Edible Radios & other Physical Impossibilities

I'm addicted.

Yeah, I'm stuck deep and I can't get past it. I'm in love with a television show that Is a mind blowing experience every time I watch it. It's called SURVIVOR and I've seen almost all of the seasons. I'm short only a few because I can't get them streamed to me on Hulu.com or Amazon Prime. I'm missing maybe five out of twenty five seasons, so I can say that I'm far and ahead of the curve. I've seen the bulk of them and I've finished my last one and I'm suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms.

This fucking show, starting from the very first one, is a fucking mind trip, and I just want to devote a post to it because my life is so pale and insignificant that it's sickening. I'm a fly in amber, stuck and doing nothing but growing old, and soon, very soon, I'll be retiring and that shit will not be funny. I'm realizing my own mortality creeping up on me and that shit is not funny, so I like to watch people act like people, and you can either deal with it from the pen of a writer, who is just trying to mimic life, or you can get it straight from the hobo tap and watch SURVIVOR.

This fucking show puts eighteen to twenty one Americans on an island paradise with just the clothes on their backs and a bunch of useless supplies. Why do I call that shit useless? Because instead of giving them a fucking BIC lighter they hand them a bit of flint and tell them to go make a fire. What the fuck? Give me a piece of flint and I'm looking for the little switch to flick. Cavemen used to make fire with flint. Sometimes these people on the island show some incredible initiative. They make fire using their eyeglasses, or bamboo shoots, rubbing two sticks together and shit. I find that shit amazing. These fuckers are resourceful.

I would die on this fucking island in the inside of a week from some waterborne bacteria or life threaten- ing infection. But this shit doesn't stop here. Not only do they have to eke out a life on this island for 39 days, but they also have to compete in challenges for either a reward which are ridiculous until you put yourself in their shoes for a week, or immunity. That's the funny thing. Immunity. First, let's talk about the rewards.

This shit is sometimes cheese- burgers and fries, or pizza and beer, or a shower and a bed, shit that we take for granted. But these poor fuckers are eating rice and coconuts for weeks at a time, and while you are watching the show, you are actually watching them wither away, losing tons of weight while they struggle to feed themselves from the available resources, or from these fucking rewards which are either fishing gear, food, or a simple tarp to keep them free from the constant and maddening rainfall.

Then there are challenges that lead to immunity, which is a talisman either carried or worn around the neck. There is immunity for the tribe, or immunity for the individual. This is because these 21 or so people are divided into tribes, from one to four depending on the season, and are pitted against each other. The losing tribe has to go to something, someplace deep inside the island, like a temple which is called the Tribal Counsel where they have to vote one of their number off the island. This can get tricky because in the beginning you want to vote off the weakest ones to win challenges, then later you want to vote off the strongest ones to make it as the final survivor.

But I learned that simple fact from watching more than ten seasons. And it doesn't always work, because your ass may be voted off. That's the funny shit. EVERYONE has a plan. The only thing that can keep you from being voted off, as a tribe and as an individual is immunity. It you have it, you are free from being voted off for that counsel. After that, you are once again fair game until the next immunity challenge.

But the thing about this show is the human inter- action. The interplay between the people who are competing against each other, because they begin to make alliances to protect themselves from being voted off. These alliances run into each other, bump and brush rudely or faintly and the individuals that make them up clash and spin out of control. It's fascinating to watch, as food gets scarce and nerves get fried, when the stresses mount up and the patience is lost, people melt down, loose their cool, and discommode themselves. The fights on the island, the swearing, the blood feuds, are something to watch.

It gives you insight on the human condition, having these complete strangers pit themselves against one another and to watch them fry and burn out like bulbs on a Broadway marquee. It's a fascinating experiment into the human condition and if you are a writer, it's a goldmine of inspiration. It's fascinating to watch and even more fascinating to try to predict, because, I promise you, you will not be able to predict shit in this show. You think this will happen and then something else happens totally in the other direction. It'll catch you every time. It brings incredible stress to watching the show, which is very addictive and very enlightening.

Personally I can't get enough of the electricity, the tension, the downright fire in the belly that the makers of this show have created. No wonder that it's the number one show on CBS for twelve years running. Amazing and crazy to watch. I'm addicted. Be that as it may, this is the hobo, now after watching almost all the seasons that he can, now has free time to write again, and is doing so with a passion. And is buoyed up by the lessons learned from this singular show. An amazing study, and by far the most relevant anything on television. I'm sorry that it took me twelve years to find it.

I wasted a lot of time watching other swill.

Except for Battlestar Galactica.

Hobobob