GET IT RIGHT

Once again, American has voted. Wrong.

So on the 10th season of American Idol, the faithful following is going to be subjected to a final pitting two, yes, two country western singers.

The last two weeks, the two best singers have been voted off--James and Haley. Their problem: they weren't country. No Grand Ol' for them in the future. No Hee Haw appearances.

And I hate to be that way. I want to like and respect most all music, but when twang meets twang, it's too much for me. Not that Scotty and Lauren don't have great voices; they do, but they're not as powerful, not as much range as James and Haley. Those are the two I wanted to see in the finals, but at least one should have survived.

Another show I watch ended badly for me, too, when conniving, lying, deceiving Boston Rob won on Survivor. When some fortunate breaks and some stupid voting by the jury that he had mistreated voted to award him the million dollars. Despite the fact that his equally disreputable wife Amber had won a million in an earlier Survivor using the same underhanded tactics. Certainly Rob's loyal but weak sycophants, Peter and Natalie, were not worthy, but better choices than the eventual winner.

So I've had a bad tv week.

Next week, I'll watch the Idol, I guess. I should have a winner in Scotty even though he's the lesser of two as they say. But Adam Lambert should have won last year, too. You never know. I have trouble accepting that this year's Idol winner looks astonishing like Mad magazine's Alfred E. Newman.

TELL IT TO THE HAND

I never quite understood that expression. Like a lot of other things I never understood.

On occasion, when my mom would hear a funny saying, she would laugh into her sleeve and say she was saving it for later. I never heard of that before or since.

Or why can't you begin a sentence with and? The Greeks did. Or at least there's a Greek word, peritaxis, for it. And it means, to make a point. A continuation that could not easily be added to the previous statement or loss of effect would occur.

Or why you can't end a sentence with a preposition. Winston Churchill did in a book he sent to his publishers before he was famous. They returned the manuscript with a note that he ended too many sentences that way. His response, "That is the kind of nonsense, up with which I refuse to put." Only Sir Winny.

Or why educators at universities moan about students having to diagram sentences in English, yet they accept, in fact embrace mathematics courses which don't use numbers to any great degree. And they call the English exercise something students will never use in their lives.

There are many more things that puzzle me. Like how they really get those ships in the bottles. Plus, electricity. And not only how it works. But why people moan about the price of oil but not the price of electricity. Don't we have a right to cheap, clean electricity?