Note: I realized a few days ago that this will be my 500th post on this blog. For a while, I considered trying to do something significant with it. But then I decided it would really be much more in the spirit of what I usually do here to write about something utterly pointless. So here's to 500 largely frivolous entries.

A few days ago I had a dream and as I woke up from it, for about 30 seconds, I was totally convinced that I knew how to find out the answer to "Lost." As in, the Big Answer, the one that will explain what in the heck is going on with that island, and why the plane crashed there, and what is the black smoke monster.

In my dream, I saw these fuzzy TV screen/computer modules sort of like the ones in the Dharma Initiative surveillance stations. Jack Shephard was sitting in front of one of them, looking rugged and sweaty, desperately trying to get one of the screens to resolve into a clear picture. And then, he did. On the screen was a baby sitting in a kind of greenly-lit, sinister-looking room. Maybe the baby was being held captive. I don't know. But when the baby saw Jack, he started whispering in a totally adult voice. He said "I can't talk, they'll hear me. But I'll tell you everything you want to know."

So Jack started asking him questions, all the big questions of Lost. And the baby started signing the answers back to him! For those of you without small children, a lot of parents teach their kids to use sign language to communicate needs and desires before they could really talk. We think this is pretty cool, and so we've bought Kate these videos that teach babies the signs using peppy little songs. Little songs that will get stuck in your mind and replay themselves constantly. Especially when you try to go to sleep at night after you watch that episode of "Lost" that you Tivo'd.

Obviously, this is what I get for no longer watch anything but Lost and Baby Signing Time videos, but I swear, at the time, the idea that captive babies will sign the answers to Lost to us seemed 100 percent plausible. And given how that show works, it might be as likely as anything else. It would be just like the writers of Lost to make everyone go out and learn to decode the baby's messages just so we could understand the series finale, in which case I will be one step ahead of the rest of you thanks to Rachel the Signing Time lady. So I wanted to put it out there and go on record as saying that this, apparently, is my theory, and if it turns out to be true, I want credit. And a giant refund on all the hours I have spent watching Lost.