So you're out in the woods one day,

looking for a crashed plane along with a big Nigerian guy who looks like he could snap your neck like a toothpick. And he looks like he would snap your neck like a toothpick, if he felt like it.

You lose your bearings. The big guy, who happens to be carrying a big stick with dried blood on it, orders you up a tree to see if you can find the plane. Not wanting to tangle with a guy carrying a more than slightly used baton rouge (which, by the way, he has carved scripture references into with a rock), you climb the tree. You find the plane. So far, so good. Your neck is a little less likely to get snapped.

And then yoiu hear a couple of explosions, and a big creature made entirely of black, swirling smoke comes out of the woods. It faces off against the big guy. And he faces off against it.

And after a few tense moments, the smoke thing drifts away.

When you accompany the big guy to the plane, he tells you that one of the dead people inside was his brother. He then burns the plane. And tells you that he’s a priest. You recite the 23rd Psalm together as the plane burns, ironically sending black smoke up into the air. Oh, and when you recite the psalm, you both get the most famous line backward. “Shadow of the valley of death.” Who ever heard of that?

And when you return to your friends in camp, you tell no one anything about your day? No one? Anything? At all?

That’s what happened tonight on Lost. And I’ve decided that no one on that island is normal. Because a normal person wouldn’t be able to stop talking about that black smoke creature thing for days.

By the way, the Kinks had a song called “Big Black Smoke.” Charlie, the guy who climbed the tree and saw the smoke creature, was standing on the beach singing a Kinks song before taking that walk with Mr. Eko. He was not singing “Big Black Smoke,” though. He was singing “He’s Evil.” And then he goes off on his walk with Mr. Eko. Fwiw.