It’s the column I write when I have a bunch of little things that wouldn’t make a whole column on their own!  It’s my tribute to Larry King!  (“If you don’t like Dick Francis novels, then check your pulse, my friend, because you’ve passed on. ... I just don’t like beets.  Never have, never will. ... Can somebody explain this “Eminem” guy to me?”)

We start, of course, with “Survivor: The Australian Outback.”  Go back to the episode where it all turned.  No, not Michael’s falling face first in to the fire.  (And was it just me, or did you hear a pig laughing somewhere when it happened?)  I’m talking about the “tiebreaker” between Jeff and Colby.  The vote that eventually sent us down this Ogakor-filled path.  Now, I was a Kucha guy.  These people deserved to win (and who knows, maybe Elisabeth or good old Kentucky Joe will hang in there), and Ogakor’s members deserved to be voted out, one by one.

Didn’t happen that way, of course, because after two rounds of voting, the freakish tiebreaker rules (votes in past tribal council meetings) dictated that Jeff (who had been voted against before) leave – giving Ogakor the crucial majority it needed to put a stake through the heart of this game and the American viewing public.

Now, think about that for a minute.  A guy gets voted out, and loses his chance at one million dollars ... due to parliamentary procedure?  How very “Robert’s Rules of Order” from a game where we expect “Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun.”

No, the tiebreaker could have been solved in a much more creative, much more “Survivor”-spirited way.

Remember the immunity challenge from this episode?  People standing on logs in the middle of a river until they fell over or were enticed off.

The answer was so simple:  Hike back down to the logs (which would have been a couple of hours; Tribal Council is not near the camp or the challenge locations, from what I understand), and get back on, Colby and Jeff.  Last one standing stays in the game.

This one blemish aside, I have not changed my earlier opinion.  This game rules.

(Note: Since this column was written, "Kentucky Joe," Rodger, has been voted off of Australia.  Bummer.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about age, and coincidentally, “Survivor’s” Jeff.  (The contestant, not the host.)  As it turns out, Jeff, pop singer Janet Jackson and I all have one thing in common.  We’re all 34.  I don’t know quite what that means, but that would have been one interesting Lamaze class to go to, with Jeff’s mom, Janet’s mom, and, of course, the best mom in the Universe, Kathy Campbell.

This comes to mind because a co-worker of mine was completely freaked the other day ... over turning 24.  Memo to my co-worker:  Don’t freak.  Be happy and grateful for every single day.  You don’t even need to find a reason; just be happy.  And hope you keep counting birthdays for many, many more years.

Yeah, I’ve been pondering my mortality recently.  So what?

I like the writing on the new “Weekend Update” segment of “Saturday Night Live” an awful lot.  Great stuff, the kind of jokes that I’m trying very hard to come up with for the show I work on.  Every week, the material is fantastic.

And the delivery is really, really sub-par.

I guess we all have our tastes in “fake news anchors.”  I like mine straight – Dennis Miller, Jon Stewart, Kevin Nealon, and the likes.

The problem I have with Jimmy Fallon (besides the fact that every girl in my office is “ga-ga” for him, because “he’s so cute!” Ugh...) and Tina Fey is that they laugh at their own jokes.  Hey Jimmy, hey Tina, that’s my job.  I know you think it’s clever, but let me make my own decision on whether to laugh or not.  I don’t want to “join you” in busting up at something you’re just so happy you wrote, you had to smirk.

Not that I counted, but Jimmy and Tina laughed at each other’s jokes 14 times the other night.

I need a new hobby.

So sometimes I invent words.  Sometimes they’re good, sometimes not so much.  The worst part about inventing words is making sure they have a good usage.  I mean, when you think about it, most of the good words have already been invented.  Can you think of something that doesn’t already have a word for it?  I think not.

However...

I was wondering what it would be called if you went around the office all day, telling a co-worker, “You’re going to get fired!  You’re going to get fired!”  Then at the end of the day, YOU get fired instead.

That would be:  firony.  ('FI-r&-nE)  (n) The act of an ironic employment termination.

If you ever hear this word in conversation, I want you to remember:  I invented it.  And I want some kind of royalty.

It should be noted that the person I first “tested” this word on quite rightly pointed out that she could think of no circumstance wherein one would spend the day taunting a co-worker in the fashion required for this word to be of use.  Still, “firony” stands ready to serve if needed.

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