Awww kine, I love you too ;)

Thanks to Uber for posting for me.

So many good points have already been made regarding gingerbug's "lesson", but I really must add a couple things.

How many millions of people sit and watch Survivor on television every single week, then kick back on their sofa and trash the contestants? How many people watch the show for the specific reason that they like to talk crap about all the idiots and their stupid strategies and behaviors?

Can anyone honestly say they are above making negative statements about participants in the show this game is based on?

The "board" in constant question is NOT a part of Diary Survivor. It is an independent entity, and operates for the sole purpose of letting people talk senseless garbage about other people who make their lives public on the internet. It is no different from countless magazines, talk shows, radio programs, and tell-all books that exist for the sole purpose of talking senseless garbage about people who participate in "reality-based" television shows.

Trust me, people: if you were on the REAL Survivor, you would be forced to endure negative and hurtful comments far beyond anything jokingly said on this insignificant little bulletin board.

These are the things people need to consider when signing up for Survivor. They need to sit back and think about all the criticism they will have heaped upon them. And they need to familiarize themselves with the rules because Jeff isn't there in their camp 24-hours a day to remind them of those rules! The idea that we need to post the rules on every single page is ludicrous.

If you don't like what people are saying about you, don't go to those sites. And if you don't like the fact that people are saying bad things about you "out there somewhere" that you aren't aware of, THAT'S HOW THE GAME WORKS. It's a competition! The whole IDEA is for people to NOT LIKE YOU and try to VOTE YOU OUT.

One final thing (for the hundredth time): The judges play such an insignificant part in this game! We vote on one diary entry per week to give one person a 1:13 chance of not being voted off. That's it. If there was a way to make the judges obsolete, trust me, we would have done it already. But I guess everyone needs a scapegoat, and it's easier to blame the judges for your misfortunes than to blame the other contestants who have actually voted you off, or even blame yourself for not playing the game better. Fortunately, the judges are well aware of the fact that they are scapegoats. And that's why they like blowing off steam by talking senseless garbage. If and when you become a judge, you'll know what it's like. Remember, all the judges know what it's like on both sides of the game -- the contestants only know one half of the experience.

Blogger is being very temperamental today. Here is a post from Sinnamon, who is having a hard time making the damn thing work in China:

I have a question: how does posting on Kim's board make a judge baised? The woman has been kicked off the island for weeks now, most of us didn't start to be naughty over there until she was gone. Contrary to Scourge's idiotic beliefs, any pro-Kim conspiracy obviously has FAILED miserably considering the fact that she was THE SECOND PERSON VOTED OFF.
I guess the judges are so bad at everything that they can't even get being baised right.

And yes, a little proxy is so very nice, fab really, but please don't try to make us believe that some random person who uses that exact same proxy and is totally unrelated to you or the contest, stumbled across Kim's board and decided to cause a little chaos. Then ventured back to diaryland, started a little anti-ds4 diary that was very pro-GB, and it was simply just a coincedence. Frankly that just smells like bullshit.

Yes. Birthdays are a good thing. You are lucky to have one, Ms. Pischina.

I'd like to respond to some of Gingerbug's comments:

You first comment suggests that guidelines are needed to get people aquainted with what is and is not considered appropriate under game rules: I think that it's pretty clear from the Diaryland Survivor rules/guidelines that anything goes. You can write about any damn thing your lil' heart desires... ranging from why you like to massage butterfly's velvety wings to a rant about the unfair abuse of abacuses in foriegn lands. If you want to apply it to an IC entry, go ahead... it's up to the judges to decide if they like it or not. One would hope that a contestant wouldn't take a topic about "Why kitties are cuddly" as an opportunity to talk about racial superiority. If that were the case, I can guarantee you that contestant wouldn't get a single IC vote. One would hope that the contestants would also take such comments as being inappropriate and give that contestant the ol' boot-a-gone. However, it's part of the game, just like on the show it's based on, Survivor. You can't predict how people act, which makes it all that more fun to watch and get addicted to. In my opinon, at least.

Your second comment suggests that once a contestant is booted off the faux island, that contestant should have all board rights revoked. Well, in my opinon, that would suck big sweaty balls. If that was the case in DS3, the contestant blog would have just been me and Jonny talking about why Snatch Magnets work best in water. Again, I think this is also pretty well implied in the guidelines... this contest is BASED on Survivor. This is not actually the real thing. If it were, you would all be dehydrated and wouldn't even be talking about swapping cookie recipes because you'd be too busy plotting each other's demise. And I don't know if this is made clear in the guidelines, but the winner isn't getting a million dollars. I don't even think you're getting $100. So, if we all understand that this isn't the real Survivor, then it should also be understood that not everything is going to be done and thought out like the real Survivor. I think this last paragraph came across as snippy on my part. For that I apologize, but I'm not going to edit as it's really how I feel.

Third comment: posting on an outside forum. I agree. It could imply that there is a possibility of bias behavior occuring. I should state that I am a member of the forum as well. However, I don't participate in the contestant bashing and only give real thought to threads that have to do with politics or writing pen pals in prison. I have enough brains to know that there's people out there that don't agree the way that I do concerning some of the contestants- just as those participating in the bashing of some worthy contestants know that not everyone agrees with them. If there's going to be a rule about judges/contestants/organizers not participating in outside forums, then there should also be a rule that no one can use IM for any sort of communication, as there's the possibility that bias behavior may occur. And also, lets not have any e-mails be exchanged between judges/contestants/ organizers because someone might say something that's considered biased. Well hell, while we're at it, let's just shut down this entire contest because a winner is chosen at the end and choosing one person out of 13 shows that the contest is biased.

I understand that the things that are being said about some of the contestants are hurtful. But sometimes, you just have to grow some thick skin and weather the storm. It'll pass. Just nail up your windows and bring in your favorite fern. If you can survive being kicked off the faux island and come out unscathed, it'll better prepare you for other faux things out there.

I'd like to repeat the last paragraph of the DS guidelines:this contest is for entertainment purposes only (just like those freaky psychic hotlines.) Please don't take it too personally if you are voted off. It doesn't mean that your diary isn't great. In fact, all of the diaries involved are amazing. If you think this contest will emotionally scar you in any way then please do not enter. I can't afford to pay for the therapy of both you and me. Just remember, it's only a game. "

It's only a game. It's up to you to weigh how much of it to take seriously. I recommend very little as it's just not worth the energy in the long run.

PS. We don't all believe what we hear. And we don't all believe that what's on television is real. Kind of like how we all think that this game isn't actually the real Survivor, but just a contest on the Internet that's not really a big deal.

PPS. Good idea on the suggestion for stream lining the DS site. Perhaps next year you could help out with the layout. But that's up to Meg Probst.

Happy B-Day Pischina!!!!!

Anyway, I think the "fair and ethical" thing to do is ignore posts from people who don't have the courage to sign an actual name, but that's just me. However, posting on the contestants' blog, Gingerbug addresses the same concerns.

She says that it hurts the air of impartiality for judges to post on a forum where others are bashing contestants. I disagree. There's been a bit of contestant bashing on the judges' blog too, does that mean anything?

By the way, I'm one of the people posting on those boards, and I was the judge that cast the sole vote for Gingerbug's entry in the last Immunity Challenge voting. I thought the entry was rather sweet, but obviously nobody else agreed with me.

The Survivors are talking about candy and divinity and caramel and chocolate and I would just like to state that November 8 is my birthday and all gifts of candy and goodies will be happily accepted.
Of course, I would never never ever trade an immunity vote for a basketful of chocolate, nuh uh, absolutely wouldn't happen.
But you could send me some to test me...

I'm rather surprised that the viewers seem to be in favor of barring booted contestants from the other blog. I imagine that things would get very quiet over there once you got down to three or four people or so. I had no idea that the viewers were so Darwinian.

I'm leaving Saturday morning, bright and early - I have to be at the airport before 7 AM.

However, I WILL vote in this IC, in fact I have already! I also MAY be able to vote in the next two ICs, but it all depends on how things go when I get to China. Cheers!

Ah, the Survivor buff. I, too, felt an irrational craving when I saw the commercial that runs after Survivor, but then I asked myself - what would I do with such a thing? If I were to wear it not only would I look like a moron, but one of the junior gangstas that infest my neighborhood would probably think I was wearing gang colors and pop a cap in my ass.

However, if it was a T-Shirt I would have ordered four. One can never have too many t-shirts.

I wonder why the other tribe is named "Chewing Gum." They spell it funny, too. Is Wrigley's a sponsor?

Yeah, the Country Music Awards is preempting Amazing Race tonight. Part of me is cursing them, another part is thanking them for leaving me an extra precious hour to get more work done before I leave for China.

Uber! You leave your brother alone! If you quit looking at him, you won't know whether or not he is staring at you! Now...go to your room! And don't you come out until you can apologize! ;0)

Why can't I open up Sabine's pictures to see what a hottie Sabine is? Thor must have some sort of lock on my computer, shutting me off from anything "hottie"!!! Word up: Never marry an internet engineer.

Mike - I said "these" words, not "three" words. Are you sure you're in an alliance with just yourself? You can't read...do you know what you signed?!!! And I say "Gee-zus!" because if I'm going to blaspheme, I'm going to do it right - God Dammit!

Jonny - This is the perfect challenge for you to vote on. You should know exactly how to vote...and you should tell me how to vote because I haven't a clue! There. I've said it. I don't have a clue on how I vote. I just throw a dart at my computer screen.

And to the children of the Blogs: "I know you are, but what am I? Infinity!" Old, my ass. My boob may be leaking but I've still got all my teeth. Well, most of them are mine!

Forgot to say: Belinda good luck with the move! We'll miss you. When you get net access, email us. Let me know when you think will be the last time you can vote. When/if you can jump back into judging let me know and I will re-add you.

Sabine is a hottie, damn! When are we starting that commune Uber and Sinn? Now if we could get Sabine to update her diary!

Where the hell is Mattu? Post, or I will stalk you again.

If we had the TV topic during DS3, I bet there would be at least 2 or 3 contestants stuck in Sunnydale with Buffy.
Yelnad, are you growing tired of the contest? Don't make me cry!

Pischina, if you're reading this, my thoughts are with you. Hope you're okay. I'll be sending you a note. At least you finally released Tobias - he emailed me! He seems a little fragile still though. What did you do to him? Now, we need to discuss Jonny. Can't we just share him? Cmon, I let you have Robert for a few weeks.

Anyone who is in the entertainment biz (or knows people that know people), and has not delivered Jeff Probst to my house is pure evil.
I will be in your, uhm...alliance if you bring him here.

Hey Kathy!

"But Maaaa - HE started it!"

Personally I am in a judge's alliance. Yes, the truth is out there. I've formed an alliance with myself. We get along most times, but currently I'm not speaking to him.

Sin, you say no one has been kissing judge's ass, but, that's just you. Everyone is totally kissing my ass. Or maybe not. But, it seems nicer when I think of it like that.

Belinda, we knew that you were going to be moving at some point, don't feel bad. Just stop in when you get a chance. Good luck with the move. :)

Kit, "three words come to mind" , those were hella long words, that contained spaces and punctuation in between. And, when you say Sweet Jesus, do you say gee-sus? or hay-seuss? I need to know these things, as I am creating a play about us all, and I need the characters to be perfect.

Jonny, as far as judge type things to discuss, I would like to pose a question to the board, and that question is, "Donuts, are the holes ingenious because it creates a gripping spot, or ingenious because it allows bakers to sell more air?"

Yelnad, why do you want to speed up the contest? We need more drama, don't make me get all scourge on us again.

And this concludes our broadcasting day. Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Mike (racer96)

Awww but K, I thought you would look so cute in a school marm outfit.

Well Jonny, I know one judgley thing on everyone's mind, what are you wearing under that robe? ;)

Hey Meg? Any way we can speed this contest up at all? :)

i think this challenge will be tough for me to vote on, as it is my industry, and i will feel like playing network execs. order a few pilots. give a thirteen episode commitment to this one. try and attach some stars to this one. as i've been spending the majority of my week working on my pilot, i have these issues on the brain. my friends band made entertainment weekly and they got an A-.

anyway, what's some judgley thing we could discuss that can get these boards a hoppin?

These words come to mind as I read the back and forth between the contestants and judges blogs:

"I know you are, but what am I?"

"Mom! He's looking at me!"

And I can't help but think:

"Do you want me to give you something to cry about?"

Sweet Jesus - I can get this sort of behavior from Thing 1 and Thing 2!

Hey BB - We'll be missing you! I hope you get your access back soon!

As Meg (and maybe some others) know I was planning on moving out of home this year and will be losing my internet connection. The planned date for this move was at the start of December but I managed to get a place to live early and am therefore moving next week. Sadly this means that I will no longer be able to judge after the 16th of November. I know this sucks but it is beyond my control as I am a poor, unemployed student who can't afford to pay internet bills without my mum to do so.

I'm sorry if this causes the contestants to get all "blah" over another judge leaving and causes more hassles for Meg, believe me, if I could continue voting I would. Donations are quite welcome to the "Get Belinda's internet back" fund.

There is no point in a judge's alliance because alliances are all about protecting yourself and none of us are contestants, we have no real self-interests to protect. Sure we can choose friends to help out but that's just not as fun. None of the judges have the same friends or the same favorite contestants, if you are talking about a 10 judge voting block, each one would probably have a different person they would want to stay in. And getting ten judges to agree on one thing is harder than getting 3 contestants to stop smuggling in beef jerky.

Besides, what do we get out of it? Not much. And as everyone knows I am all about me, me, me and if there is nothing in it for me, then screw it! (Hint: if there is something in it for me, then let me know)

You know you are getting on someone's touchy side if they start pointing out grammatical errors. Perhaps you hit a little too close to the truth there, Uber. Ol' Kine is trying to distract you!

Oh and so far no one has really been kissing any judge's ass, I know that might a hurt a bit though Kiney-poo you were so hoping to be "different" in your little angsty schoolmarm outfit. Personally I like to keep my buttox away from all contestants lips, taking a bite might be a little too tempting.

For July, you can win my immunity vote by 1) writing the best entry! (this is of course the required judges repsonse) or 2) sending money and since the exchange rate is in the US dollar favor over here, it doesn't have to be a lot. ;)

Tel: I have tea leaves! I have tea leaves! Hell I have been here for three months, I think I AM a tea leaf.

Wow, I go away for the weekend, and you guys get all chatty kathy. (Sorry, no, that's not a Kit reference, it was actually a name that my friends use.) Perhaps that's just a hint that I should go away more often. You guys all hate me so.

I can't type worth beans right now, as I smashed my thumb, and it makes me not want to use it, therefore my fingers are constantly reaching out and trying to hit the keys for the thumb, my fingers are nothing if not considerate of my thumb.

And since we're discussing how we choose to vote for IC's, I like to spice it up and vary it from IC to IC. This last IC I cut and pasted the entry backwards, and looked for hidden messages. I'm thinking on the next IC, I might run it through babelfish through a couple of different translations until I get back to english.

Ahhh babelfish, how I love thee.

Mike (racer96)

I count vowels. Who ever has the highest vowel to consonant ratio wins my vote.

Tea leaves. It's all about who puts money for me under the tea leaves.

Well, my strategy has been to vote for whichever contestant mentions General Hospital the most. Bonus points if you mention Jason Morgan. Could tie in nicely with this week's Immunity Challenge.

Another one?

"I'm sorry, but you have reached your alliance limit. To purchase more alliances, please contact the administrator."

how is everyone doing on this fine monday? i'm bored. let's form a judges alliance.

Actually, July, that's an interesting analysis. The judges do have an advantage in that they vote first, mainly because it would sort of invalidate the game to have them vote second. :) However I still think that any one contestant has more power than any three judges.

Strategical considerations aren't supposed to effect how a judge votes, it's supposed to be all about the writing, which is the way I've been voting. If there is a judges alliance, I sure don't know about it - when the results are tallied I keep finding myself as someone's sole vote. That means that Sinnamon and I aren't even voting as a bloc.

Mr. Hamster looks at his Philosophy degree, currently being used to help weigh down the top of a hamster cage, and wonders why Mr. Kinetix feels the need bring up such irrelevant matters. Typos and bad syntax happen to us all from time to time, it can't be helped. There are even a couple of mistakes in recent entries of Mr. Kinetix' own diary, which is otherwise witty and well-written.

However, when it comes to antagonism, Mr. Kinetix wins the paper crown for Judge Needling, an interesting strategy to say the least. I don't suppose it matters though considering the judges' miniscule effect on how the game is played. Each judge has only one vote out of 19 (or so) that can only protect one player out of nine.

I'm not a touch typist, but I type fairly quickly. In the last few months some annoying bad habits have crept into my typing. Instead of capitalizing the first letter in a word, I'll capitalize the first two. Even more annoying are the usage errors for synonyms, like "to" for "two" and "too" or "their" for "there." Spellcheckers always miss them and they are hard to spot in proofreading. I have no idea why I'm making these mistakes - it's the sort of thing I'd never do when writing something out longhand.

Since I know how easy it is to make such errors, I generally don't bother to point them out in others' posts. Besides, it would make me sound like a nit-picking schoolmarm.

By the way, about "fixing" the contest... I didn't know it could have kittens! Anyway...

The only way the judges could fix the contest is by voting as a bloc for a certain person's immunity challenges, but so far nobody has won two ICs, of course making the previous round's winner vulnerable to getting voted off (see:loudwoman). The judges can only protect one person per tribal council so their effect on the game is minimal, but it increases marginally with each round as the number of contestants dwindle.

So, the real power in the game comes from the contestants who vote each other off in the Tribal Councils. The contestants "fixing" the game is known as "having an alliance," which certainly is not against the rules and whether there is an alliance or not is open to debate. However, the fact that the contestants seem to be bending over backwards to make us think there ISN'T a serious alliance makes me sure that there is one. Methinks they doth protest too much, etc. Well, I'm sure it will all come out in the wash.

Ah, I see scourgy-poo is at it again. Every time I read something he wrote about DL-Survivor I have to reduce my estimation of his IQ downward once more. Seriously, what is the point of commenting on something when you are too lazy to check even the simplest facts?

So, what do we know about this person?

1) He is almost certainly from England - Britslang abounds in his posts like "winge" and "bloke." And he seems to be concerned with mainly British issues, like the EU, etc.

2) I'm assuming (rightly or wrongly) that scourge is a "bloke." Females, in general, have little interest in Formula-1 racing, although how they can resist the lure of very noisy cars driving in circles is beyond me.

3) Scourge is NOT a failed DL-Survivor 4 applicant. There was only one applicant from England, and it wasn't a guy - it was Gingerbug. The fact that they both are from England doesn't mean anything, especially since the writing in both journals is so different in tone.

4) Scourge is probably very short since almost everyone's sarcasm and irony seems to be going right over his head.

It is odd how this guy seems to know more about DL-Survivor than a casual observer would, and yet shows some woeful ignorance of some simple facts, like Sinnamon being a girl, or how the game actually works. Also, his accusation of the contest being fixed is laughable - I don't think he realized that Sinnamon was JOKING when she said it was.

I'm speaking for all the Judges. Just because I'm in the mood to do that. And I'm sure that they appreciate me doing this for them. Yep.

I have read one of Scourge's DS4 bashing entries. And it was incredibly ridiculous so I read no more.

Why is everyone still reading? Does nobody here know that the best way to eliminate the scourge of the internet is to look away?

If you are of the type who can't refrain from looking away, keep in mind that this scourge is writing from the world of the scourge. What that world is - we don't know. Why take it personally?

Unless, of course, Scourge is dead-on regarding something about you that you thought was a secret to everyone but your best friend on-line. Then of course, you should be worrying about your best friend on-line who's sharing secrets with Scourge. There's your problem. Not Scourge.

Okay. I'm done speaking for all of the Judges.

K. Lo.