…from DHARMA Initiative Travel.

After this past weekend’s LOST finale, I was going through some boxes of old magazines and came across what I believe was DHARMA Initiative Travel’s last ad from a 2007 issue of Ocean Airlines’ INflight magazine.

I’ve personally never used DHARMA Initiative Travel to book a flight, car rental, or hotel room, but it’s always sad to see a long-time business unable to make the transition to the digital era. I think the shift to web-based travel services killed off DI Travel and many other large and small travel services. DHARMA Initiative Travel also had an unfortunate reputation for disappearing travelers—actual people, mind you, not reservations—and luggage and rooms inexplicably torn apart by polar bears.

The one thing I wish I’d been able to do before they closed up shop was take one of their DI Travel submarine cruises. What other travel agency offers something like that?

…or snack, actually.

For our LOST finale viewing, Miss T and I opened up a few of the last items we recieved via product resupply drop—DHARMA Initiative Beer, Lemon Lime Soda, and Cheddar Baked Snack Crackers.

A good, happy, sad time was had by all. Namaste.

…(and wine).

Sometimes you don’t want wheat ale, double stout, Albanian pilsner, or double-hopped Bavarian pale lager. Sometimes you just want beer. DHARMA Initiative Beer. After a hard day of being a workman in Dharmaville or an afternoon spent repairing a DHARMA van, nothing hits the spot like a cold, refreshing DI Beer. Mmm… beer.

It’s been noted that DHARMA Initiative stations on the island have long received drop shipments of DHARMA Beer. Until now, here at The Hut we’ve only ever received DI Amber Lager, and DI Stout. Our recent Product Resupply Drop (PRD) included cases of DHARMA Initiative Beer in various differently-shaped bottles and possibly of various different beer varieties—but they were all simply labeled beer.

Good enough for me.

If good old DHARMA Initiative Beer is good enough for you, but none have shown up in your PRDs, you can make do with regular bottled beer and the following downloadable PDF:

• DHARMA Initiative Beer (variety)

The PDF contains body and neck labels for beer, amber lager, and stout. With scissors, tape, glue, and determination, you should be able to fit the labels onto the body of any bottled beer. Neck labels are a bit trickier and require experimentation, so start attacking those beers now. (Though, perhaps it’s best to not drink beer while you’re trying to fit labels onto beer.)

Ah, the wine.

We’ve noted in the past that, clearly, DHARMA folk on the island get shipments of bottled Merlot and Cabernet. We’ve also been recipients of DHARMA Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Muscat, and Sauvignon Blanc. But what about Riesling? Or, Gewürztraminer? Where are all the other DHARMA Initiative varietals? Well, apparently, if a variety isn’t one of the grapes already mentioned it just gets labeled red or white. Again, good enough for me. And, again, if DI Red Wine or DI White Wine are good enough for you, the following PDFs will allow you to turn ordinary bottles of wine into DHARMA Initiative bottles of wine.

• DHARMA Initiative Red Wine labels (variety, 750mL)
• DHARMA Initiative White Wine labels (variety, 750mL)

Cheers, everyone! And, namaste.

…customize a new one.

One of the great conveniences of modern-day travel is the ability to print your own airline boarding passes in the comfort of your own home/office/hotel room/motorcycle sidecar/wherever. Oceanic Airlines has gone a step further by allowing you to not only print your own boarding pass, but to choose your own flight number, seat, date and time of departure, origin and desination city, passenger name, and endorsements and restrictions! Now that’s customer service.

How do you go about printing your own Oceanic boarding passes? It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. 1. Download the fillable PDF below. 2. Use Adobe Acrobat to enter in the pertinent information for the boarding pass recipient: flight, seat, date, time, origin, destination, name, endorsements/restrictions. 3. Print out—it looks better in color—the pass onto to some nice, heavy, white cardstock. 4. Use a straight-edge to trim out your boarding pass, and don’t forget to round the corners. 5. There is no 5—you’re done! See how easy that was?

• Oceanic Airlines Boarding Pass (customizable)

Now, don’t forget that while you can put any kind of information you want on your Oceanic Airlines Boarding Pass, the TSA won’t let you through a security checkpoint without documents for a actual flight. So, if you aren’t printing passes for Oceanic Airlines travel, you can use them for party invitations or something.

…refrigeration required.

I’m not sure why the DHARMA Initiative Ranch Composite we have at The Hut is different than the Ranch Composite that gets shipped to DI stations on the island. Key differences: size – 13 ounces at The Hut, 1 gallon on the island; and, refrigeration – yes for The Hut, no for the island. The DI Ranch Composite delivered to the island is supposed to be good for 7 years without refrigeration. Seven. Years. Without refrigeration.

Now that is a remarkable scientific achievement.

In any event, if you didn’t receive either Ranch Composite you can make a bottle of refrigeration-required DI Ranch Composite with a 13-ounce jar of standard ranch dressing and the following PDF:

• DHARMA Initiative Ranch Composite (13 OZ)

DI Ranch Composite + french fries = delicious… If only there were DHARMA Initiative Oven Baked French Fries.

…buy DHARMA Initiative Explorers Cookies.

I love this time of year—after ordering several boxes of DI Explorers Cookies via station computer (I think it’s code 2-4, then 1-6-4, or something), our supplies of DHARMA Initiative Chocolate Mint Cookies and Lemon Iced Shortbread Cookies arrived via PRD. The Explorers sell several other varieties of cookies, but Miss T and I like the chocolate mint and lemon iced ones the best.

If you were unable to get your order in on time (it only comes around once a year, you know) and you don’t see any of the DHARMA Initiative Explorers girls* around your neighborhood, you can modify Girl Scouts® Thin Mints and Lemonades™ with the following labels:

• DHARMA Initiative Explorers Cookies (variety)
• DHARMA Initiative Explorers Cookies (variety) (for 11×17-capable printers)

Girl Scouts cookies are pretty good, but they’re not quite the same as DI Explorers’.

*Why is it only the girls that sell cookies? What are the boys up to during this oh-so-important cookie sales season?

…staved off (just barely).

It may have been the DHARMA Initiative Mixed Fruit or the DHARMA Initiative Crackers and Cheese (or a combination of the two), but last week something had my stomach churning worse than an island jumping through space-time. Miss T suggested that I try to get to The Staff for a checkup, but first I checked through the last Periodic Resupply Drop crate that landed in the back yard.

Down at the bottom of the box I found this:

It took two doses of the pink stuff, but in an hour everything was gastrointestinally back on track—like a record needle settled firmly in its groove.

If you’re suffering from heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, nausea, or—heaven forbid—diarrhea, I heartily recommend DHARMA Initiative Bismuth Subsalicylate for stomach relief. If you don’t have DI Bismuth Subsalicylate in your station’s emergency medical locker, go ahead and use a bottle of Pepto-Bismol with the following label PDF:

• DHARMA Initiative Bismuth Subsalicylate (8 OZ)

Like this 1972 ad says, DI Bismuth Subsalicylate will help you achieve “a calm mind and a calm body.” Namaste.

…now in cans!

Last week Miss T and I snacked on some DHARMA Initiative food items while we watched the LOST season 6 premiere. Nothing fancy, just some DI Crackers and Cheese and DI Mixed Fruit.

If you’d like some DHARMA Initiative Mixed Fruit for tonight’s episode of LOST, making your own may be the only way to have them in time. (Unless you can somehow get a retroactively-timed product resupply drop—one that will arrive in the past.) All you’ll need are 4-ounce tins of Mixed Fruit and the labels from this link:

• DHARMA Initiative Mixed Fruit labels (4 OZ)

Bon appétit and namaste!

…one last time.

With LOST back on the air—for its final season *sob*—I was inspired to go digging through some of the old periodicals piled up in our station’s storeroom (a.k.a. the garage) for DHARMA Initiative stuff. A 1976 issue of Oceanic’s INflight had a DHARMA Initiative Travel ad which I’ve scanned and posted on Flickr.

As Season 6 continues, we’ll keep looking for fun DHARMA Initiative things to post. Namaste!

…and a little LOST cheese.

Sometimes you just want a snack. A small one. Not a sweet—something savory. And, you want to have to use a stick in the preparation of your snack. Yes, a stick. (These may sound like peculiar circumstances, but it comes up more often than you think.)

For those small, savory, need-a-stick snack urges, the DHARMA Initiative has you covered—try DHARMA Initiative Crackers and Cheese.

If you’ve searched your station’s pantry and come up short in the DI Crackers and Cheese department, you can restock with generic crackers and cheese, some self-adhesive label stock, cutting implements, and this PDF:

• DHARMA Initiative Crackers and Cheese (.95 OZ)

DI Crackers and Cheese might just be the snack for a LOST Season 6 premiere viewing party! If not, there are many more items at our LOST labels for your DHARMA Initiative needs.

…the DHARMA Initiative way!

Everyone knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day (you do know that, right?), and, despite being in an indeterminate place and time, life on LOST Island is no different—breakfast is important. So, when wild chicken eggs, boar bacon, and taro-flour bread are in short supply, make sure you at least have a bowl of DHARMA Initiative Cereal. There’s a wide variety available—from Sweetened Puffed Corn Cereal to Sweetened Multi-grain Cereal—and they’re great with milk or dry.

We were fortunate enough to receive a DI Cereal Individual Variety Pack in a recent resupply drop, but if your pantry is lacking in the DI Cereal department, you can improve ordinary individual-serving cereals the DHARMA Initiative way with scissors, tape, and the following PDF file:

• DHARMA Initiative Cereals (variety) (.81 OZ to 1.52 OZ)

Make sure to try them all! (DHARMA Initiative Cereal not your thing? More DI labels at LOST labels for your DHARMA Initiative needs.)

…You’re not fully clean, until you’re LOST-fully clean.

And how does one get LOST-fully clean, you ask? By using DHARMA Initiative Soap (like Kate at the Hydra Station above), of course! And, it just so happens we were lucky enough to receive two types of DI soap in our recent PRD (product resupply drop): 4.25 oz bars in boxes and 3.1 oz bars in paper.

If your DHARMA Initiative supply cabinet is low on such health and beauty supplies, you can always make do with some locally-sourced bar soap and the following PDF labels:

• DHARMA Initiative Soaps (3.1 and 4.25 OZ)

Remember, cleanliness is next to Jacob-ness!

…in cans.

As a kid growing up in the ’70s, one of the first things that I was allowed to cook on the stove was pasta from a can. Of the two competing brands of the time, Chef Boyardee and Franco-American, I preferred Chef Boyardee. Inexplicably, I associated the mustachioed Chef Boyardee with a superior—more sophisticated—product. I think I found the Franco-American names of SpaghettiOs and RavioliOs too childish for my worldly, 7-year-old tastes.

What brings these mushy childhood memories of sweet, tomato sauce-drenched pasta to mind are the 24-pack cases of two new items received in our most recent DHARMA Initiative supply drop—DI Macaroni with Beef in Tomato Sauce and DI Ravioli in Tomato and Meat Sauce. I haven’t dug into a can of either pasta, but I suspect they’re highly similar to the Chef Boyardee delicacies of my youth. In fact, should you want to experience the taste of these DHARMA Initiative wonders of food preserving technology, simply stock up on some tins of Beefaroni and Ravioli, and download, print, and affix the labels below:

• DHARMA Initiative Canned Pastas (2 varieties) (15 OZ)

I can probably stretch these canned pasta supplies until LOST Season 5 comes out on DVD/Blu-ray in December, but I don’t think they’ll last until the show starts Season 6 next January.

…2009 vs. 2019.

About two weeks ago, Miss T and I spent a hot summer’s afternoon in Downtown Los Angeles at the Bradbury Building, current home of the L.A.P.D. Internal Affairs department and future home of J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner.

On the day we visited, it was hot, bright, and the Bradbury appeared as spic and span as the day after its 1991 renovation (the building was built in the 1890s). It looked a good deal better than Ridley Scott’s future vision of L.A., but there’re still 10 years until the events in Blade Runner take place, so one can hope.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about (and what kind of film fan are you if you don’t?), here are some Bradbury-related stills from the movie:

The completely mocked-up entrance facade.

Looking across South Broadway to the Million Dollar Theater.

One of the two atrium elevator entrances.

Looking up to the west staircase.

On the third floor, looking into the atrium.

Looking up through the skylight at a passing advertising blimp.

I actually brightened up these stills a bit, so that you can see some resemblance to the photos we shot while we were there. All of the pics are from the ground floor or the stairway first landing—sightseers aren’t allowed on the upper floors.

We also took a walk over to Angels Flight and Grand Central Public Market. All this after a bite to eat at gr/eats, a few miles away on Sawtelle.

Take a look, if you like, via the thumbnails below or at 20 Los Angeles photos at maxpixpix on Picasa.

“It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?”

…for your DHARMA Initiative wine cellar.

We know that the DHARMA Initiative keeps their personnel hale and hearty with a semi-steady supply of wines. Thus far on the show we’ve seen bottled Merlot and Cabernet and generic red wine in a box. Well, recently several more DI wines have come to light: Pinot Noir and Zinfandel in the reds, and Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Muscat, and Sauvignon Blanc in the whites.

You may not be able to get hold of these additional varietals from your DHARMA Initiative sommelier, but you can repurpose existing bottled wines into DI wines by downloading, trimming out, and applying these labels:

• DHARMA Initiative Red Wines
• DHARMA Initiative White Wines

Sorry, no generic wine labels in this batch.

Additionally, we came across an old DHARMA Initiative Wine ad from the ’70s—take a look at it at maxpixpix on Flickr.

Now where did I store those Hydra Station wine glasses?