LAST EDITED ON 03-13-02 AT 07:25 PM (EST)

===========================================
NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE THREAD WHERE THE MESSAGE BOARD POSTERS VOTE FOR THEIR 'OFFICIAL' PICK. THAT THREAD IS HERE
===========================================

First off, I want to apologize for the lateness of this posting. No, I wasn't waiting to see the 7PM airing of Entertainment Tonight like Bungler. Today's just been a very busy afternoon for me at my day job and I couldn't get around to writing this up before leaving the office. Although it's just getting posted now, this posting was composed somewhere south of Boston as my commuter train shreaked southward at speeds of upwards of 60 MPH.

OK, that said, onto the predictions...

First off, yes, I believe that somehow, someway, Burnett will find a way to get Maraamu to win Episode 3's immunity challenge, sending Rotu to it's first tribal council. The question then is who goes from Rotu?

We all know John is going to hurt his hand with some sort of a sting and one of the female Rotu survivors is gonig to um, take care of the problem. I can't remember who, but someone on the boards pointed out that this might even be Burnett's reasoning for ramming that quick promo of Neleh commenting that everyone is calling her SweetPEE down our throats about six million times. Assuming that's all the injury is, a John booting due to injury would seem to make little sense, therefore it's time to move on to ROBERT.

Robert is also shown hurt -- apparently with a foot problem of some kind -- and unlike John's injury, it doesn't seem to the type of thing that urine would resolve. The big question becomes how serious is Robert's injury, and, combined with his other apparent illness issues -- issues that Burnett has only given us the slighted look at -- will it be enough to cause Rotu to vote out Robert instead of the obvious outcast, the one and only KATHY.

Many folks have made good agruments as to why KAthy will go or as to why ROBERT will go, and I'd reference them here except for the fact that again, I'm not online as I'm composing this message. As a result, I'll have to rely on my memory of the arguments, which seem to basically boil down to "Kathy is the obvious boot, just like Kimmi in S2" or "Robert is the obvious boot, just like Michael from S2."

Both are valid agruments, but unfortunately only one can be correct. And in this case, I'm going to go with KATHY for the following reasons:

1) If Robert wwere being booted in Ep3, my belief is that Burnett would have spent some more time in his development, at minimum showing a few more shots of his previous bouts with illness.

2) Whatever the problem with Robert's foot, John seems to think that A KNIFE can help it. To me this implies more of a minor injury like a splinter or such rather than a severe injury like a sprained ankle, etc.

3) Kathy is dreaded -- there is no doubt about that.

4) The episode title is "No Pain, No GAIN" -- which implies to me that something is GAINED from the injuries, not that the injuried party is penalized and kicked out of the game.

Therefore, in what is sure to be a controversial decision (I'm trying to remember the last time that the message board voting was this tight) I'm going with KATHY as tonight's bootee. I will however demand the right to select ROBERT as our alternate selection, wimp move or not, I'm making it

As far as the Reward Challenge, come on, this one should be easy -- not only is Marammu 0 for 3 in challenges, but they've proven particluarly horrible at WATER CHALLENGES. Add another "W" to the ROTU column.

-SB