The new treemail after the previous round mentioned a live challenge, but it had nothing about sitting anyone out in advance. That's suspicious! And you know what that means?

WE ARE MEEEEEEEEEEERGED YO!

So yeah, I'm ready to get back in it! The challenge started while I was having homemade deep dish pizza at a friend's house, and it was *sigh* a popularity contest challenge. I always prefer those to be reward challenges, but eh. I got knocked out first by Laura and Richard, which doesn't really surprise me, as I haven't said a word to Laura (never had the chance to, really) and Hatch has a grudge against me for whatever reason. Jamie, however, did win immunity. I congratulated him and we patched things up about Greg's weird lies (seriously, the whole "people openly brag about having an alliance with me when we don't really" thing has happened to me before and I just don't fucking get it). I also got back in touch with a good number of the others that I hadn't spoken with in a while. I then drove home and had to avoid a giant, inexplicably unshoveled patch of road, which is when I said the title quote to no one in particular. It sounds like some bizarre combination of old lady and crass teenager!

We all basically agreed that we should take out Richard. I agree with this very much in principle, but I'm not feeling confident about it. The problem is that Richard has an idol most likely, which is a suspicion somewhat confirmed by John sending me a screencap of something Richard sent him to prove that he doesn't have an idol that has something that looks shopped in it. If we (we being myself, Jamie, Dan, Todd, John, and Chet, which is a slim majority but it's there) all vote for the idol holder and said idol holder is suspicious enough to actually play it, I think there's pretty good odds that I'm the one who goes home. So everybody's telling Richard and Ciera and associates that Laura is the real target and hoping to dear fuck that he doesn't play the idol. People don't seem too concerned, which baffles me. Richard, talkative and insincere as ever, tells me that working with Ciera on that one vote where Dan went home was just a marriage of convenience and that the two of them still don't like each other; if I could believe that, I would tell Ciera that we want the idol out of play and give her a heads up so that she could give Richard more concrete reassurance, but Richard also knows exactly who all is in the six, and I'm sure he's warned all the relevant parties, all of whom would love to see one of us taken out via an idol. I'm just very much afraid that that person will be me.

People who cut other people are the luckiest(?) people in the world:

Leann: Laura, Richard
John: Dreamz
Chet: Kelly, Laura, Dave, Ciera
Dave: N/A
Ciera: N/A
Todd: John, Dave
Laura: Leann x3, Chet x2, Todd x4, Dreamz x2
Dreamz: John x4, Chet x2, Jamie, Richard, Laura x3
Richard: Leann x2, Dave x3, Jamie, Kelly
Kelly: Chet, Ciera x2, Todd, Dreamz, Richard
Jamie: Ciera x2, Dreamz, Richard x2, Kelly x3

I just saw a Super Bowl commercial where Peyton Manning is hawking some car with electronic blind spot detection, and he says "After X years as a quarterback in the NFL, I know what it's like to be blindsided." You don't know the half of it, Peyton. Not even close.

The above is not pertinent to my current game situation, or I should say I REALLY HOPE it's not, I just think it's funny when I find the word "blindside" in a different context. Anyway, I think things are looking up this round for two reasons: one, Chet wasn't in on the "say it's Laura to blindside Richard" plan and said Ciera was the target, which organically accomplishes what I was hoping to artificially construct: a plan in which we say it's Laura and let it slip the the real target is Ciera in order to conceal that the real real target is Hatch. REAL REAL, BITCH. The second thing is that Richard is panicking enough that it seems like he doesn't have an idol. Enough for Jamie to actually have to take an Advil, he tells me.

I'm getting a clearer picture every time I play Survivor as to what my strengths and weaknesses are. Strengths: making strategic plans, keeping stories straight, challenges. Weaknesses: coattail riding, confrontation avoidance. I am a natural sidekick, and in order to take the reins a little more in the next few days, I am going to have to sit down and do some real thinking about how I would like the game to go so that I can express that opinion before Jamie makes my mind up for me. I am also going to have to force myself to have uncomfortable conversations after Tribal Council results are in and immediately after someone wins immunity (meaning before plans for who's going home next are concrete). Talking to everyone is the best way to ensure that the information I get has no filter on it. I'm Albert in that I'm continually trying to think of ways to shake things up and not succeeding, and I'm Monica in that I want to play this game for me. Both of them made it to FTC, neither won. I'm interested in winning, thank you very much.

The merge tribe name finally happened! It was a combination of a lot of people's ideas, but my favorite was Kelly suggesting that gold plus silver equals crystal like in Pokemon. Bato-Bato (which my autocorrect wants to read as NATO) is setting sail! Shit only gets weirder from here!

So I'm busy making pigs in a blanket when I check my chat and all of a sudden Jamie's waving me down telling me the plan is to vote Ciera because Hatch is playing an idol. I really thought he would do it and tried to warn Jamie about that last night, coming up with every complication I could to try to make it more believable that the vote wasn't going to Richard and getting shot down with "oh it'll be fine", and then what do you know, he makes the executive decision to do the smart thing last minute. I need to be more forceful with my opinions! Anyway, I tell Dave about the plan to vote Ciera because Richard is playing an idol, and he's like "so we're splitting?" And I say "No, switching, there's not enough guaranteed votes to split" and he gets all silent on me, and when he does say something, it's very much reluctantly. Jamie tells me that this is because Dave thought he had Dreamz with him.

So basically what happened is that Richard ended up playing his idol like he really tried to make us all think he wouldn't, all the while covering up for it with a veneer of "pity me because nobody ever talks to me and it's good that the idol's out of the way now", and Ciera finally went home. Ciera said on her way out that I had better know what I'm doing and not to get played, and she told me about Jamie's fake final 6 alliance that he made with her, Richard, Todd, Kelly, and Dreamz. Jamie claims Dreamz made that alliance, and that that was also useful in demonstrating to Dave that, contrary to what he thought, Dreamz wasn't actually on our side. So now I have a better picture of how the Greg vote came to be! Now Hatch is being very terse with me, a long way away from his usual verbose self, and Dreamz isn't talking to anyone apparently. I think he's the one that voted Laura; it'd make sense if he had heard the fake Laura plan, and it'd also make sense for him to not want to talk right about now!

And now I have a plan for this upcoming round. It involves deviating from the accepted plan, and if this works, I will have more bonafides! The widely accepted next target is Hatch. This makes sense, but not as much sense as other possible options. Todd wants Dreamz out, and that makes more sense to me in some ways. Laura could also go, really. (Todd thinks Kelly is the mysterious 7th person who voted with us, by the way.) Basically, keeping Hatch for a round or two is a function of something I like to call the Brenchel Principle. Basically, a majority will stick together longer against a threatening target, which is why despite Brendon and Rachel being targets very early on in BB12, they stuck around for a good several weeks at the Brigade's mercy. Why get rid of public enemy number 1 when you're public enemy number 2? I don't want anyone on Lugaptano (my name for the core six) to defect, and that is better accomplished by keeping someone transparently fake around as a threat. So now I just have to do the convincing part, and this will be done through extensive conversations tomorrow.