A.R.G.gh!

Been playing/following "The Lost Experience" for the past week to keep myself distracted from stuff at home.

For those who don't know, TLE (as insiders/nerds call it) is an "Alternate Reality Game." It's a sort of roleplaying game where you become part of a huge group of people helping the main character reveal the "real truth," about The Hanso Foundation and some sort of project that THF's new director, Dr. Mittlewerk, is running.

Gameplay mostly revolves around solving puzzles to access photos, video and audio clips, and web sites to discover more of "the truth." The puzzles and clues to same are dispersed through instant messages and e-mails from in-game actors, podcasts, entries in various characters' blogs and, sometimes, advertisements in traditional media like this commercial for The Hanso Foundation's Life-Extension Project shown during a recent airing of Lost.

I've been interested in the concept of ARGs since the early days of Majestic and "The Beast" the game associated with the Spielberg movie A.I. but TLE is the first ARG I've ever actually followed and participated in.

I have to admit that it's sort of interesting to try to solve the puzzles and find new video clips and podcasts and such but there are times when new stuff is being released so quickly that you either have to devote several hours every day to finding and solving the new puzzles or "cheat" by looking at one of the many sites devoted to listing the clues and their solutions outright.

Once Robyn's home from the hospital I'll probably stop playing and just wait for all to be revealed at the end of Summer.

I Didn't Win The Contest

Goshdangit!

One of the guys in field service won.

I tied for second, which won me a $15 iTunes gift card. I've already downloaded "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and am trying to figure out how to spend the other $14.01. I'm trying real hard to make my other 14 purchases fairly recent songs as I already have a good collection of 60s - 80s pop, and I've still got a case full of cassettes from about 1984 - 1990 to convert to mp3. Also, my nieces recently made it very clear to me that knowing who the White Stripes and Fall Out Boy are no longer qualifies me as hip, trendy, or "rad."

Current Contenders for My $14.01:

The B-Side Wins Again - DJ Spooky vs Dave Lombardo
Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado and some guy
Feel Good, Inc - The Gorillaz
16 Military Wives - The Decembrists
Gone Daddy Gone - Gnarls Barkley
Jesus Walks - Kanye West

Dang, I just spent a half-hour trolling iTunes for other songs. I previewed a whole bunch of bands I've heard mention of recently (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Walkmen, Death Cab for Cutie) and I don't know why, but they all just sound like Grateful Dead cover bands to me.

That's not a compliment.