Well, less than a week until Lost starts - you know where I’ll be on Thursday night. In 2006 I made predictions of Season 3 (which you can read here) and some of those predictions where really accurate - some were way off… So I’m going to give it another shot. I’ve given up on actually calling what is going to happen. These predictions aren’t my beliefs but merely a “I hope”. So here we go:

Jack
I’ve always thought Jack was too much of a numbskull to be a doctor, hopefully in this season he’ll assert some of the same smarts that got him a PhD. I hope he bags Juliet, something tells me she’s going to die this season - and the women always die right before or after sex (Ana Lucia had sex with Sawyer, Shannon was jumping Sayid, and Libby was about to take the bounce with Hurley). We do know that Jack gets off the island and develops a painkiller habit so naturally he’d have to screw up big time in order to break him in the future. I think Ben was right, Jack is going to inadvertently kill a whole bunch of his people - or leave them in a perilous condition.

Locke
He’s going to be the other’s new leader - or at least be the leader of the group that wants to be on the island. He’s now acquired some God-like powers granted by the island, and will do the island’s bidding. I still think he’s the one in the coffin and that the series will end with him being taken from the island against his will. Either-way, hopefully we’ll see Jacob in this season and maybe Locke will, too. I just hope Locke stops being the mad bomber like he was in Season 3.

Kate
Kate is PREGGERS. If she is, then the rest of Lost will take place in less than nine months. Hopefully it will be a boy, and the child is who she is referring to in the finale as the one who is “wondering where I am” as she’s talking to doped-up “We have to go back” Jack. Sawyer will prove to be supportive and ultimately sacrificing his life for Kate and the baby - a call back to the “Tale of Two Cities” reference.

Charlie
Will appear as one of the island’s/monster’s forms. I don’t think the rest Charlie will exist though. He’s been sleeping with the fishes for quite some time. Hopefully, Claire will find his note “greatest hits” and his ring.

Hurley
He will make it off the island, but hopefully will have lost some weight - this unfortunately won’t be the case, as none of the recent pictures show him slimming down. This however leads to an interesting theory about whoever is “hushing” the survivors who make it off the island; what can you offer a millionaire to make him lie about what happened? Hurley is not the type to be swayed by money - so is he lying like Kate and Jack after they are “rescued”?

Michael
He’s on the freighter that Jack calls at the end of the finale. For some reason, Walt isn’t with him. He is going to either make amends for his murderous activities, or have some serious whoop-ass handed to him by Hurley.

Sawyer (now James)
Sawyer’s pretty much been castrated after killing his nemesis Cooper (”the Real Sawyer”). What other back stories will be told about him? The only question is how soon are the creators of Lost going to kill him off? Charlie kicked his demons (heroin) and now that James has exacted revenge, what’s left but to do one last noble thing and then die?

Sayid
Hopefully, Sayid will offer some better flashbacks (and flash-forwards) and step up as the Season’s action star. I wonder what’s the possibility of Nadia showing up on the island? Andrews is a great actor and I get weepy every time the dude sheds a tear.

Desmond
Well, first he’ll have to swim up from the Looking Glass station. Then he’ll have to race to inform everyone that it isn’t Penny’s boat. Where is Penny anyway? Why was she transmitting video to the Looking Glass Station? Charlie received an incoming transmission from her so wouldn’t that have to be a direct line broadcast? Unless she is nearby sending out a blanket transmission… I think the creators of Lost are setting up the biggest “Fuck you” in television. I think they’re are going to have Desmond and Penny almost meet before one of them dies.

More to come tomorrow…

My foot feels like it’s falling off. Sunday I had woken up and stepped on my left foot wrong. I didn’t know I had mildly sprained it, but the rest of the day I continued walking on it, inadvertently making it worse. I’ve been limping all over the place - and with this deadline that I have at work, I just want to curl up into a ball. Hopefully it will go away soon. With all this time at work, I haven’t had a bit of time to myself, much less anyone else. Lost comes back on next week. I have some songs to write. Some angry bitter songs to write. The second one will be about how I want to cut off my foot with a butter knife.

I’ve been working day and night trying to get this project done at work. However, I did take some time to use some of my Christmas gift cards and purchased the Boss DR-880 “Dr. Rhythm” drum machine. I had an older model that was from the 1990’s (the 550mkII) but it was 8-bit and had no practical way of backing up the patterns. I decided that I needed to upgrade. This sucker has multi-measure patterns, bass patterns, AND a Boss GT-6 guitar processor built-in. It has 500 user patterns and 500 preset patterns, each pattern can be assigned a bass line and guitar effects - all can be linked into songs which can be stored in 80 banks. That’s some pretty powerful stuff. The important part is the bass patterns. I’m currently still writing my song, and I’m trying to work out the chord progressions and beat. This is helping tons.

Now this is Boss’ promotional video for it. These guys are pretty ridiculous, but showcase the machine’s features:

I had a bad day yesterday - decided to take it out on an Ewok.

In other news, a co-worker pointed me to this:

I know, my puns are getting worse.

Happy New Year to all. 2008 is the year I’ll finally “get it” about music. I’ve put together the following chart to explain an anomaly in building key signatures while also explaining chord qualities in relation to scales.

I’m trying to come up with some charts for learning progressions in several keys. I’ve come across an anomaly in the chart that first confused me, but after working it out it seems to make sense. Hopefully, one of you can tell me if my thinking is correct:

Looking at the following chart, you can see that there are missing key signatures. According to the Circle of Fifths, there are 30 key signatures (15 major and 15 relative minor). The reason why there are missing keys for D# Major, G# Major, A# Major, B# minor, E#/Fb minor, and Gb minor is that they cannot be easily assigned accidentals through the key signature system.

The anomaly is from a notation standpoint. Writing out a G# Major scale, for example, would have

G# - A# - C - C# - D# - F - G

something that a key signature would have difficulty indicating since it contains both a G/G# and a C/C#. Using it’s enharmonic twin, Ab - the scale would read correctly with

Ab - Bb - C - Db - Eb - F - G

Now it contains the correct sequence of ABCDEFG and has the correct number of flats that corresponds to the Circle of Fifths and it’s appropriate key signature.

Next I’ll get into how the chords lead into each other and how special chords work within this paradigm.