S:13 - Song of the Sekou
The king of realitytv is back for a 13th installment - Survivor: Cook Islands (aka S:13).
Yay!
Let me start out by clearly stating that the controversial “social experiment” of initially splitting folks up based on ethnicity doesn’t bother me at all. I thought that it would be an interesting spin on things, and the first episode bore that out. It’s not controversial, at least among people capable of rational thought - which is probably why the PC Police on the left got so bent out of shape. A more important thing to note is this: as a result of the need to have four equally represented ethnic groups, the producers had to recruit participants. This is interesting because (as has been reported) it has resulted in (IIRC) a majority of participants who really aren’t familiar with the game of Survivor and how it’s played. That really hasn’t happened since the first three seasons, and it’ll be very interesting to see how it will play out.
The first episode struck me as being atypically “mature” & well formed. Usually the first episode has a very disjointed & hectic feel to it. Either the producers did an exceptional job of editing, and/or this is an exceptional group/cast. I tend to think that it’s a bit of both, leaning a little more towards the editing.
That said, this does seem like an enjoyable cast. No psychos like Shane, to be sure, but Cao Boi definitely has some potential in terms of entertainment value (his riff on the “old country” & removal of Brad’s “bad wind”/migraine was priceless!). I think that Ozzy could be a formidable player, along with Nick (if he can keep the three ladies happy & survive until a merge/twist of some sort).
No one did anything that was horrifically stupid or shockingly annoying (shades of Cirie’s fear of a leaf), although I must say that Jessica (aka Flicka, aka the-new-Courtney) didn’t help herself by letting the chickens (including Jonathan’s pilfered piece of poultry) escape. Billy looks like he’s well on his way to annoying the bejeebers out of his Latino compatriots, and Sekou certainly didn’t do anything to keep a low profile among the city dweller, er black, tribe.
At this point, my least favorite tribe is the white tribe, although Jessica’s exclamation that they were the “whiteys” was a chuckle-worthy moment. Parvati is probably the early favorite of mine to emerge from that group.
Finally, it was quite obvious that Probst is more than willing to stir the pot, what with his various pointed observations, like about how the black tribe made their decision to send Jonathan to Exile Island (btw, Exile Island looks absofreakinlutely brutal this season — it makes last season’s version look like a spa resort in comparison, if you ask me…).
In the end, Sekou’s fate was sealed when the black tribe couldn’t get their puzzle boat put together quickly enough in the immunity challenge. They worked together horribly, and then paid the price by not being able to make up the deficit. Sekou had the misfortune of being in a tribe with 2 men & 3 women, and being the more bombastic of the 2 men to boot. Thus, it didn’t really surprise me that he got voted out.
Let’s hope the quality continues nest week. At the very least, though, the fact that the preview showed a tribe contemplating throwing a challenge (in episode 2!) should mean that things will be interesting to watch…
-ghp
(btw, if you or your kids are Veggie Tales fans, then you should “get” the title of this post…)
Get this woman a burqa!
Rosie O’Donnell is a pox, a blight if you will, upon our culture. I don’t feel like taking the time & effort necessary for listing all the ways in which she is a thoroughly contemptible person. Just for illustration, check out this video over at Hot Air…
“Radical Christianity” is more of a threat to America than “radical Islam”? 
Really? 
No, Rosie, I think that radical stupidity, as you’ve so ably demonstrated, is the greatest threat to America.
-ghp
Wisdom from Ablog!
These quotes come from two recent posts by Rev. Beisel over at One Lutheran… Ablog!. These posts are quite good, and amazingly well-related (I’m not sure if Pr. Beisel intended the linkage, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did, ’cause he’s good…).
I think that the second quote is a source reason for the first. More simply put, Satan attempts to drive us from the foot of the cross by convincing us that our problems are not a matter of our sinfulness, and, thus, confession & absolution aren’t needed; rather, we need to turn the focus inward onto what we can do to heal ourselves.
That’s not to say that many problems (say, mental illness) aren’t physical/medical, mind you — to do that would be foolishly ignorant. It’s more accurate to state, however, that we are constantly tempted to deflect the source of the problem away from ourselves at the same time that we try to usurp the authority to fix the problem.
C&A works. It’s God’s gift to us, because He loves us. Satan cannot abide that, and must try to subvert it by keeping us from it. Unfortunately, he’s been all too successful, as proven by the dearth of individual C&A in our congregations, and the number of worship services that have jettisoned even the corporate C&A.
-ghp
Brown’s noise
A few weeks back, I finally broke down and gave in. On a trip to the local public library, I checked out copies of Dan Brown’s novels Angels & Devils and The DaVinci Code. Even more, I actually read them! 
Vast amounts of ink have been spilled reviewing, discussing, bemoaning, and condemning these novels, especially The DaVinci Code. As novels go, however, here’s the worst thing that I can say about them:
As works of literature, they fall short. Even more damning, as contemporary “page-turner” novels, they stink. They are formulaic to the point of absurdity. The characters have the depth of the puddles on my driveway on a sunny day. They are duplicitous, in that novels (WORKS OF FICTION) should not contain disclaimers/contentions that they describe “real” things accurately — if that’s such a concern, then write a non-fiction book. I respect fiction, and counterfactual history in particular, too much to let it be sullied by such lowbrow tactics.
I didn’t expect anything from these novels theologically, as I already knew that they were full of crap. I knew going in that the author had an axe to grind wrt orthodox Christianity. Even so, I was still amazed at the ways in which the author worked to give his non-historical suppositions a veneer of plausibility and/or “truthiness.” Dan Brown obviously hates orthodox Christianity, because both books are full of venomous slander that serves no purpose other than to make people doubt the Truth.
I actually found Angels & Devils to be a better “read” than The DaVinci Code, as it was somewhat less implausible (to damn it with faint praise…). I also found the historical underpinnings of it to be of greater interest, and the “science” element had a nice Tom Clancy-ish feel to it. Sure, it fell apart under the weight of its own outrageous implausibility in the end, but at least it wasn’t horrifically offensive right from the conceptual get-go like the Code. I find an indictment of the Papacy much less problematic than one lodged against Christ Himself. So sue me.
All things considered, I enjoyed the Left Behind series more than Brown’s two novels. While both sets of novels are severely lacking theologically (the former via “mere” heterodoxy, and the latter with more blatant blasphemy/heresy), I never got the feeling that LaHaye & Jenkins were putting on airs. Brown, OTOH, seems much more enamored of his “craft” and comes across as being much more pretentious. Quite frankly, neither set/series should be high on anyone’s reading list, especially if someone isn’t properly grounded theologically.
Either a good secular novelist, or something like Paul Maier’s Skeleton novels, would be a much better choice for meeting your fiction-reading needs.
-ghp
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