And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger...

We were watching Survivor: Marquesas on OLN, it turns out one of my favorite Survivors is in it, Rob Mariano (or more commonly known as Boston Rob or Rob&Amber). Now first of all this is weird because we know him from after this Survivor season because he was in Survivor All Stars and The Amazing Race, this is almost like knowing someone and then getting to see a tape of how they were 3-5 years ago, definitely strange. He is one of my favorites yet he hasn't won any one of the shows has been in (although you can argue that he split a million with Amber in All Stars, but he still did not win outright). The reason I like him is that he is smart enough to manipulate people without them realizing it. Best 2 examples: while on the Amazing Race all of the teams were on a bus, most teams were sitting in the back of the bus. Rob was at the front, with maybe 3 more teams, he convinced each of them to give him money (in this show you only get a set amount of money per "leg") to bribe the bus driver into not opening the back door once they got to their destination. This might not seem huge but the kicker is that he did not put any money in the pot himself therefore making the bribe free for him while earning the other teams trust since they had no clue what he did, and finally getting a nice lead once they arrived, genius. The best one though is when they were at an eating challenge where they had to eat a whole bunch of meat (probably like 8 pounds after being cooked but I'm not sure), he realized pretty quickly that it would be very hard for him to eat all of it, so he asked what would be the penalty for quitting, which was a 4 hour penalty from the time the next team arrived at the challenge. He took the penalty and once the next team arrived he convinced them to quit as well therefore guaranteeing that he would not be the last person to leave that stop, again genius.

After all that background on Boston Rob, I want to talk about something he said during one of the Marquesas episodes ***...Warning, this post will be taking a very weird turn in the next few lines, watch out...*** He said (I'm paraphrasing): "Fear is what keeps people in line, because of fear of being voted off other people will vote with me, ..." Basically he is saying that people are so afraid of being voted off the show that they do what other people tell them to do just as long as their name does not come up. I've seen so many survivors by now to tell you that most of those people are along for the ride and eventually do get voted off. However the reason that line stuck with me is not because it was talking about the game of Survivor but because it described the very reason why religion is so powerful ( Hey, I warned you that this was going to get weird, in fact if you are very into religion, you might not like me anymore, hopefully that won't happen).

Lets think about this for just little bit, do most people believe in God because they truly have faith? Be honest, don't think with your church brain, think with your common sense/analytical brain. You see I've always thought that people believe "just in case", just in case there is a heaven and/or a hell. Religion in its many forms has created such a myth that people are just afraid of the consequences once their life is over, not necessarily during their lives. Its always been done, look at the Indians throughout the Americas (Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, etc), they had many gods they believed in, however most of those were based on natural events like Hurricanes, earthquakes, just the plain old sun and moon. They feared most of these things since they could not explain them and therefore worshiped them so they wouldn't get "mad" and unleash the fury. There is not much difference to modern religion, only that the natural disasters/events have been replaced by a book that tells you what to do and what happens if you don't. Isn't that convenient **please note sarcastic tone here**.

I've always had problems with religion in general and struggled believing, and as I get older I believe less and less. To top it off, I once watched a stand up comedy special featuring George Carlin (probably one of the 5 best comics of all time), the last 20min of his routine were devoted to this topic. In it he goes to say how he decided to worship the Sun, 'cause you can count on it being there, it keeps you warm and it gives light. Now he doesn't pray to the sun, no he wouldn't dare, he preys to Joe Pesci ,because he "looks like a guy who can get things done". But the most fun part about this was when he said that since he started praying to Joe his prayers have come true at a 50-50 rate...the same rate as when he prayed to God. He does go on to say that there is no God but I won't say that because I'm still afraid.

Go ahead, tell me I'm going to Hell...I already know I am...if there is one off course.

The Apprentice…blah, blah, blah

I was watching the apprentice last weekend. Aixa loves this show, I liked it the first 2 times, the 3rd time was ok, right now I’m questioning all this crap.

In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, The Apprentice is what Donald Trump calls a 15 week job interview, basically 16 executives are broken into 2 teams and asked to perform “tasks” each week, where one team wins and off course the other one loses. The losers go to the boardroom where someone gets blamed for the loss and is “fired” (only they weren’t really employees, but who cares, all these people are rich anyway).

The fundamental problem with this show is that there is no consistent way to judge the contestants. You might think this is good for a reality show since it will create drama and what not, but to me its just plain non-sense. Let me explain, for each task a “project manager” is chosen, this person is supposed to lead the team to victory. If a team loses, the project manager chooses 2 team members whom he/she feels is responsible for the loss. So far so good, here is where all the problems begin, The Donald is crazy, it seems he always has some bizarro new thing to judge these people by, so I started thinking to the past seasons of the show came to the conclusion: he makes it up as he goes. Nobody has any idea what the hell he is thinking, he might fire the project manager because he was a “bad leader” or fire the poor bastard who had extensive “event planning experience” (only she forgot to mention that she only planned really, really BORING events). This gets frustrating after a while since he constantly contradicts himself every few firings, this brings me to my second complaint:

The “tasks” are stupid. For every interesting task there is at least four that basically just suck. Perfect example: last week the teams had to create a “technology expo” for old people (like they care anyway, lets be honest, these people were just waiting to die, but that’s besides the point). This task was clearly just an advertisement for Best Buy. Wow, this is the best that Mr Fake Hair can come up with? Give 8 college kids a credit card, free food and beer money and they could do it probably 10 times better than the crap displayed here. Now my biggest problem with this types of tasks is that #1 the winner is determined by the average survey score given by the attendees, #2 the same people do not go to both events. How does this make sense? What if my team gets a bunch of grumpy old men that don’t give a rats ass about the sweetness of TiVo? Whatever.

At least if some of these tasks had realistic goal, it would make more sense but the problem is they take place over a few days. So maybe the first part of the task is interesting, like creat X for X company….but then the second part, sell as many of them as you can in a day, make little sense. Lots of times, teams win by $10 and then have to blame the dumb guy ushering people at the door because he wasn't "aggresive enough". Makes sense doesn't it, yeah, as much sense as my dog defecating on the carpet.

Maybe I’m over-thinking this stuff but these are the things I think about, maybe I should watch it as a zombie and not question any of it, yet you see a show like Survivor and think there is just no match. At this point, America’s Next Top Model is better, at least there are a few good looking ladies and better unintentional comedy…

Maybe I should realize that I’ve finally lost it, who knows?...

I suck at updates

I know, I know, I’m not that good at posting updates. In my defense, I’ve been busy with home improvement projects, work, dogs (don’t get me started on that one), we just went on a little escapade up in northern Michigan, in fact here is a picture I’m very proud of taking

(and yeah if you didn’t know that is Aixa, my wife, she is taken so don’t get any ideas…). With all those things going on there was basically no time to write (that and the fact that I think I have adult ADD plus incredible lazyness)

Ok, lets keep rolling, the next paragraph I wrote at work one time I was having lunch at my desk, it was meant to be a quick post only I never got around to actually posting it:

“As you all know, after finding MyMoneyBlog, FatWallet Forums and all other personal finance blogs, I have been obssesed with getting free money, making the most out of my own money and saving as much as possible for retirement and emergency. In fact I'm so obssesed that I find myself thinking of my next move at really akward times (like during sex, um...I mean sleeping...forget it). We'll I've come across a very interesting 4 part post related to buying a new vehicle http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2005/09/16/buying-a-new-car/. The concept here makes huge sense and while I'm not in the market for buying a new car, I will be applying this in about 2-3 years when its time to get rid of the Mazda we have (not because its bad but because it's a constant reminder of the horrible deal I got at the time, and how much of a dumbass I was back then). Yeah, it might be even dumber to get rid of it because of that reason alone but I know the wife wants a new vehicle at some point, that way I'll just say "Remember, you'll have this car for at least 10 years so make sure you like it...". Well thats a quick one for now, enjoy...”
Moving on, FatWallet’s Finance forum has had my attention for a while, I’ve found many deals, strategies, etc. so I’ve pretty much become obsessed with finances, retirement, rates, credit lines, free money, and so on. I’m actually going nuts, I mean it, my brain hurts half the time, I wonder if there is some sort of anonymous club I can join to get help (stop laughing). Anyway, my buddy Chilly Willy was asking me about identity theft, I remembered seeing something about a credit monitoring service that was pretty cheap, so here is the link to that forum thread http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=0&catid=52&threadid=510510. Basically this is a service provided by TrueCredit (TransUnion company) where you can monitor all your credit reports, get your credit scores (“FAKO” score, which means its not the true score that lenders look at, its more of an estimate but hey it’s a good baseline to know how your credit is doing). It also provides $25,000 identity theft insurance, all this for $7.44 a month, not bad in my opinion. Read the thread, there are ways to bypass the initial $24 fee. [EDIT: I actually just signed up, and did not have to pay the $24. I went to annualcreditreport.com got my free TransUnion credit report. During the process, you need to create a free account with TrueCredit. Once you are done with this report, log out and then follow the instructions detailed on the thread liked above. Its super easy. If you need help let me know, do NOT pay the $24!!!!!!]

Sports:
Baseball
Typically I watch baseball once the playoffs start but this year I’ve been very disconnected from baseball. I don’t know, for now its still boring for me, maybe as games get more important. I will acknowledge that the race just to get to the playoffs was very good (even though I only saw everything through Sportscenter, dadada dadada)

NBA
Felix, you know I have to say something about the Knicks. Well, Isaiah basically just confirmed he has no idea how to build a team (not that I know, but at the rate he is going, why not hire me for 1/10th his salary and get similar results? I’m available if they want me…) If you don’t know what I’m talking about, New York just traded for center Eddy Curry, who is ok at best, has poor work ethic, likes to eat a lot, and generally looks like he doesn’t care. I forgot one other thing, he has a weird heart problem. This not like a drug problem or a drinking problem, there are no anonymous meetings to go to get rid of this problem. In fact, two guys with similar conditions have DIED on the court before. Knowing Isaiah he probably gave him a 10 million dollar a year overpay, and knowing the Knick’s luck he will either die while not hustling downcourt (yes I said d.i.e. ) or he will never play for them and cripple their already paraplegic salary cap. And Larry Brown is loving this ‘cause he now has plenty of escape excuses once he realizes that his team pretty much sucks.

NFL
A few things I’d like discuss about this season so far:

• The Colts are playing good but they have been playing crappy teams (except Jacksonville), and they will keep playing against crap until like week 9 or so when they have a date with the Pats, should be interesting.


• I like Pittsburg but I must admit when watching their games I cringe when Roth-Hamburger drops back to pass. I don’t know, even though I want to see him succeed, I don’t trust him yet. Only time will tell.


• The Lions got absolutely robbed when a Touchdown call to win the game was overturned by an officials review (remember only officials can initiate a review of a play when there are less than 2 minutes left). The rule is you need to have enough evidence to overturn the call on the field, the replay clearly showed Pollard was in-bounds when he caught the pass, so what the hell where the officials looking at? This is crazy…


• Its physically impossible to watch football every Sunday for me. Don’t get me wrong, I can do it but the wrath of the wifee-nator is almost impossible to overcome. I have some strategies though, basically I have identified my 2 favorite teams (Colts, Steelers), if they are on National TV then I’m watching them, actually that is the only strategy I have, it works most times…

I’m falling asleep, so this is all for now, I’m not even going to say when my next post will be. I’m thinking of starting a mailing list to let people know once an update is up, please leave a comment if you think this is a good idea. If I decide to do it, I’ll make a post about it with instructions, etc.

Goodbye you knuckle heads…