By Bill Vaughn

Pathfinder Video

Woe is Ramona. The 29-year-old New Jersey chemist ate her rat-on-a-stick and her squirmy beetle grub with gusto, and gave her all in the treasure chest contest. But, as Jenna said, it was all just too little, too late. When her Pagong tribemates voted Ramona off the island and she walked the Walk of Shame out of my life, I knew I would miss looking at her agreeable frame and listening to her incendiary laugh, but I was not sad. Nor was I surprised. And if you read "Survive This!" in the July issue of Outside Magazine, the account of my efforts to sabotage the boffo CBS summer hit Survivor, you also already knew that Ramona's fate was sealed.

As I reported, she was one of the main topics of gossip among certain large-mouthed CBS film crews as they relaxed in the bars and around the pool at the Magellan Sutera Hotel, 60 miles from Pulau Tiga, the small rain forest island off the northern coast of Borneo where filming had been going on for three weeks when I arrived on the scene in early April. My goal was to seek revenge for being rejected not only as a Survivor contestant, but as a journalist covering the show as well. So I concealed myself among the hotel's gardenia bushes and orchid trees in order to eavesdrop on conversations, or found ways to be near the CBS crews as they lounged around waiting for their turn to go back to the island and work.

Ramona, of course, had faltered her first day on the island. She seemed wilted by the heat and humidity. She couldn't keep down any food, not even a simple meal of boiled rice served in a coconut shell. She groaned. She whined.

I assumed she was pregnant. But she told the cloyingly effervescent hosts of the CBS Early Edition on Thursday, June 22 that because she wasn't a "water-drinker" she had become dehydrated by Pulau Tiga's fierce equatorial glare, and had never fully recovered—an odd mistake for someone whose profession revolves around the effect of one substance on another.

And speaking of substances, I see now how effective my main strategy as a Survivor contestant would have been. My plan was to swallow a Baggie full of vintner's yeast before going ashore so I could secretly make wine from the mangosteens and other tropical fruits thriving on the island. In my strategy, I would become the island's revered Boozemaster, rewarding my allies with my fine product and punishing my enemies by denying them the sauce. Of course, since Ramona couldn't keep down anything until it was too late, I wouldn't even have been forced to make a decision concerning her ration. I would have drunk it myself.

As you know from reading my article, one of the upcoming ejectees from the show will be Joel, the traveling salesman from Arkansas. Joel has already begun to irritate the increasingly threadbare psyches of some of his Pagong tribemates with his bossiness, and may not be long for that world.

And now check out the ages of the contestants. Most of them are in their 20s and 30s; the oldest of this group, at 39, being the manipulative and evil Richard. On the even older end was 62- year-old Sonia, the show's first ejectee. Then there was 64-year-old B.B., who got kicked off the island after proclaiming that the only thing stupider than a cow was a woman (in my article I quoted a CBS crewman who incorrectly identified B.B. as "Bob"). And finally there is the cranky and demanding Rudy, the 72-year- old Navy Seal. But where are the Baby Boomers, the contestants aged 40 to 55? The Bill Clinton generation? My generation? Producer Mark Burnett promised America he was seeking a true cross-section of the Republic—but he lied.

Moving on, the tabloids are falling all over each other trying to pin down the winner of Survivor. The National Enquirer has narrowed the field to a short list of four contestants, and is willing to pay serious cash for information leading to irrefutable evidence of who will take home the One Million Dollars. Because of all those gabby crew people—loose lips sink ships, my friends!—I am 95 percent certain of the Final Survivor, America's newest millionaire. So why should I monkey- wrench CBS and publish this name? Well, first, because they rejected me as a contestant. Then they rejected me as a reporter. Then they scheduled me to appear on the CBS Early Edition as a "commentator." But at the last moment I was bumped because the producers wanted instead the geeky little pinhead who penned a predictable piece in Time magazine about the show.

Anyway, I am 94 percent certain that the Last Man Standing is Rudy, the 72-year-old Navy Seal.

Next week, after dissecting the winners and loser again, I'll move on to my second strategy for winning, and touch on some of the sights and sounds and smells of coastal Borneo.