The new greatest thing I have seen

Just watch this video by Girls Aloud. Anybody who's wiling to blatently rip off Tiffany while looking very attractive wins kudos from me.

Post 1342 in an ongoing series

Reason # 418325 to hate Derek Jeter: He rebounds from Scarlett Johansson to Jessica Biel.

Survivor: Cook Islands Episode 10 Thoughts

This was one of the episodes that reminds you why you watch Survivor in the first place. They built up the downfall of the Raro tribe over the weeks, which made the payoff oh so much better. Thrown into Raro's doom was some fine schadenfreude, with their arrogance and stupidity getting the best of them. There's a merge, which is always good times. And in the end, you also have a good old-fashioned blindsiding.

First, let's talk about the monster that is Ozzy. I mean, ignoring that the challenge was perfect for him since he's small but strong and agile, he still destroyed everybody else - when he said that he would hold on until the next morning if that's what it took, it was believable and plausible. If most of the challenges end up being physical, you might as well write Ozzy a check for at least $100,000, because he's making it to the final two. It will be interesting to see what his other 4 alliance-mates do when they have the opportunity to give him the boot.

And yes, I did say four. Jonathan jumped back to Aitu this week in what is probably one of the most interesting strategic moves to be seen in Survivor. The biggest impression that we were given early and often was that Jonathan was not happy with the tribe that he put his lot with. From their lackadaisical attitude around camp (after they had been beaten 4 times in a row by a smaller tribe), to their stupidity at not even considering that Yul would have the hidden immunity idol and finally their desire to vote Yul out when Ozzy is a much bigger threat, Jonathan quickly realized that he might be on the wrong side of the equation. But what could he do?

In a shockingly honest conversation, Jonathan let Yul know that he couldn't just switch sides unless he knew that he was protected until the final four and somehow the hidden immunity idol would do this. (This is the most fuzzy part of Jonathan's logic - he seemed to think that aligning with the immunity idol holder = Jonathan going to the final four.) And then he explained why: If he flipped again, he would be the guy who had betrayed everybody still left in the game, which would mean that he could not win the game. And Yul was honest with Jonathan as well, saying that Jonathan had nothing to worry about in terms of not making the final three because Yul felt that Jonathan is somebody that Yul would want to be sitting next to in the final two. And later, knowing that Jonathan wasn't going to budge without seeing the immunity idol, Yul coughed it up.

This led to the aforementioned schadenfreude. Jonathan, not being a dummy, went back to his tribe and floated the idea that Yul had the immunity idol without actually coming out and saying that Yul did. His tribe's reaction? "There's no way that Yul could have it. He was only on Exile Island for a day!" At that point it was a fait accompli - Jonathan would switch to Aitu and virtually forfeit the $1 Million prize on the basis that he stood a better chance of actually getting a shot at the $1 Million by flipping yet again.

Jumping back to Yul for a second, for as much as I called Ozzy a threat, Raro needed to look at getting Yul off the show as well. They fingered him as the mastermind, and that is rather smart. (With that said Ozzy=young version of Terry, who can sweep to the finals without much thought. Yul, smart, but can be beaten.) Yul's project management skills worked incredibly well today, along with his ability to read people. He targetted Jonathan to flip because Jonathan is the rational thinker, the one who would listen to a reasonable argument and act accordingly. If he approached Nate, for example, it would have been disasterous.

(I would be remiss not to point out Yul's discussion about surface area and mass and how it affected people during the immunity challenge. Parvati has it half right when she says "smart=sexy". "Smart+decent physique=sexy". And besides, if the pictures of him as a kid in his huge glasses didn't cement his geekiness, nothing will.)

It's funny, because Nate is well, not so smart. Let's see...your tribe managed to put together a 4-2 vote of Jenny, with you being not in the loop. And yet, you feel secure in working with this tribe. Good job Nate. At least Jonathan had the good sense to read the writing on the wall and conclude that he was at best 4th in the tribe. You, OTOH, seem to be missing this (then again, you were very bitter about Jonathan switching so maybe you realized this too late.) Special shout outs to Candace and Adam, who don't seem to realize that maybe this whole "romance" thing will put them on the chopping block. At least Parvati has some sort of sense that "hooking up" with somebody is a bad thing, but flirting can help you.

And now, it's time for the return of everybody's favourite feature. That's right, the ranking lists! It's a bit more difficult to rank who will win, because there are three people on the jury who haven't necessarily spent any of time with potential final two members. But like it's stopped me before.

Most Likely to Win
1. Yul
2. Ozzy
3. Sundra
4. Becky
5. Adam
6. Parvati
7. Candace
8. Jonathan

Who I want to Win

1. Yul
2. Ozzy
3. Jonathan
4. Parvati
5. Becky
6. Sundra
7. Candace
8. Adam

(Note: It's not that I really like Jonathan that much, but I'd love to see him rewarded for realizing his bad position and doing something to change it.)

Who goes next week? Buh-bye Adam. It's been nice knowing your stupid gameplaying ass.

From the Out of Left Field File

I'm with George Wallace and his comments about Michael Richards' screw up to the n-th degree, until he says this:

Richards needs help, Wallace said, "and we hope he gets better ... Betty Ford Center, whatever it takes."

Is it just me, or is George Wallace breaking the code here and telling us that Kramer has an addiction problem?

An oldie but a goodie

I have a whackload of links sitting around, so instead of trying to make sense of them, it's time for everybody's favourite List of Links!

• Apparently, the web is only 1% porn. It leaves us with a couple of questions though:
  
  • Isn't this number a bit low?
  • Who got paid to go through every website to determine if they were "sexually explicit"
  
  
• A bunch of kill-joys who happen to work for MI-6 explain that their work isn't quite as glamourous as teh James Bond films would have you believe. What's next, pro wrestling is fixed? (On the bright side, Q is actually a real person.)


• Time released a list of the All-TIME 100 Albums. Most notable on this list is their willingness to include compilations for artists instead of choosing a particular album. That's one thing that I always agreed with when it came to "essential album" lists. Sometimes an artist is important to include (like Elvis) but has no standout album to include. So kudos to Time for thinking outside the box, so to speak.


• An example of what bothers me with some baseball writers:
  

  "Who would you rather have?" the exec asks. "Thomas or (Carlos) Delgado?"

  
  (Okay this is coming from an unnamed baseball executive, but the general point still stands.)
  Of course the Blue Jays would rather have Carlos Delgado over Frank Thomas. But Carlos Delgado was not available to the Jays this off-season. When he was available to the Jays, they could not afford to pay him what he wanted. If you want to make a comparison of Carlos Delagdo to, say, Frank Catalanotto, then make it. But leave Delgado out of it.


• 'Tis a sad day in Vegas when slot makers aren't looking for a way to make a 1 vs. 100 slot machine.


• Coming soon to Victoria, BC - the open urinal, which rises from the ground.


• Make sure you read the eBay auction carefully before placing a bid.


• Just what I expect from my politicians - a public discussion about the benefits of wearing silk.


• You know, I will watch almost any game show at least once, but this is a bit much for me even.


• In what I wish was more than just specuation, David McKee notes that the Sirens of TI will reduce their shows during the winter and even go dark for about a month. From there, he speculates that the Sirens could possibly not be long for this world.


• Finally, a position that I hearby endorse completely: Pink Slip Sam.

The other side of the Wii

In my previous post, I was singing the praises of the Wii. Well, it's only fair to bring you the darker more murderous side of the Wii.

Quick Wii Thoughts

So my friend picked up a Wii today. (Well, more specifically his brother picked up a Wii for him.) We had a chance to play a little bit of Wii Sports. So I offer a couple of quick thoughts:

• The controller doesn't take that long to get used to. For Wii Sports, it also helps that you are basically doing the same motion that you would if you were participating in the sport.


• Fathers take note: you can use the Wii to teach your sons how not to throw punches like a girl.


• While Wii Sports will never top Dance Dance Revolution for being a good cardio workout, the dodging balls training method for boxing could provide a bit of exercise on its own.


• One potential problem is that you have to set in the Wii whether you have the sensor bar on top of your television or on the botton of your television. If you change televisions and where the bar is (ie from top to bottom), this might be an issue (the insturctions are very specific in stating that the sensor bar has to be in teh middle of the TV, and flush with the front of the surface it is attached to.)
  
  Another nitpick is that the way that the sensor bar attaches to the TV or cabinet is via two sided tape. I don't know about you, but I don't want to attach anything to an of my furniture/electrical equipment by two sided tape.

All in all, Wii Sports was fun. And hopefully I'll have a chance to goof around with an actual game sometime soon.

Survivor: Cook Islands Episode 9 Thoughts

Before I begin on Survivor, I'd like to give Global a Jenny-esque one fingered salute. Thanks for cutting away from Jenny's last words before she was done. Much appreciated, JERKS! (At least you show us the previews for next week's episode, which is more than I can say for every other show you air. Stupid CRTC rules not letting us see American feeds.)

How about that twist? Just when Raro thought they couldn't be kicked any harder, in comes Mark Burnett et al. with a running kick to their collective groin. After getting rid of dead weight Rebecca, Raro is informed via a Message in a Bottle that they will have to vote out another member immediately. And the Caucasian alliance held to form, giving Jenny the boot. And I think Jenny had every right to be angry. She knew what was going on and held with team Whitey, and yet they gave her the boot when thrown this twist. I have to go to point form on this, because there are a few things to cover:

Why did the Caucasians decide to vote Jenny out after trusting her enough to have her vote with them? Why not Nate, who's out in the cold?
Speaking of Nate, how comfortable do you think he's feeling now that he's truly the outsider in this tribe? (Once Jenny got voted out, I said that Nate was being held down by the man one more time. I think that might be giving the Whiteys a bit too much credit though.) All of the sudden, the Aitu decision to kidnap him looks amazingly smart - Nate has a bit of a bond, and might just be willing to come over to Aitu to give them the edge should a merge happen.
The reactions to the twist was fantastic. Initially, the reactions of "Oh, it must be about the merge," and "Maybe we'll live on the same beach but still act as tribes" were so funny and so far off (why is that is a bottle when Jeff has just announced it in the past?). Then at tribal council, Nate was amusing by reading ahead and having his jaw hit the ground, but Parvati wins with (a) her pre-tribal council realization that they don't normally give good things to losing tribes and (b) her reading the Message in a Bottle and following up with "That's not a merge and that's not cool". For all of her flirting prowess, she either (a) is an innocent little girl deep down or (b) knows how to play the innocent little girl role. (For the record, I don't care either way - she's still fantastic.)

Of course, there was a lot of amusement to be found in this episode. Candace's incredulity and sadness that the mean old Aitu tribe is picking on her and sending her to Exile Island is funny in a "What the hell did you expect?" sort of manner. The taunting of Candace when Aitu announced that she was going to Exile was funny as well. But Jonathan wins this week with his crotch full of fish.

One of the themes of the week was Jonathan working hard around camp to try to prove himself. And he sure did a good job on it. But his method of storing the fish was rather odd. He hung them presumably from his belt, but in a way that it looked like they were actually hanging from his crotch. Needless to say, the jokes were flying last night.

So now, we're into the merge area time, with Nate poised to jump is Jonathan doesn't get there first. So who's to go? For the second week in a row, I'm going with Adam. He's a phsyical threat and a part of the Caucasian alliance, so it's killing two birds with one stone. The only mystery is who puts the knife in his back, and I don't know the answer to that right now. It's probably Nate, but it could be Jonathan, depending on how comfortable he feels.

Rather quick Survivor: Cook Islands Episode 8 Thoughts

Just some quick thoughts, bulletpoint style, about Episode 8. I'll try to come back with a bit more complete post about it, but offer no guarantees.

• Candace=not too bright. Seriously, you can't gut out 5 more days before a likely merge and you get to hang around with your friends? You want to put a target on you and your boyfriend by becoming all cozy with him? Hopefully Parvati is smart enough to stay away from these two.


• with that said, Jonathan=teh stupid. I know why Jonathan did it - Candace was his security blanket in his alliance with Yul, Becky et al. And he had intentions of putting together an all Caucasian final four alliance. But instead he shoots himself in his foot by looking extremely untrustworthy, AND his desired final four alliance is in trouble. His only possible saving grace is if he ends up being a swing vote between Parvati/Adam/Candace and Nate/Jenny/Rebecca.


• Adam can get off of my TV screen right now. His macho-agressive "I want to take a brick to Jonathan's head" is utter bullshit and harkens back to Judd/Jamie/Bobby Joe from Guatemala. It's going to be amusing when he finds out that he got played by Candace on the Jonathan issue.


• I called the Brad eviction. I certainly did not call that he would be the first member of the jury. What exactly this means, I don't know. Because right now, if everybody makes the jury, there would be 10 members of the jury. My guess is that the next 3 people voted out will not make the jury, and we will end up to our normal 7 person jury.


• Anybody cheering on Raro instead of Aitu has no soul. Heck, Ozzy is this close to getting a pass for his stupid throwing of a challenge.


• Who goes next week? I'm going to say Adam in a shocker. We get the Adam/Candace/Parvati vs. Nate/Jenny/Rebecca split, and Jonathan takes out the guy who he finds out wants to get him out.

Adding to the blogroll

As you will probably have noticed, there are a couple of new additions to the (relatively small) blogroll on the sidebar.

First is Your Mom is in a Bucket, Boyd's blog of putting moms in buckets. Who will be next?

And second is Overheard at Western. Kids say the darndest things, but students at Western can just be ridiculous.

Quick comment about Bills/Packers

The Terry Donahoe (sp?) announce crew is absolutely horrible. For every interesting insight they have, they have 5 or more comments about how amazing Brett Favre is.

(UPDATE: Favre is apparently a "champion" because he tried to force a quick throw in and instead it gets picked. Why is he a "champion"? Because he "prevented" a touchdown return. How did he "prevent' said touchdown? By running down the field diving at Ko Simpson and not even coming close to him. I can't tell you who actually stopped the touchdown, but it was not Favre.)

(UPDATE 2: According to the Fox Sports NFL Game Day blog, it was Ahman Green who stopped the return. And Fox just showed Favre's miscues.)

(UPDATE 3: And the final reason why the Bills won? Because they had a bye week to prepare for the mighty Green Bay Packers.)

Survivor: Cook Islands Episode 7 Thoughts

Well, you got me again Survivor. I really thought that I was going to be wrong this week. Then you throw that immunity challenge at me, and Aitu does something stupid and I turn out to be right for a second week in a row.

The part that really hurts is that I had an excellent post all ready to go about how destructive the Blue tribe had become once they had lost all hope. Then, against all odds, they win the damn immunity challenge and we get Flicka's deathmarch.

So I'm left scrambling here, trying to determine what to write about. (How about what happened on the show?) Nah, too obvious. What's the overriding theme here? Being a strong swimmer is a good thing on Survivor? How about winning makes everything better? Nah, the overriding theme here is trust.

The one thing about Survivor is that you need to have trust in somebody. Because you won't make the final two if you do not trust somebody else to support you. And this is what did Flicka in. She did not trust her tribe to have her back, and made it known that she did not trust her tribe. Then, once it was known that Aitu would be going to Tribal Council, she pressed everybody to make a decision right at the time she was talking to them. They did, even though they did not verbalize that to her. She sealed her own fate.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have to look at Brad and Jonathan. Both have done enough to cause their tribe not to trust them. In Jonathan's case, I don't know if it could have been avoided. He could have plaed the game not as hard as he did, but I don't know if that gets him to as good ao a position as he is in right now. But Brad, well Brad is playing a poor game. I don't get what he is trying to accomplish. First he puts himself on the puzzle because he thinks that the Blue Tribe "has problems finishing strong". Which of course is proven when they don't even get to the puzzle stage because they struggle with the swimming. (Shockingly, Adam, Parvati and Rebecca struggled with the swimming stage. And Rebecca's attempt to swim let me come up with this, the joke of the week:

Jeff: Rebecca does not have a key!
Me: Nor does she have a top!

Hey, I laughed.)

(BTW, this challenge actually made the Nate kidnapping a strong move. It was also smart for them to sit Nate out as it lets them make somebody available to be sit for the immunity challenge. So well done Aitu. Even if it didn't work out for you.)

Getting back to Brad, he first messes up by not swimming during the reward challenge. Then he proceeds to provide half-hearted defenses, like the aforementioned "I'm good at puzzles" defense, and the "I messed up, my bad" defense. Now his tribe has doubts about him. If the previews are to be believed, Brad proceeds to tell his tribe that it's every man for themselves. Unless he's saved by the surprise twist (which looks like a "You have 10 seconds to decide if you want to switch tribes" twist), he is done for, and he's not even thinking about what he's saying now.

So there you go. My boot pick for next week is Brad. And I'll even throw in that this is where we gete to see the beginning of the end of the Blue tribe, as they begin their path to Pagong-dom.

(On a personal note, next week's update won't be posted until at least Friday. I will be out of town and I have no guarantees that I will be able to see the show next week at its regular time, let alone being able to post anything.)

Your new greatest thing to be found on the Internet

The NHL is teaming with Google Video to present The NHL on Google Video. You can see full length games sans commercials. (Of course, this only lasts for the first couple of weeks of existence.)

It looks like each team has at least 5 game available to watch, along with some classic games. (Leafs fans can watch the Leafs win their last Stanley Cup - just look under the Canadiens games.)

(h/t to the on the job James Mirtle)