and tell the Internet what I think.

8:59 – I have almost as little experience with NBA basketball as I do with Lost, but the automatic TV reminder just took me away from the Lakers-Suns game. Context-free entertainment is easy for sports to pull off; we’ll see if that’s true about weird, dramatic television.

9:01 – Excellent! The “previously on” scenes made absolutely no sense to me.

9:05 — How long have these people been on this island? Their hair and clothing make it look like it’s been a long afternoon.

9:07 — I gather that this is hard enough for people who watch regularly to follow, so I’m probably making it almost impossible by trying to type and drink and watch at the same time.

9:17 — So at some time, some people were bailing strangers out of jail and taking them to very important concerts, and then at some other time a bald guy planned to blow up an island where some of those same people are, along with some others? And everyone speaks needlessly cryptically all the time?

9:27 – I thought this was going to be all smoke monsters and time warps and parallel universes and smoke monsters. I might be seeing some parallel universes or time warps (I can’t be sure about the chronology of these the flashbacks or flash-forwards), but apart from one reference to a “magic Leprechaun,” which I’m pretty sure wasn’t literal, this hasn’t been nearly as crazy as I’d hoped.

9:34 — Eh, who cares? Abort.

Late update (the next morning) – I tuned back in at the very end to see the big reveal. Since it was the purgatory scenario, which ranks below the dream scenario on the list of acceptable television show endings, I feel vindicated in my decision to watch only 34 minutes of the 121-episode series.

Email scammers in the developing world have had tremendous success at relieving Americans of their money, but there’s much room for improvement. Checking my spam filter just now, I found an attempt from “PayPal” that began thus:

Due to our last days online problems, many phishing attempts and identity-theft, we need to verify our members accounts information.

That kind of sloppiness might produce profitable results when sent to illiterate or particularly oblivious Americans, but the rest of us need to see a little more respect before you can defraud us.

Scam managers really ought to consider adding English-language editors to their operations.

The driver of this car changed lanes abruptly in front of me in heavy traffic on K Street this afternoon. As you can see, it’s registered in California and bears a license plate marked “U.S. CONGRESS 46.”

Does Rep. Dana Rohrabacher drive a green Oldsmobile Aurora?

As far as I can tell, it is — or should be — his car. The California Department of Motor Vehicles says this of such licenses:

The number represents the congressional district. The small “A,” when present, indicates a second vehicle owned by a member of Congress. A small “R,” when present indicates a retired member of Congress. A small “1″ after “R,” indicates a second vehicle owned by a retired member of Congress.

There are no small letters or numbers next to the “46″ above, so this appears to be Rohrabacher’s primary automobile. I didn’t get a better look at the driver than what’s visible in the photo, so I can’t confirm the congressman was behind the wheel.

If it is Rohrabacher’s car, he’s had it since at least 2000, when Space.com published an article that began thus:

A sign above the congressional office door of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher sums up his mindset: “Fighting for freedom and having fun.”

That might help explain why the California Republican, who loves a good battle over space issues on Capitol Hill, was cruising his district’s scenic coastline in his Buick Aurora recently when a reporter reached him by cell phone.

Case closed!

Postscript: if I’m ever unlucky enough to be a member of Congress, I certainly will not pay extra to have a license plate that invites bloggers with too much time on their hands to investigate my identity when I make a questionable decision on the road. California’s DMV charges legislators $12 for the privilege of announcing themselves to drivers behind them.