I have about 5 different ideas for what to call this episode, so I'm going with the silliest. Enjoy whatever the fuck this is!

I found this video while in a thread discussing some ideas for what the Tokyo 2020 Olympic logo could be, and of course since this was on Reddit, the joke submissions floated to the top. The most popular was Power Ranger themed, since except for the pink ranger, the core 6 are all Olympic rings colored. And then somebody brought up the fact that there were upwards of 35 seasons of it in Japan, and apparently the above video runs through the different designs for the red ranger through all of the first 35 seasons. Because it can.

The reason I was even looking at Olympic stuff, of course, is because the Sochi Olympics are going on right now, and they, like all Olympics, kick ass. These, however, kick more ass than ever before, because this is the first Olympics I have been able to watch live. Not much of it, mind you, since it all takes place in the wee hours, but a good chunk. In particular, I get to meet my long-lost, used-to-be-ironic-but-now-I-sincerely-appreciate-it, favorite Winter Olympic sport: curling! And that's idea #2 for the thread title. Curling. Not very exciting, but it's more like Survivor than you might expect.

For those of you not in the know, it's basically ice bocce. You don't need to know what a house or a hog line is if you know it's ice bocce. But there's a lot of strategy and a lot of skill that goes into it. The strategy involves thinking a few steps ahead, much like I have been doing lately with regard to what happens after Dave goes. (By the way, he went. Unanimously, actually, which means that Dreamz and Kelly must have caught on and not minded because hey, that's a Lugata gone. FINAL 7777777 YO! Seriously, that's 2/3 of the way there. I was not expecting to go this far!) In curling, you can't just put a rock in the middle of the target without expecting someone to try to knock it out right after. Similarly, I am aware of what kinds of shots this Dave incident has been teeing up. With Dave being the last wild card in the group, the playing field can be arranged into 3 groups, all based on what tribe they started on. Lugata consists of myself, Jamie, and Todd. Gwad consists of Dreamz and Kelly. Saptano consists of John and Chet. This is inherently a dangerous and unstable situation, because any two of these could gang up on the third, and of the three, mine is both the largest and the most strategically dominant, which makes us pretty big targets.

Also, Dreamz ended up giving me the chest. And, unlike every prior season (except season 1) where there was a crate or chest to open that actually was opened and that didn't just contain a dummy prize, this one actually had a hidden idol in it instead of a necklace! Now, Dreamz said that as part of the deal, I would have to send him a picture of what was inside. If I were to have a necklace and not an idol, he would feel less of a need to blindside me. So I've made an extra post in the thread with a fabricated necklace message in it, and I'll throw that together in the morning when I can claim I actually got my idol. Yeah, I know I went around calling Richard a shady fuck for making alternate votes and photoshopping the evidence so it looked like he didn't have an idol, but really the only thing he did wrong was get caught. You're not supposed to leave a cursor mark right next to the word "incorrect," dude. The point is, if I can't photoshop well enough to fool a trained eye tomorrow morning, I'm a bigger target than I ever have been. (One last note about that idol: the real Dreamz made a deal to give up immunity and then didn't, so how was I to suppose this Dreamz wouldn't do the same thing? Something about that was name idea #3.)

So Jamie and I started hashing out a plan for what happens from here on out. Here it is: The most likely avenue for Dreamz and Kelly to take in trying to knock us out is to get John and Chet on board with taking out a Lugata. I might use the idol here to ward that off, but we want to work Saptano enough that they want to keep on board with us. Once Dreamz is gone, we could just get rid of Kelly, but that leaves us in a jam at final 5, because Todd (and myself, honestly) thinks that he would have a hard time beating me or Jamie and thinks that he could probably beat Chet. This would mean that he would be liable to flip to Saptano at final 5. He wouldn't do this, though, if we were to take out Chet, a la Courtney Marit at a certain other F6. So we would get Kelly on board, and Todd would not be very likely to try to force a tie over Chet, so Chet would go home. At final 5, we have our bases covered, since we have Todd and since John and Kelly wouldn't be working from a long history; apparently they don't hardly talk much. I don't hardly talk much to Kelly because she's hardly on, but the point remains. We have our options at that point. There still remains the risk of Todd flipping for a goat, in this case Kelly, but she's a former Gwad member, which means she automatically has Ciera and Richard's votes since they're both rabidly anti-Lugata. Ideally from there on, I would like to get into a final 3 with Jamie and Todd. Jamie tells me that Todd told him that I proposed a final 3 to Todd. That is absolutely not what I said, I've been very careful when it comes to saying "final X where X is an integer;" I've made sure I haven't said it once all game. However, we both agreed at some point that we both trusted each other and Jamie more than anyone else in the game, and Todd apparently took that to mean F3. This is why it was just Jamie and I having this conversation in the first place; Todd isn't as careful as we are. From that final 3, I can at the very least say that I stuck with Lugata to the end like I said on day 1, and at the most, I can win immunity and take Todd with me to the final 2 (and it IS a final 2, the stipulation on my idol says that it's good to the final 5, and idols post-Cook Islands have historically been good for all TCs except for the finale ones) or convince Todd to take me to the final 2 if he wins. If Jamie wins the F3 immunity, or if he's somehow been able to play me throughout the super long strategy conversation whose results I printed above, then fuck it, he deserves to win. Or I could come up with a better plan to get to the final 3 that ends with me going to the finals no matter what with two people I'll win against. Either way, deals will have to be made and broken. Possibly even integer deals. (Episode idea #4: Integer Deals.) So now that I'm here, with fewer and fewer chess pieces to move, it's time to move them with gusto. (Episode idea #5: With Gusto? This is getting to be a bit of a stretch.) The game is afoot, bitches!

WHAT. WHY DID THEY EDIT OUT THE PART WITH THE ICE CREAM. I NEED TO SEE IT.

EDIT: From the Wikipedia article:

"Season 2: Rita's superior Lord Zedd returns to the Earth to take over for Rita's incompetence, imprisoning her once more. His new monsters prove too powerful for the Dinozords, leading Zordon to empower them into the Thunderzords. Jason, Trini, and Zack leave to join a youth conference in Switzerland, and are replaced by Rocky DeSantos, Aisha Campbell, and Adam Park, respectively, and Rita returns and marries Lord Zedd. This season uses footage from Gosei Sentai Dairanger."

I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT A YOUTH CONFERENCE IN GODDAMN SWITZERLAND. WHY DID I NOT WATCH EVERY EPISODE OF THIS SHIT WHEN I WAS A KID. IT SOUNDS MORE AMAZING BY THE SECOND.

I hope this is convincing...

Chet wins immunity again in a challenge that involved counting objects very fast, posting very fast, and then apparently making up a couple of extra objects at the end. So that's the perfect opportunity to set up Chet to go at 6 and in the meantime get rid of Dreamz at 7.

Todd seems on board with it, although he's been in a bit of a down mood lately since his job (and recent promotion) have been stressful. Chet seems on board with it, although he has been about as slow to respond as Dave lately (he chalks it up to being prone to getting up and wandering around once he's on the computer, which is a hilarious mental image). And John seems on board, although when we started talking about auction prizes and and whether we should split the votes, I botched my presentation of the immunity necklace lie by first going with the "visit from Rory" version, getting sidetracked a few minutes, going along with it when John started talking about Netflix, and then correcting to "oh, I forgot where I was going earlier, turns out he gave me a necklace!" I really hope he buys it. This idol is burning a hole in my pocket something fierce!