In Which Lost Violates Its Own Inner Chi

The Dumbest Professional Killer Alive
by DICK CHENEY

The dream. Every night it's always the same.

I'm a little boy walking through my hometown. My dick is super-huge, because in my dreams I'm always well-endowed. I'm trying to walk home, but I keep finding the same street at the end of wherever I go. A man finds me there. He's wearing a mumu and he smells like a skunk masturbating. He tells me that I'm going to be the vice president one day, and that I'll run the whole world. And then he shoots me in the face.

he can't say he didn't see this coming

This dream is reflective of reality: some enterprising hippie is always going back to try and save the future. But lately, it's not just hippies killing me in my dream. And no longer are people telling me I'll be the vice president one day.

setting the record for interminable press conferences...this guy

The people who kill me in my dream now say one thing: "If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have elected him." "Who?" I say. "Obama," they answer. At first it was 60 Minutes. Then, he started guesting on Heroes and The Office. Pretty soon he was on television three times a week. Three times a week turned into every night.

Like Benjamin Linus, our president can't get enough of his own press. And someone is trying to travel back in time to ensure I never exist so that Obama won't get elected. It's the perfect plan.

I know what Sayid Hassan Jarrah is going through. I too have many lives on my conscience. Families without homes, because their president is addicted to watching himself on TV. I have half a mind to go back in time and prevent myself from ever existing. One thing and one thing only stops me: Faraday said you can't change the fucking timeline.

Where is Faraday? Who knows. He's probably doing yeoman time travel work. I half expected him to pop up during Adam Lambert's phenomenal rendition of Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears" on Idol last night.

"I brought you some chicken salad...unless you are planning to kill me later on perhaps?"

You can't change the timeline, and yet young Benjamin Linus sits dead somewhere in the jungle. There are only two possibilities. The first is that Linus somehow weathered a bullet to the heart, and is still alive. The second is the possibility that Linus dies in every version of the timeline.

"I'm doing a blond now"

Let's take possibility one. Having lived through these events, it's possible that the elder Linus made his way off his sick bed on the other island and was able to communicate with his young version of himself, and ensure that he wore some kind of protection from Sayid's killing bullet. This would allow him to live to a ripe old age.

The second possibility is that Linus dies. Since we meet Linus later on, it's possible that the two Linuses are not one and the same. We believed that the older man was Benjamin Linus, but he could be Henry Gale for all we know. We have no proof that the two are one and the same, except the show's POV storytelling. Taking Benjamin Linus' name and place within the Dharma Initiative would be a clever way for the hostiles to infiltrate Initiative if they knew what had occurred. With the Senior Linus dead, there would be no one to refute this.

Either way, one thing is for goddamn certain: you cannot change the timeline. (The next episode is even titled "Whatever Happened, Happened.")

Then again, Sayid always was one to learn things the hard way. This is approximately the 8,000th time he has slept with a woman on Lost only to find out she was deceiving him in some way. This time it was somehow more forgivable, because honestly who could believe that a bounty hunter could be that foxy?

In Dharmaville, things are getting a bit on the edgy side. LaFleur and Juliet had a good thing going, and the only one of the castaways who seems amply satisfied with his new digs is Hurley, and that's just because of proximity to the cafeteria.

the fucking tater tots here are out of this world you guys

Presumably Jin was driving the van around because he was finally looking for Sun. Once again instead of finding Sun he finds Sayid. The only screen time Jack Shepard can manage is when his wet hose is flailing around. His meek little firefighting smile is just about the saddest thing we've ever seen.

Where is all of this going? I'm going to put myself out on a limb and guess that when the Dharma Initiative gets dumped into a mass grave, it's the Losties writing the check. They're going to win this war for Benjamin Linus, and they're going to complete the Swan station. The only question is, what is going to motivate them to take the lives of Horace Goodspeed and Co.? What is going to end female fertility? What is going to put a premium on young children, and what is going to bring the Losties back to the future?

I have but one answer for you.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.