I'm in musical pain.  After tonight's performance (and the volume of screaming fans) I strongly suspect Archuleta is going to be the winner tomorrow.  Teeny-bopper appeal is going to win out over bankability (seriously, how many people are actually going to pay for a 17 year old crooner?).  On the birght side, that still leaves David Cook in the Clay Aiken position...and considering Aiken still has a recording contract and a career, and Rueben Studdard...well...doesn't, I'm ok with that.  Either way, neither preformer is going to be hurting for a job (or a date) anytime soon.

Jerry and I have found a new hobby: geocaching!  In this age of the internet, all you have to do is go to www.geocaching.com, put in a location, and it will tell you where nearby caches are with coordinates.  Then you go out with a GPS device, find the cache, sign a logbook, and perhaps swap swag inside the cache.  It's exercise, its something we can do together, it introduces us to all sorts of corners of our town we never knew existed, and eventually it will probably prod us to do some travelling.  We aren't the type to just go someplace to say we've been there.  We need a purpose, although not necessarily a particularly good one.  Now we can say "hey, there's X many caches in that town.  let's take a day trip."  

I may grow less interested over time, but right now I'm pretty obsessed. And since it's impetus to get on my bike, it's all good.

Geocaches are everywhere.  One cacher has seeded all the local cemetaries here, which is way cool because they have really old stones here.  There's four within a half mile of my house.   They're tucked into trees of nicely pruned parks and stashed deep into the woods and everywhere inbetween.

Ok, out of date again.  This as been sitting on a zip drive all week waiting for upload.

I totally admit I'm not very knowledgable about singing.  I generally have no idea what Randy means when he describes a performance as "pitchy."  But Tuesday was a rare time when I could clearly delineate everyone according to performance:

Syesha and Carly - Clearly the top two.  Both were fantastic, and both earned high praises from the judges as well as from Lord Andrew.  Brownie points to Carly for her "Simon Loves Me (This Week)" T-shirt, which got a laugh from everyone, including Simon.

Brooke and Jason - Clearly the bottom two.  Jason, in particular was describes as a "train wreck"... and that was BEFORE Simon got to comment!  Jason's performance should have earned him the boot except that Brooke had a bad start (for the second time on the show) and has been struggling in the votes for weeks.  Brooke should have gone home before Kristy.  She definitely should have gone home before Michael Johns.  Surely this would be her week.

Yeah, I realize this post is about 4 days too late.  Better late than never.

I more or less side with Simon, and I more or less side with the general voting...until this last week.  David Archuleta bores me to tears now.  Sure, its impressive for a 17 year old, but I don't buy albums based on age.

I'm going to have to disagree with <lj user=sainthuck> about David Cook.  I thought Innocent was a more than decent performance, and I'd be shocked as all hell if he ended up in the bottom three anytime soon (unless, of course, he really blows something, but I ahven't seen it happen yet)

The bottom three of Carly, Brooke and Michael was interesting.  Jerry and I were begging America to end Kristy Lee Cook home after her self-pitying display last week of showing up on stage with a sign saying "Kristy's seat" intended for a bottom three seat.  Seriously Kristy, if the bottom three is your goal, do us a favor and just quit.    But her performance deservedly won her a place on the safety couch, and at least she didn't parade the sign around for a second week in a row.

Brooke was no surprise at all.  With Kristy safe, we both expected Brooke was packing her bags.  The judges had not been happy with either Carly or Michael, so they weren't exactly suprises...although its interesting to see how the mighty have fallen, since they were "the people to beat" during Hoolywood auditions.  Michael has wonderful vocals but just can't show us he has real performing talent other than singing Queen songs.  "Dream On" was technically fine, but sounded incredibly karaoke in style.  There was no Michael in it.  I thought Simon unfairly harsh on Carly.  I liked her rendition of "The Show Must Go On" (although I'll admit the iTunes version of it is better), but he apparently nailed it when he said she was real trouble.

What was really interesting was the reactions of people on-screen to Michael being sent home.  Having never been in the bottom three, he was suddenly the guy with the fewest votes.  The judges were in shock, Brooke was dumbfounded (not difficult), and Carly was in tears (perhaps feeling a sense of her own Idol morality?).  Yes, it was an unimpressive performance, but was it really worse than Simon-darling Jason's performance?  Michael karaoked Aerosmith, while Jason karaoked a song from 1938 on a ukelele.  Is that really what passes for star performance on a pop song competition?  The ukelele version of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" has been widely aired on a commercial for something (I just remember the song, no recollection of what they were selling), and Jason added nothing to it.

I'm befuddled.

"With all due respect. I won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton. So, I don't know how somebody who's in second place is offering vice presidency to the person who's in first place," he said.

Obama also said the Clinton campaign was "hoodwinking" voters when it suggested he was not ready to be president while also floating the possibility of a joint Clinton-Obama ticket.

"I don't understand," he said. "If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?"

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/10/dems.campaign/index.html

This is part of what I love about Obama.  Besides having a generally good head on his shoulders, he's proving himself to be supremely tactful while not letting others bully him around.  He doesn't respond to Clinton's negative campaigning with more negative campaigns.  he simply points out the rediculousness of them.  And in this latest round, where Clinton is now painting herself as being gracious enough to share the ticket with her rival while simultaneously putting forth the image that she's on top, all Obama has needed to do is stick to the facts and Clinton looks like an idiot all on her own.

I know I can't regularly keep up with reviews for shows on a week by week basis, but I really like writing them when I get the chance...especially when I don't have to do them in order.  My answer to this is http://scifi.wikidot.com, a wiki I've set up specifically for reviews.  Right now I'm busy catching up on all the new series Doctor Who episodes, because, honestly, you can't pay me to not think about Doctor Who.  When I'm done with those I'll do Torchwood.  Not sure where I'll go next, although there are certainly plenty of options.

Part of this is certainly just a creative outlet for me.  part of this is also to provide info for people (like Dan over at xark.typepad.com) who don't like stepping into the middle of a show without knowing what the heck has been going on.

Anyone else interested in taking up their favorite series?  If someone wants to step up and blather on about the best, the worst and the mediocre of their favorite show, their welcome on the wiki.   Spoilers are fine.  I'm presuming anyone who's reading episode reviews either has already seen the episode, already knows something about the episode, or doesn't care if they pick up a few secrets from the review.

I've never considered myself particularly empathic, but it struck me last night how much information can be communicated even to me without the point actually being expressed in words.

I'm currently doing a run at a community theatre, during which I shut off my phone.  Afterward, I see my father has called at 10:30pm - 11:30pm his time.  Crap.  Something bad's happened.  No one in my family would call that late to chat, and Dad never calls just to chat.  Never.  Probably something with Mom.  If something had happened to anyone else in the family - even my dad's relatives - it would be Mom who would call me.  That's just how it works.  The one exception might be my little brother, Jon.  If something happened to him Mom might be too distraught to make phone calls.

All of that before I even check the voice mail.  "Hi Cass.  It's your father.  Call me when you get this.  I'll be awake until at least 12:30 my time.  You can reach me on the cell or at home."

Mom's definitely in the hospital.  She definitely wasn't dead.  Dad was too calm for that.  She's not immediately dying either.  There would have been more urgency.  And it was almost certainly not Jon: there wasn't enough ambient distress to be keeping Mom from making the call herself.

So I call him back, and I really feel like a total jerk as I say hi and wait for him to explain what I already know.  It would be rude for me to make presumptions, but at the same time I feel a bit like I'm making him unnecessarily repeat my internal monologue.  "Your mother's in the hospital.  She went in this morning.  The doctors think it may be some kind of heart failure."

Wait a minute.  Heart failure?  OK, remain calm.  "OK, um, what exactly do they mean by heart failure?"

One of the improv actors makes some quip I don't quite hear and laugh.  What I do hear is another of the actors cutting in with something like "Um, I don't think this is a joking phone call."  And then everyone kind of awkwardly files out of the room.

In fact, I think he probably used the wrong word.  They were concerned there was a problem with her heart, but they didn't know what.  They didn't even admit her until this morning after spending the night in the ER.  As of this morning, they've ruled out heart attack and can't find any damage or blockage to her heart at all and are looking to her circulatory system, which they'll be doing on an out-patient basis.  Which means that the clearest communication by far through the entire incident is what I gathered from seeing my father's name on the caller ID.

What would you do if the entire human race was obliterated with the exception of your worst enemy?  Someone the world is better off without, someone like Hitler or Bin Laden or Stalin, someone you have spent years fighting.  What would you do?

In the case of the Doctor, the answer is:  beg.

One of my students has filed a greivance against me and my college on the grounds that:

• I am an anti-Christ
• The course title (Religion in America) is deceptive.  ("It should state examining all religions and occult practices in America from a sociologist prospective[sic].")
• I described religions positively as long as the subject was not Christianity
• I reduced his assignment grades for repeatedly adding extraneous material
• I intimidated him
• I used manipulative witchcraft against the class
• I agreed with a passage in the book that did not respect men
• The textbook criticises Christians
• The book doesn't speak positively about Promise Keepers
• I taught untrue statements such as "Washington was a Deist."

He's specifically asking for the grade on his final to be changed.  Considering that I've already shown said final to the dean (looking for guidance as to how to grade it), this promises to be almost amusing.  It should also be interesting because he and his wife gave the only bad reviews of my class.  Everyone else gave very positive reviews... including a male born again Christian.