The "shit-talking" circle.

I have to say, when I was in Jamaica, I hadn't a clue about a lot of things going on. I wanted to stay out of the drama, and I did to the point where I am about as new to what I'm seeing as anyone else in the world. My original impression of this circle of girls here that you see is that they are there to have a good time, to have a lot of laughs, and they are so disconnected with the drama that they never talk about anyone in this game - not even think about them. Watching this clip right now was a little disappointing for me because I had no idea that these girls spent time sitting around talking badly about anyone else. Whenever I was with them, I never heard a word of it, but maybe that's because Veronica and I got along so well.

Christina: "I just wanna see her go home because I think she's a bad person. She says mean things to people."
Anne: "The one huge, festering pool of negativity is Veronica. She makes all the other girls feel like crap."
Emily: "Veronica is just that girl that walks around like its her job to make you feel bad about yourself."

Now, we can all see that there remains to be a single fraction of evidence in footage of Veronica saying one negative thing about anything at all, to anyone at all. I don't know if this is due to the editors decision to make Veronica look like a victim or if they never caught any footage of Veronica acting this way, or if it never happened at all. Again, I am seeing as much as you are seeing here, and so from both my experience and from watching this show, it "appears" that these girls are having issues with themselves and are threatened by Veronica. I say this without conviction because I feel like I got to know Genesis and particularly Anne pretty well on this trip. As I've said before, Anne was one of my ABSOLUTE favorites, and she is STILL a favorite person of mine today, so I'm not going to say that how it looks is 100% how it was. I will admit I am being naive when it comes to the goings-on of this Challenge. I know that everyone there was very nice to me and no one there said anything bad about anyone else in front of me (except for a few people, and this all happens later, so we'll talk about it later.)

I'm currently IMing Anne to ask her what Veronica did that I just didn't see or know about, but Anne isn't home right now, so I can't tell you what it is.

Veronica was into doing well, and she busted her ass to do so. This is all I know. She may have done something really offensive, and I, like you, would love to find out what it is just so all these nasty bitch-fests could make a little more sense.

We get to the mission, our first real physical competition. It was the hottest fucking day ever. We had to take that bus into the winding roads of the jungle, and I was so carsick I wanted to die. There were more mosquitoes than I ever thought possible, and though we sprayed and sprayed, those suckers were out to eat us alive.

We have to traverse the river. I love how when Johnny announces it, it has these spooky, slow-motion flash-forwards of people crossing it and these echoing screams. This course is NOT clear. There are two courses, one for the men, one for the women. They are adjusted accordingly - the men's stirrups being farther down from the security rope, the women's higher up. Now, those ours is higher up, it still seems too far from the ropes. Melissa is freaking out because no matter WHO tested out this mission, they were not 4'11", and Melissa is. There are a lot of super short girls, and we were afraid that we were at a disadvantage. It's not even clear which stirrups are the guys and which are the girls. They tell us it will be clear once we start, but we're not too sure of that. No one can even imagine how it's going to feel - how stable, how wobbly. Because we're not sure what to expect, we're all a bit nervous.

Ellen was freaking out because she has to go first, and she's convinced she's too short to reach the stirrups. Eric Neiss was being a little obnoxious and teasing her. "I'm just worried because I don't know if I can reach it," Ellen says.

"Well, if you can't reach it, then you can't, and that'll be it," Eric replied. She wasn't even complaining to him, she was stressing out by herself, and he kept frustrating her, so she yelled at him. This is one of the clips seen on the "this season on Battle of the Sexes" but never actually made the show. She made fun of his Buddhist "bullshit", and I laughed at this. The guys were all offended, and it was a serious strike against Ellen once again for the guys. I didn't think it was a big deal.

Blair is REALLY freaking out because he has an inner ear problem or infection. He cannot get water into his ear, and he's afraid that if he falls, he may lose his hearing - which is a fact. He doesn't know if he should try it or not. This is why when he does complete it, you see him stay on the ropes.

All this is out of order. I know this because my hair is up and down, then up then down.

Ayanna, "It's for Tonya, it's for Emily it's for Anne, and everybody who stuck up for their morals yesterday." <groan>. I HOPE this doesn't imply that I had no morals or that I did and just didn't stick up for them.

This mission was very hard. It was scary, it DID feel really wobbly and unstable, and I was ten times more physically demanding than I had thought. I did well, but I could've done better. That will be the case in any mission though.

Veronica hanging by her ankle. That was scary. I was very proud that she held on, not that it mattered. If she had stayed on, she would have stayed in the inner circle. It's interesting to think what would have happened if she made it. When she first fell and was hanging, a few of us said, "Aaaannnnd...go to commercial." Surprise, surprise - that's how it was edited. How could it not? It's just funny when we talk about it in TV terms. Sometimes, it's just so obvious.

I look like I have guns in this one. Nice. When I dropped off the rope at the end, I held on too long with my hand and got a horrible rope burn. Anne's was much worse. She clung to the security line with her arm over it, rather than just her hand. She had huge rips in her skin under her arm that didn't go away for weeks.

There is a reason why Syrus's turn was such an event that everyone was on their feet when he made it across. At one point, he has one leg that goes all the way through the stirrup up to his crotch. He is totally caught but he's not going anywhere. He is in such a bind that everyone there was trying to couch him out. One would think that there is no way out of this situation, so Syrus just stopped and started laughing he was so exhausted and so trapped. Everyone else is cracking up on the side. Eventually, and I don't know how, he manages to get out of the stirrup and get to the end. People were clapping, laughing, crying (the good kind). It was the best part of the day.

Melissa's in the inner circle. Hardcore.

Not much else to mention here. See you next week.