It’s hard to believe it already, but the 2012 political season is already beginning. Candidates have been declaring that they would be running for a couple of months now. You could say that the first shot of the 2012 campaign occurred on Sunday, when Osama bin Laden was shot, but on Thursday, the Republicans are going to begin their season with the first Republican debate.

Let’s hope that it goes well on Thursday for some of the more unconventional candidates. Some of the people’s names that I’ve heard batted around have bored the snot out of me. Mitt Romney? Seriously? Do we really want someone who devised a mini version of Obamacare? Pawlenty? Santorum? I really don’t know too much about them, but they really seem too far into the establishment for me. The last two will be at the debate tomorrow; they’ll have to really impress me that they’re not more RINOs.

I do like Herman Cain… a lot. I’m glad to see that he will be at the debate. There’s also a guy named Gary Johnson who might be interesting, although I know nothing about him other than the fact that he founded a construction company that grew to be one of the largest in New Mexico, and that he was also the former governor of New Mexico.

I know that a lot of people would like Alan West to run, but I’d personally like to see him stay in congress for 4 to 8 years and run in 2016 or 2020 (depending on who wins this next election). I really like him; I don’t know too many people who can rattle off facts about obscure topics like the Roman Empire and the like off the top of my head (well, except me, because I’m always reading that kind of stuff).

Ron Paul will also be at the debate. I do like him, and think that his policies are a lot more likable now than four years ago, but he’s still a little too radical, especially in his views on foreign policy. I like Glenn Beck’s idea to make him secretary of the treasury.

The debate should be pretty interesting. If it was just the same old, boring RINOs, I’m not sure if I’d bother to watch, but I’d like to see more from Johnson, and although I know a little bit about Cain (and like everything I’ve seen so far), I’d like to see more from him and his policies.

CBS is finally releasing some of its old seasons of Survivor. I got an email in my inbox that CBS was going to release Survivor Africa and Survivor Marquesas. It’s been a long wait: Survivor Africa came out nine years ago. Marquesas was eight years ago.

I never saw Survivor Africa when it originally came out. Eventually, I downloaded a copy of all the episodes on IRC and saw them on my computer, but I never saw them on a full-size television set. I didn’t know why… I had seen Survivor Australia and really liked it. When I wrote my review of the show, I realized that it came out right after September 11, 2001. That fall, I remember going to work before the sun rose, and coming back home after it got dark. No wonder watching my favorite television show just slipped my mind.

Now you can see both Africa and Marquesas on DVD… or at least you can on October 5th, when it comes out. You can pre-order it now though. I’m short of money, so this will definitely be going on my Christmas list.

I’m not sure why CBS hasn’t done this earlier… or why they aren’t releasing Amazon or Thailand. These videos are print-on-demand, so they’re not costing CBS much to sell if nobody wants them… and I know that there are people out there that want them. I know that I would rather have a legitimate copy of the show than some .mp4 version that someone taped off the television and shared through IRC.

So we’re taking spring break a little early (kind of). We’re doing Olympics week in school, with Olympic activities, including Olympic geography, Olympic math, and Olympic reading. That should make things a little less busy.

Now, the only sports I really pay much attention to are the Olympics… but sometimes it’s a little hard to ignore that there’s a Superbowl that people watch too. Especially as a writer, sometimes you can capitalize on things like that. Last year I wrote an article about Superbowl party foods that were easy to make. This year, my pastor has been singing a line of “When the Saints Go Marching In” in church; I’m not sure whether he is a New Orleans fan or not, but he likes to tease people about the Cardinals losing (I live in Arizona).

The only thing that I really am interested in regarding the Superbowl is the commercials. For the past couple of years, I have been Tivo’ing the game, and then I’ve been fast-forwarding through all the boring football to get to the commercials. When I lived in Italy in the Navy, we used to get a half day the Monday after the Superbowl, because the guys that wanted to watch it would have to watch it in the middle of the night. Sometimes we had the option of coming in at normal time and leaving early instead, if we didn’t watch the Superbowl (military television overseas doesn’t have the commercials, so the Superbowl was useless to me).

Sometimes the commercials haven’t been the… cleanest… I guess you could say. I was pretty happy when I heard that Focus on the Family was going to be putting on a pro-life ad in the Superbowl. But I was shocked when I heard that CBS’s “standards board” had rejected a commercial for “male dating”.

So good for them. I guess I’ll keep supporting the company by watching Survivor every Thursday, starting on the 11th (that and the Olympics on NBC… got a lot of TV coming up).

If you would like to see the cast list for the 20th Survivor Season, Heroes vs. Villains, I have published it up on Associated Content. Enjoy!

See the recap of episode 1.

More information about Survivor Samoa on Squidoo.

After the Survivor finale, of course, they will be announcing the new Survivor location… Samoa.

The television show has adult cameramen and medics on staff (although hidden), so I guess that keeps the kids from killing each other. The television show seemed fairly tame, so I let my daughter watch the show. Here are my findings:

The show is pretty good, kid-friendly television, for the most part. The kids have to deal with things like homesickness, working together to win challenges, and they end up with assigned duties like cook, laborer, or storekeeper depending on what team they end up on (four teams competed for the different spots; the fourth team became the “upper class” and get to help out however they feel like). None of the kids are sent home, although they can go home if they choose, but one kid per episode can win a gold star worth $20,000… which is a lot more than the first Survivor competitors to get voted out get.

There was only one thing that I found wrong with this show. There were several instances of blasphemy (oh my g__). The kids on the television show ranged in age from 8 to 14, and I’m sure that many of them have far worse potty mouths at home or even off-camera, but I did find it bothersome. I suppose that most of the kids on the show don’t see anything wrong with that phrase, as most of them were probably brought up in homes where that wasn’t considered cursing. At least it allowed me to have a conversation with my daughter about how that is not a phrase that she should be using.

I suppose that Kid Nation is more family friendly than most television that has been on during this time slot lately. I think that I will allow my daughter to continue to watch it, but it reminds me of the movie Time Changer, where a professor at a Bible school from 1890 travels through time to the present day and goes to see a movie. He comes running out of the movie theater yelling “stop the movie! There’s been a big mistake! They are blaspheming the Lord!” or something along those lines. I’m not particularly fond of this aspect of the television show.