The Sitch

American Idol

In case you haven't heard, all voting from last night is null and void. Voting will commence again tonight at 10:00. Due to someone screwing up, the posted phone numbers for Mikalah, Anwar and Jessica were incorrect last night. (Apparently, instead of posting 1-866-IDOLS-11 for Jessica, it was 1-866-IDOLS-05. Or something like that. In other words, another contestant was getting tons of votes that were meant for Jessica.)

So tonight at 9 there will be a sort of rebroadcast of last night's competition (so we can all point at Constantine and mock heartily) with some additional live elements. The results show will be Thursday night at...9:00? Something like that.

( American Idol: Billboard #1's )

The Judges

The judges are getting on my nerves this year. Mainly it's because of the obviousness of their critiques. Yes, they know how their words affect the outcome of the voting. But when they fail to comment at all on how bad Nadia's singing was? Or they fail to comment on the poor song selection of Constantine, other than to call it "An odd song choice"? Come on!

There's a noticable lack of balls for me this year. Now, I dare say if you matched this group against last year's group vocally, last year's group would kick their asses to Timbuktu. But if it was a match of performance skills, this year's group would kick everyone in last year's group to the curb. Except maybe George and Fantasia.

But it is a level playing field for this group. Competitively they can take on each other really well. Which is why we have the judges. They shouldn't be playing favorites so obviously. The favoritism with regards to Nadia this week was grating. In direct contrast, the lack of support (during critique) for Nikko and Vonzell is also grating. This is considering I like Nadia and find Vonzell to blend into the woodwork too much.

Get your balls back judges. I want the real critiques back. I want to see something from you guys besides bland praise. (And this could all be helped by someone alloting a little more time to Simon. Please?)

Fun time!

Cribbed from paperbkryter, because boredom breeds...this.

Ask me a question. Any question. All questions are subject to ludicrous and silly answers, with not a trace of sincerity or actual intellectual thought.

*honks clown nose*

Run! I thought!

Because I wanted to touch (briefly) on the Terri Schiavo situation, I'm doing a brief post on it.

For one, every Republican leaning I have is screaming "state's rights!" and is mad as hell that the federal government got involved in one particular case. The unconstitutionality of the actions taken by the House, Senate and President should be grounds for a major slap down by the Supreme Court. I hope the Court takes the case *just* for that reason.

Every Republican leaning in me is also against euthanasia of people with the ability to choose for themselves. (Euthanasia: The act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment.) Where the problem arises in this case though is in the intricacies of Terri's medical condition. At this point, I have major issues with the fact that both sides are so busy pointing fingers at one another that no real explanation for her condition has been given. I need details to make a decision. In my eyes, removing life support is one thing, removing a feeding tube is another. Yet the courts saw fit to rule in the favor of removing the feeding tube (at the early stages...we're at later stages now where the argument is about due process). There had to be medical evidence that this woman was in a persistent vegitative state, a state where she is gone, only the physical body remains. I believe the exact words used by one doctor early on were "her cortex is mush". Yes, I'll always have questions, but the courts in this case have ruled (many times) in favor of Terri's husband.

The issue of the husband vs. the parents is a sad one to me. The parents would like nothing more than to keep her alive forever. Physical life and the life they want are two things that will never be reconciled. Sadly, Terri is gone. This is not something she's going to emerge from. The claims of her responding are just wishful thinking. Independent investigators, brought in by the governor of Florida (and we all know what he was hoping would be found) found that Terri was not responding in a particular pattern or with any frequency to suggest response to stimuli.

Really, I feel bad for all sides. On one hand, I can't help but wonder why Terri's parents aren't given the opportunity to have her as they want for the rest of her life, since it's not like it would hurt anyone. On the other hand, given the lack of any other logical motive, it's obvious to me her husband is trying to enforce her final wishes. (I don't believe the parents that they know their daughter better than her husband did. One of the things about marriage is that you are giving all to that person in a way. They may have discussed things and made decisions that she never discussed with her parents. It really wasn't their business unless she made it their business.) All of the money is pretty much gone. He's gone through a lengthy battle with one purpose. If he had really just wanted rid of the responsibility, he'd have signed her over to her parents long ago.

It's a bad situation that the federal government has no right to be in. And that's my conflicted deep thoughts for the day.