Oceanic Victims Rescued Afterlife Threatening Crash

By Gary Troup

One year ago, 6 members of Oceanic flight 815 stunned the world by miraculously emerging from months at sea to return seemingly unharmed. The tragedy, which was thought to end the lives of nearly a hundred passengers, was finally put to bed after the survivors revealed the deaths of all of the other members of the flight.

In what can only be described as shocking chain of events, wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815 has recently surfaced, and with it, 8 more passengers of the terror filled plane have come back with more stories to tell.

Unfortunately, their stories will have to wait to be heard. No sooner did our passengers come back into our lives, they were taken away by what appears to be employees of Oceanic for a debriefing. At this time, very little is known about these new survivors. What little information we do have was taken from a copy of the flight manifest and through our inside sources. Here are their profiles:



Name: Dr. Ari Girard
Occupation: Reverse Psychologist

Dr. Girard was visiting Australia to study its legendary backwards nature. Eerily enough, she found that things were the exact same backwards in Austrlia, as they were forward in the States.



Name: Bob Afett
Occupation: Corporate Head Hunter

Mr. Afett was sent by his employer, Bounty Paper Towels (they'll vaporize your stains) to bring in a new spokesperson for his company. While he sometimes is forced to work with others, he usually prefers Solo missions. On the island, he suffered from major indigestion.



Name: Rob Banks
Occupation: Politics (Literal Activist), Unknown

For years Mr. Banks has had trouble drumming up support for the failing Literal Political Party, which makes it all the more puzzling as to how he has amassed such a great amount of wealth.



Name: Edgar Helthe
Occupation: Struggling Live Actor

While Edgar is no doubt struggling to maintain his profession as a live actor, things appear to be turning the corner. Since his disappearance on that fateful dark night, his career has soared. Lately he has begun to take himself a little less seriously.



Name: Punny Tended
Occupation: Chemist, Author

A noted chemist, Miss Tended was flying back from an Australian book signing tour, promoting her new best seller "Barium Today!" While on the island, in between periods of promptly disposing of her fallen friends, she was able to start her next book "Isn't it (Fe)ic, Don't You Think?"



Name: Barbie Whitt
Occupation: Marine Biological Clock Maker

Barbie was always obsessed with setting her clocks and with people following her. She did, however, prove that even if you are running late (as Barbie tended to do), after a big meal she could always go back four seconds.



Name: Carrie Murry
Occupation: Ex-Ray Machina Technician

While on the island, Carrie asked herself the philosophical question, "Deus ex-ray Machinas really help the subject, or not?" Now, in her spare time Carrie enjoys dropping into situations randomly to solve problems, leaving us to scratch our heads.

No Photo Currently Available for the New Girl

Name: Kara McBoba
Occupation: Non-Prophet Community Organizer

Kara was the one chosen to leave these non important survivors. Being the chosen one is something she has embraced whole heartedly. She can never stay in one place too long though...as she is always talking about change.

Your Lost Companion(s):

This party, like Lost, is the meeting of people who may not know eachother very well but have common links (mainly me) in their past. So, to make things easier, you have each been assigned a character I think identifies with you the most.

THE SURVIVORS OF 815 (RICHMONDITES)

ME: Jack

Basically I am the organizer of this shin-dig, so I get to be whoever I say I am...but just for fun, lets think about it:

1. Jack got the brains (on Grey's Anatomy I would be McBrainerson)
2. Jack got the ladies (I went to prom as a SOPHOMORE)
3. Jack got the curse (both addicted to pain killers...him: Oxycontin. Me: my ipod, a warm glass of milk, and 3 hours worth of Enya cued up).

I intentionally made it so Locke did not attend my party, because nobody deserves to be such a threat to take over my party in badassness.

Brianne: Claire

You are the sister of Jack (Robby) and the only person present who has a baby Aaron (Abe)You are currently in a relationship with a someone who thinks he’s a rockstar, Charlie (Jake), but is no longer (couldn’t be) with us. You pretty much get along with everyone here except Ethan (Ward), who wants to take you to his lab and shove needles in you (hang out) all the time.

Sara: Kate






You come off as a very sweet and innocent girl, but you can’t move from one place to another quick enough (can you say like 400 speeding tickets?). You’ve also had your share of run-ins with the authorities such as the US Marshal on board (bartender at the Wellington)…which is ironic because you were the criminal, yet everyone hated the cop (the bartender was a bitch).

Rob: Sawyer







You are a mysterious badass with an edge. You’ve killed a man or two (Halo), gotten with a girl or two (I have the texts to prove it), and even had a drink with Jack’s (Robby’s) dad. Watch out for that temper one second and love the next (road rage). And stay away from Kate (you heard me).


Karli: Libby





While you were not part of the original cast (from Richmond), you were definitely on the same plane and joined the group later ((married Mark, a Richmondite (obviously Hurley)). You both went to school for psychology, in which you parlayed into graduate degrees. Jack meets you with your annoying friend Ana Lucia (whiny becky) but luckily she was killed off (made out with). We later find out that Libby is possibly crazy (often sends back food), but she is also very nice and gave Desmond his boat (I don’t have a real life example of you being nice). You are going to yell at me for giving you a character that only existed for one season, but Libby is one of the most fascinating characters and will definitely be around (somehow) in the future.


Sydney:Vincent







The lovable yellow lab (please don't ruin my party)



THE OTHERS (Non Richmond Folk)


Ward: Ethan Rom





Lets face it, you work in a lab and are closest to Claire (Bri). We don’t know much about you, except that you know more about the island than any one of us (because you read spoilers ). Ethan Rom is of course an anagram for “Other Man” (you are probably the only one that knew that) and Bryan Ward is an anagram for “Bar And Wry”…which describes your home and your style of humor.

Mike: Ben.





You are often bitter and conniving. Everybody fears you because you are so well connected (family in the mafia). You met Jack (Robby) when you were captured and thrown in a makeshift prison (National City Bank). At first we only knew you by a fake name “Henry Gale” (G-Bo #2), but you have since earned your own name. You betrayed your father by killing him years ago (you became a Jets fan and your dad is a Giants fan), but I dont really think you care.


Jess: Juliet.

Like Ethan, you also work in a lab. By nature you are very calm and peaceful girl. Even though you are an Other, your allegiance to them is always up in the air. You have known Ben (Mike) a lot longer than Jack (Robby), but its pretty obvious who you like more. Although you spent a lot of time working with Ben (Deer Creek), you just want to get back to your real job of making babies (word).

So now you know who you guys are dealing with. If you know of anyone else that loves lost and would want to come, let me know...im just getting started.

Honestly...I forgot my password.

You use the same simplistic usernames and passwords for every thing you do...yet, occasionally you get crossed up...then you wait for them to send you one...you get wait listed...you get distracted...all kinds of crazy excuses are applicable.

So, many months of blogs have come and gone inside my head. And when I said gone, I mean gone. I have never felt more scatterbrained in my entire life. I have all kinds of nerve issues going on that I'm getting worked out, but that doesn't mean that you guys should go without another blog. Its not your fault.

Really, I have been writing a book. The title: "You're from Richmond Indiana, and You've Just Won $314,000,000 Now What? The step by step guide to a happy 300 Million Dollar Lifestyle"

I know I may not be making any best seller list as far as copies sold...but with my hefty (yet extremely reasonable) 10 million dollar price tag on this treasure of a book, I expect to do ok. Its a fairly small demographic, but whatev.

Lets get down to business. I think i should tell people that because she is still a "Teenager", I am going to keep my tongue planted quite firmly inside of my cheek. Without further adieu: Miss South Carolina:



I dont see what the big deal is? What i DO THINK is a big deal is how society thinks this is a stupid answer. I actually think she had a lot of good points.

First of all...she mentioned Osama (Bin Laden presumably). Now I know all the transcripts dont think she mentioned Osama...but thats just because she was throwing out the name to see the crowd reaction...and when the lib elites winced, she decided to change her course. Just listen to the first 10 seconds of her answer (18 seconds into the video).

Ok...why would most Americans, (and THANK GOD she was specific in mentioning U.S. Americans...because GOD KNOWS there are a crapload of Non US Americans that would have no bearing on the question asked...non US Americans know exactly where the United States is on a map...NORTH) not know where the United States was on a map? DUH! Osama! He has freaking spread us out all across the Earth. We have so many freaking embassies that are considered US soil that who among us could actually point out where all of the United States actually is? I mean PLEASE! Technically our soil is in just about every non third-world country on the planet (and the other countries U.S. soil in their pants just thinking we'll visit). NOT TO FREAKING MENTION when this is aired in future reruns (as opposed to past reruns), Osama may, by that time, have blown the United States GOD KNOWS WHERE...and i appreciate her way of looking out for the future of this broadcast in syndication.

BUT GASP! She mentions "Osama" and then the elites scare her into changing her answer faster than it takes Sean Penn into changing a Prius' 12 inch tire with his baby arm. And when elites scare you into saying something...you sure as hell better retreat to South Africa, or even Iraq, where they feel comfortable. Well played South Carolina!

I also like how she repeated the phrase "such as" AFTER she finished her sentence. This sentence inversion is very common amongst the french. "Our education such as South Africa, and uhh, the Iraq, and everywhere like such as..." That is basically like saying "Voulez-Vous" or some stupid lib french crap like that. She's only guilty for playing to the natural homemade deodorant wearing crowd, once again.

At this point, I would like to add that i DO NOT have a map. And her just going out and stating it as the way it is, enlightened me. Why dont I have a map? As she pointed out, some of us dont. I think thats crap. Thanks South Carolina (nobody even knows where the hell South Carolina is anyway. CRAP!), I owe you one.

Then she tries going back to her roots...her natural instinct is isolationistic... "Our education over here, in the U.S., should help the U.S...." A-FREAKIN-MEN! How often have we seen our educated men and women go over to other countries and try to teach them a thing or two? TEACH US! They are ungrateful of our teaching anyway. Unlike our educational efforts being wasted on the rest of the World, Miss South Carolina's efforts were not wasted on me.

But the self-fart sniffing crowd would have none of it. And for a girl that has been trying her whole life to climb this impossible mountain of achievement (such as Everest, such as) I dont blame her for going back to her libfest pandering. Bring back South Africa...bring back the Iraq. That alone would probably be good enough for 4th place....

BUT NO. She wouldn't be denied. So she picked a fight with the uneducational bully of the world, the absolutely dumbest countries that ever existed: ASIA (Oh yes she did). Like she said, we have a duty to teach those economically struggling countries as well...and I, for one, am thankful she finally said what we all been thinking for quite sometime. After all...if we dont teach countries like China and Japan about our ways, how will they know English when they swallow us into theeir global-economic belly that is the future?

And if it weren't for Mario Lopez (who was by this time already enthralled with her response, look at his face) Miss Teen South Carolina would have been able to tell us exactly for whom we should be building up our future. I like to think she would have finished by saying we are bulding our future for "our children"...with an emphasis on "our"... Message recieved S.C., read you loud and clear.

So as you can see...she is just a bit misunderstood. I have a theory on why...and I planned on writing it in this blog...but you'll just have to wait till tomorrow. For today, lets just blame it on Slater.

Mullally out.

SOME THINGS I'M LOVIN RIGHT NOW:

Syd running in the snow like a crazy wolf slaughterer

Then helping me do dishes...

then scratching the living hell out of my arm (I feel like Roy Horn).

Oh yea, and HD in time for March Madness. I'll even watch PBS AND Sheryl Crow (at the same time) in HD!

Congratulations to the Indianapolis Colts. The spotlight of the world is square on the city I live in, and that is pretty cool. I’ve had this blog brewing for probably 17 years…when I first really became a diehard fan. That team was the Chicago Cubs and I was 8 years old. I should note that I was a fan prior to being 8, but diehard status was achieved at 8, and cemented by my first Cubs Convention when I was 10. Introducing the Cubs to an innocent, vulnerable, kid is like a parent pushing their young child into a staring role on a TV show…you’re in for a life of sheer pain and humiliation. I can’t blame this one on my parents though. I found the Cubs on my own.

Anyway. The victory in the Super Bowl is something Colts fans should cherish. It’s not something that happens everyday. I have gone on more than a few rants on whether any of my sports teams will ever win a championship. Truth is, there is a real legit chance they wont. The aforementioned Cubs haven’t won a World Series in 99 years (you can thank Fred Merkle for that one ). Think I’m being a little melodramatic?” Think about the people born in 1909 that have long since left us that just KNEW they would live to see the Cubs win at least 1 World Series. You can understand why I may not be entirely optimistic.

As you all know, I suffer through every game of every single season. And not just for the Cubs, but also for my other two passions: IU (basketball AND football), and the Browns. There are times when they have come close, as the 2002 IU National Championship game and the 2003 National League Championship Series (wipes tear from face) are two of the more recent teams that narrowly missed championships. But none of my teams have made it to the top while I was a fan of them. You can imagine, then, my frustration of seeing what most people know as “fair-weather” fans jump on this Colts bandwagon in the last few weeks (especially in the last week) and celebrate like they’ve waited their whole lives for this moment.

But it’s not like that. I don’t mind at all. Despite this blog, I’m not a fan snob. The reason? It’s simply because you can act like you LOVE a team…but you can’t truly convince yourself of that unless its true. The old adage is you get out of something what you put into it. And I can’t think of another situation where that adage rings more true. I realized this last night when the game was over. Neither team was my team, but Jake, Bri, and Abe are Bears fans, so I wanted to see them happy. After the game, although I felt bad for them, I didn’t have any trouble sleeping. Jake was a different story…and I know what he went through…I know very well. Fair-weather fans don’t put much into it, and they’ll get their cheep buzz, but they truly don’t get much out of it. If they can live with themselves when they forget they have a team during a 4-12 record, then more power to them.

The spark that ignited my little firecracker of inspiration was something Jimmy “Mad Dog” Matis said just prior to the Colts arriving at the RCA Dome for their parade. Dog is a Colts pre-game personality and DJ for Q95 in Indy. He noted, “Its unbelievable here…there are probably around 40,000 people in the dome for this. That’s more than the Detroit Lions get for an actual game.” He actually repeated this clever little “factoid” twice more, to the next two people he interviewed. Now, I have no loyalty towards the Lions…but I respect the fans that go to their games…because they haven’t had anything to cheer about in years, but they show up (and then get ridiculed by a dude named Mad Dog). The funny thing is, I checked the validity of his comment. Turns out, Detroit has out drawn the Indianapolis Colts the last 6 years (and probably forever, my data only goes back 6 years). Detroit drew an average 3,500 more fans last year than the Colts. The Colts were in first place, and Detroit was in last place. To those who say the Dome is small, the Colts actually drew 94% of capacity. So it was a first place team, probably the best team in football and they couldn’t even sell out a “small” venue. To compare, the Browns drew 15,000 more fans than the Colts (per game), and were at 100.5% of capacity.

Dog didn’t know the attendance figures, he just knew the end of the season record…and it shouldn’t surprise me that he assumed they were directly related. To Colts fans, record and showing up have been directly related.

Now before you all get all po’d and start posting “I’ve been a fan since the day they sneaked over here blah blah blah.” Just remember: This is my blog. This isn’t sharing hour with Barney the freaking dinosaur in which people will actually pretend to be interested in your bs. You want to talk about living through the Gary Hogeboom years, then fine. But having short fingernails from the wearisome Tony Dungy era will get you no sympathy from me.

I was at a bar Saturday with both Colts and Bears fans (probably more Bears fans). Everybody wanted to talk about the big game, and they always asked which team would be getting my support. I had to be honest… neither really. I’m a Cleveland Browns fan, and I am damn proud of it. The reactions were telling. Almost all of the Colts fans I told laughed at me. Got a couple “Jeez man, they suck. Why?” Bears fans, however, painted a different picture, and were almost all the same. “That actually gives you a lot of credibility,” said a dude with a Thomas Jones jersey. And one guy just said, “respect.”

You know why? Because they recognize a fan when they see one. And actually, so did I. As I was leaving the bar I saw a guy in his early twenties with a 1993 Cleveland Browns Vinny Testaverde jersey. I started wondering at that moment, if the roles were reversed (Browns in the Super Bowl), would you ever see a Jim Harbaugh jersey in a Cleveland bar the night before the game. I’ll let you ponder that yourself. But after we bumped fists I could see in his eyes the mutual respect between two true fans…and this pleased me. Of course, he did think I was a pussy and less of a fan for not representing a Browns jersey myself.

But that didn’t bother me. I mean really, who the hell is he to say what a good fan is anyway?

“There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
And you know sometimes words have two meanings
In the tree by the brook there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven”

Greetings from Sydney’s apartment.

This thing has bothered me for quite some time. And I am serious about this, as it is something I wouldn’t take lightly. Everyday you watch on the news, you read in the paper, and you hear in casual conversations of people that have recently passed away from one of too many diseases we have in the world. Why is it that just about EVERY single time someone’s passing is caused by a disease people (often media) say “Terry Adams lost a long fight with Lou Gehrig’s disease Tuesday morning.” Or “Randal Myers lost his all to short fight with cancer yesterday.” I think the one that really got me thinking was a similar quote about Jimmy Valvano. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that. Jimmy V wasn’t a loser….not at anything. Sure he lost some games…he lost a lot of games. But a fight should not always be characterized by the end result that way (and aren’t we all going to succumb to the same “end result” eventually?) ...actually whether someone “wins” a fight or not should actually be characterized by the fight itself. Anybody who has seen the original Rocky knows what I am talking about….and for those who haven’t in a while…I feel I should let you know that before he became a caricature of himself Rocky was actually an amazing character, and still is a great great movie. He fights the impossible fight at the end…goes longer than anybody thinks is humanly possible, and clearly shows himself to be a winner. While a visibly battered Rocky is trying to find the one person he wants to celebrate with, the judges are revealing the results of his fight to the crowd (and movie watchers). But Rocky isn’t listening to find out if the judges say he won (he didn’t), and neither are we. We already know, and it has nothing to do with a score.

If it is absolutely necessary to include “lost their fight” when dealing with disease, then why not use it in other cases of death? “Fred Merkle lost his abruptly short (but just long enough) fight with gravity after slipping off the cliff Tuesday evening,” or “Dwight Smith lost his fight to stay warm in the waters of Lake Anawanna this morning.” How about this one, “Jim Bullinger lost his extremely long fight with time just moments ago.” And if you think those examples are ridiculous, then cant we AT LEAST use the terms “lost” and “fight” when we are REALLY dealing with someone who lost a fight? Like, “Luis Salazar lost his 3 minute long fight to Paul Bako yesterday after receiving four gunshot wounds to the neck.” No, of course not. That would be tacky. So its ok to say Jimmy V lost his fight with cancer (sub headline: “Cancer Wins Again")…but it would be in bad taste to say Luis Salazar lost his gunfight to Paul Bako.

Jimmy V changed more peoples life by "losing" than any traditional "winner" I can think of. And to me, that means that he won the fight...and actually, it wasn't even close (think IU v Purdue 2007).

Maybe Ill write up a recap of last weekend if it is so desired...but basically this headline says it all.

Getting too big for Daddy.