It was time for another Survivor auction, and everyone was given 500 fake dollars to bid on food and other goodies. Fun!

WARNING: spoilers ahead.  read more »

If you were at yesterday's iBlog4 or 88DB.com's afterparty, you probably saw this chicken.

What was intended as a small publicity stunt turned out better than I imagined. The costume is quite flimsy and uncomfortable, but I don't think Philos can complain after winning a shiny new PSP for having the best costume at the 88DB party. He also probably never had so many women touching and hugging him in one night. The only problem was that, without any peripheral vision, he couldn't be sure at any given moment if he was being groped by a woman or a man, heh.

Anyway, it's time to dish out some link love for the people who had pictures taken with the chicken. Here's what to do: find your picture below and leave a comment with your name, URL, and number (not your phone number, silly... your picture number). Again, don't forget to mention the number of the picture you're in. Make it easier for lazy me, okay? If you do that, I'll put your link under your picture.

Click on the thumbnails to see bigger versions, which you can then right click and save and set as your desktop wallpaper. What? You don't want a chicken on your desktop? Boo.

Sarah	Chris	3
Ambo and Gab	Dexter	Jane
Karlo, Topz, Toni, Tinette	Arbet	Fjordz and Gerald
Dhon	Benj	The [Deranged] Writer, Jed, Vinch, Reyn
Ian/ravenfox13 and KC	14	Makoy
Denis	Aaronjames	18
Prudence	Robby, Mistervader, Prudence	21
Robby	23	George
Jerome	Ria	27
Lauren	Mistervader	Murder!
Jester	Poyt	33
34	Elaine, Aileen, Vida, Rommel	Arbet
Jeff	Jeff again	Stop molesting the chicken, Jeff!
40	Poyt	Eugene
Maki	Mica	45
Mary and friend (no links?)	Camille	Dak
FunnySexy	OneTamad	Ade
52	53	What are you looking at?

Our apologies to the nice people at the 88DB party registration desk... their group picture with the chicken got lost somehow. Sorry.

All the pictures were taken by ArsenaL, but you can grab them and do whatever you want. ArsenaL swears that he won't sue you for copyright infringement.

UPDATE: Mica made a nice Chicken Mafia tribute video from some of the pictures.

Go see if you're in there and which of the five groups you belong to :-P

Philos volunteered to wear a chicken costume to iBlog4... if I can get one. Who knew that chicken costumes are so hard to find in this city? After weeks of fruitless search, I gave up and decided to make my own.

I haven't done any arts and crafts crap (say that quickly 10 times) in over 10 years, but I felt that I'm smart enough to pull it off. How hard can it be, right? A child could do it. Should be as easy as 1, 2, 3....

Step 1: acquire tools and materials

I did that over the weekend. Here's what I got.

- 3 sheets of white cartolina (P10.75 each)
- 1 sheet of red cartolina (P7.00; don't ask me why it's cheaper than the white ones, because I don't know)
- a pair of scissors (P22.50)
- a roll of double-sided tape, which smells strangely intoxicating (P21.75)
- a permanent marker, which also smells strangely intoxicating (P33.75)
- a "mathematical set" (P42.00). I don't know why I bought the whole set--I only needed a compass. I guess getting a whole box of extra stuff for an additional 20 pesos sounded like a good deal at the time. So now, I have a protractor, a couple of triangles, a ruler, and some other random objects, all of them in bright colors and utterly useless. Yay! So stupid.
- an old pencil from my high school days (well, at least that one is free)

So I spent a total of P159.25, which is most likely much cheaper than renting a costume.

Step 2: make costume

Being a procrastinator, I of course didn't start this task until less than 12 hours before iBlog. But I wasn't worried, because I had a plan.

Ha, piece of cake. Should be done in 20 minutes, right? Too bad I couldn't focus my sleepy brain enough to follow my own plan. I ended up making quite a few mistakes, and the 20 minutes cakewalk turned into three and a half hours of damage control. Damn.

Step 3: do last-minute panic adjustments

That's for later. I need to go sleep now if I want to have any chance of waking up before noon. The costume is more or less done, but it still doesn't have eye holes--I don't know where to put them because I forgot to measure Philos's head. Tsk. I'm not even sure it would fit him.

Oh well, we'll see what happens.

If you didn't get the joke, don't worry. There's no joke. That's just something recycled from the T-shirt Philos will be wearing to iBlog4.

I'll wear the same shirt I wore last year because I'm too cheap to shell out another 400 pesos to get a new one printed.

And ArsenaL will probably show up naked because he enjoys public nudity. Consider yourselves warned.

Another entertaining episode... yay!

The winners of this week's reward challenge went to an "authentic" Micronesian village for a feast. But little boy Erik was feasting his eyes on something else.

WARNING: spoilers ahead.  read more »

Last weekend, while browsing through the organic soaps section in one of the local health and beauty shops here, I stumbled upon Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. I think it was the colorful appearance of the bottles that attracted my attention.

I picked up a bottle for a closer look. Hmm... "18-in-1 Hemp Almond Pure-Castile Soap"... whoa! HEMP?!! Is that the same hemp known by other names like mary jane, hashish, grass, weed, pot, ganja, dope?!!

I mean, I know this stuff can also be used for medicinal purposes. I think I read it somewhere and also saw it on CSI:Miami where Delko bought some illegally for his cancer-stricken sister. (Oh and Horatio is marrying the sister in the next episode I think.) But it's quite surprising to find the stuff freely accessible in a liquid soap when a TV cop had to get it the hard way.

Anyway, I bought one because I thought it smelled good (or was that the drug kicking in?). When I got home, I continued reading some of the finer prints on the label and realized that this Dr. Bronner dude must have been smoking his soaps. It was quite an interesting read. Here are some of my favorite lines:

- Clouds when cold. (What?)
- If Cap Clogs, Poke It. (That sounds dirty.)
- Do Not Squeeze Bottle and Shoot Out Soap. (That sounds dirty too.)
- Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! (That doesn't sound dirty... just stupid.)
- To simplify & enjoy life more, dilute 1/2 oz... (... and smoke it?)
- Enjoy body rub to stimulate body-mind-soul-spirit. (What's the difference between soul and spirit?)
- Within 9 minutes you feel fresh and clean. (Really? 9 minutes? How did he figure that out?)

Want to torture yourself with the whole thing? Here you go (163 KB). There's an even longer and more confusing version (957 KB) on Dr. Bronner's website, where I also saw his picture... which confirmed my theory about him smoking his magic hemp soap.

So I followed the instructions and diluted the soap in hot water, dipped my towel in, and applied it on my face. I waited 9 minutes and didn't really feel any different. My face felt a little cool, but I couldn't define that as fresh since it was obviously just cold air hitting my warm face.

Oh, and I didn't find out all the 18 ways of using the soap. Maybe next time I'll try using it undiluted and see whether any magic feeling appears.

The smart peeple at Stanford recently hopped on the water conservation bandwagon and installed dual flushing toilets, which come with needlessly complicated diagrams explaining how to use them.

Hmm, okay. But this brings up an interesting dilemma: what about diarrhea? Do you pull up because it's mostly liquid? Or do you push down because there might be some nice small solid chunks in there?

I think the terms "liquid waste" and "solid waste" are confusing in this case--diarrhea is a magical substance known to have the properties of both solid and liquid waste. Why not go with simpler and more precise terms, like "pee" and "poo"? "Pull up for pee; push down for poo." Sounds good to me.

As a bonus, my version is shorter, which means less ink wasted when printing the signs. And what is ink made of? That's right, water! So, by conserving ink, they would also conserve water, which is the main goal of the dual flushing toilets in the first place!

See? I'm an environmentalist. Yay!

I think we just had the most entertaining episode of the season. Yay!

I wasn't happy last week when psycho bitch Ami was voted off and boring ice cream scooper Erik stayed. But the kid is starting to show that he can be somewhat funny too.

WARNING: spoilers ahead.  read more »

Anyone else watched Idol Gives Back? It was basically a bunch of mediocre musical performances mixed with celebrities emotionally blackmailing people to donate money to charity. Wow, really? Idol gives back? Awesome. I want American Idol to give me back the two hours I wasted watching the whole thing, please?

As much as the show underwhelmed me, I have to say that they're supporting some very worthy causes. Halfway through the show, Forest Whitaker showed up and talked about the malaria epidemic in Africa. He seemed like a sincere guy, and he has an Oscar, so I guess he must be a good actor (although he was terrible in Vantage Point). But he might have let his emotions go a bit out of control while trying to make his point.

Give, muthafucka!

Heh. Of course, that obscene gesture was entirely unintentional and not really funny. But I have the mental maturity of a 9-year-old kid and nothing else to blog about, so... yay.