Legalisation

I think you misread me, Max. I’m not a hardcore supporter of the legalisation of marijuana, but I am a supporter of the basic human right to do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else. And in my own experience I’ve never seen anybody on pot do anything worse than I’ve seen people do on alcohol. (Granted, people do terrible things when they’re drunk, but in our society we blame that on the individual, not the beer, right?) I’m not a fan of teenagers embracing “pot culture”, either, but I think a big part of it is simply that it’s forbidden. When I was in high school it was “Coed Naked” T-shirts and L.A. Raiders jackets. Now it’s stoner wear. I don’t know anybody who would smoke pot but doesn’t because it’s illegal. They do it anyway. Making it legal isn’t necessarily going to increase the demand. It’s just going to make it regulate-able and keep young people from going to jail (or being denied college funds) for something that doesn’t hurt anybody.

Okay, I now eagerly await your rebuttle. Man, this take me right back to being on the Speech team in high school!

Survival

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Voyeurism is bad. Reality shows are bad. People are all attention-grabbing whores at heart. But I refuse to agree that killing rats and eating them when you’re STARVING is bad. (Sorry, Brigita.) I suppose drowning them was a bit much, but I doubt the animal rights people would have been any happier about Simon whacking their heads off with a machete. And what’s the point of Uzma’s quote? “I saw the vicious side of people, their crass vulgarity.” Since when is doing what people have done since they climbed down out of the trees vicious or vulgar? What does she actually thing goes on in a meat-packing plant? I’ve got no illusions about it, but I don’t think I need to make apologies for it either.

I was just looking at webcams on Amazon when my attention was caught by the lists they have down the side of the page. Some of them are hilarious! Here’re just a couple I saw:

  • Gifts for Cord-Haters, by Dan Garlington, Cord-Hater
  • Anger Management 101, by halo1000, angry guy
  • What I’d buy if I owned a DVD player, by tarunthegreat, Former Amazon intern
  • Robbed by the Oscars, a list by Gregory Kastigar, disgruntled Oscar viewer
  • Top Five Space/Time Reality Bending Films, by Christopher Ganir, Futurist extraordinaire
  • Movies I have written haiku about at www.dimspace.com, by ben@dimspace.com, movie fan

Have you found any funny ones?

It’s very hard to be an American and have the sneaking suspicion that Canada, of all nations, is becoming cooler than you. On a related note, how many people predict a sudden influx of American immigrants to our neighbor up north? Yeah, just about everybody.

Goodbye, sweet Kerolene.UK Survivor: Man, it’s starting to get ugly. Helang, who last episode suffered a team-dividing tie vote at Tribal Council, continued their downward slide. Ular, on the other hand, are bonding as a team and look to be unstoppable. The highlights of the third episode:

  • The lines are pretty clearly drawn in Helang. It’s the three “old” members (Andy, Jayne, and James) versus the three “younger” members (Adrian, Charlotte, and Uzma), with Simon riding the fence and playing up to both groups. They all play nicey-nice when they’re together, but as soon as they separate they start slagging each other off. Personally, I’m rooting for the old folks. Charlotte and her beeatches just really get on my nerves.
  • The reward challenge involved five members of each team balancing on a log and trying to spell out words with letters on the T-shirts they were wearing. Ular was much better at it, and they won four tins of baked beans and equipment to spear fish. As Mick noted afterwards of Helang, “They seem to have lost…their leader. They looked totally shot away.”
  • Back at Helang, I thought I noticed a funny glance between Charlotte and Adrian. And when I checked the BBC site this morning, surprise! They were having an extra-marital affair! And you thought that Colleen and Greg thing was exciting. We actually have people goin’ at it in the shelter!
  • The immunity challenge was even more embarrassing for Helang. The teams had to dive down into the sea and carry a heavy chest all the way up to the beach. Helang was still near the beginning when Ular set their trunk down at the finish line.
  • On Tribal Council day, Simon horrified some of the squeamish members of Helang (Charlotte and Uzma, again) by drowning some rats he caught. Then he cooked ’em and ate ’em. Hey, go Simon. Do whatcha need to do.
  • Charlotte revealed that she, Uzma, and Adrian have a voting alliance. They don’t say who they’re going to vote off, but it’s pretty obvious that Jayne’s in their sights.
  • At Tribal Council, the most amazing thing happens. After Charlotte and Adrian have voted for Jayne, Uzma gets up and votes for James. I turned to Snookums: “WHAT? I thought they had an alliance? Is she just so dumb that she messed up the names?” To which he answered, “I think she’s been spending too much time sniffing the kerolene.” HA!
  • So anyway, Uzma’s gone. She seemed pretty happy about it, though. I thought her post-partum BBC article was pretty hilarious. She predicts that Charlotte is going to win it all. Uh-huh. Uzma, just because Charlotte was the pretty, popular girl who deigned to hang out with you, that doesn’t mean everybody else is in love with her too. She wouldn’t last one Tribal Council with the members of Ular. Uzma also claims that she was voted out because of her aversion to eating the rats. As opposed to, say, her complete and utter uselessness. Whatever.

Thursday should be pretty interesting. Helang need to get their collective ass in gear or they’re going to be in poor shape for the tribal merger. One more defeat and stick a fork in ’em, they’re done.