Lions and tigers oh my

Ashley turned six months today, so we celebrated her half a year birthday with a trip to the local zoo, which is very close to home. The world renowned San Diego Zoo is also not terribly far, so I'm sure we'll be checking that place out eventually as well. The weather has cooled off and it feels really nice to get the occasional chill in the air after many years without one.

In the news again -- Ron Hodges

I walked into my local Barnes and Nobles, which nicely is just across the street, and was looking at the many new offerings when this book caught my eye. I knew there had to be a Saipan section, and sure enough there is. And wouldn't you know it, the principal source on that chapter was none other than persona non grata himself Ron Hodges, who is quoted rather extensively. The overall mood captures the depressed economic state of the CNMI, but some of it, there were several sources, was a bit exaggerated with suggestions that the place is especially violent playing up the Mafia angles and suggested there are hordes of people with broken thumbs and such from gambling debts. The book does a good job of explaining the depressed pricing of Saipan real estate, and it uses the staggering difference in the cost of building the Hotel Nikko and what it just sold for, it might have been hundreds of millions less I can't recall, to illustrate the point.

The tenets of Scientology

Tonight I caught the new Bill Maher movie Religulous, which is a combination of the two words "religion" and "ridiculous," which does seem to be a reasonable word combination. My favorite scene is this one where he goes to London and starts preaching the tenets of "Scientology." He gets treated like he's crazy because, well, it is crazy, and he makes the point that it only sounds comparatively crazy because it's newer and we haven't heard these stories as often as the ones from the more mainstream religions. Bill's too smug for the dopey masses to even contemplate a lot of what is offered in this movie, but it's nice to see someone putting up the good fight against the forces of superstition, prudism, dullness and dogma.

Smashing Pumpkins Starla

This song is great. It is good to see the Smashing Pumpkins back. I love their moody, atmospheric songs that continue to build like this one.

Good game, lousy ending

I got a good seat to the Dallas vs. Cardinals game today in Phoenix. From my perspective as a Cowboys fan it didn't go particularly well. The current Cowboy coach Wade Phillips is a horrible NFL coach -- maybe as bad as Barry Switzer. The rookie sensation Felix Jones doesn't get the ball nearly enough, the all pro receiver might be slipping and doesn't get the ball thrown to him very often and last year's team was an all time underachiever -- the only number one seed to go one and done in the playoffs. I made the right call to stick to the end of this game and saw a miraculous comeback to tie it up and send it to overtime, but I also saw an atrocious and brief Cowboy overtime performance where they lost in ugly fashion.

The behavior of people at these games confounds. It's like the Ancient Roman Arena only we watch people pull hamstrings and tear knee cartilage instead of slicing off limbs. When I see how kids act in school, today was a reminder of where they are getting it from. It was still cool to see the game up close and personal. I've seen the Cowboys live in three different seasons. In the previous two times they later went on to win the Superbowl. I saw them in Atlanta in 1993 and at Giants Stadium in 1995 when Emmitt Smith ran wild on the night they retired Lawrence Taylor's number.

Market madness

Last night I made the depressing decision to go online and look at my mutual fund account. I rolled over my CNMI retirement contribution in July, and since then, I've seen that money, in a very broad array of mutual funds, crash to the tune of 22 percent -- 11 percent in September alone. I just saw a yahoo story that says retirement accounts have decreased by $2 trillion. That decrease doesn't even factor in today's five percent fall. Finally it seems President Numbnuts has run everything into the ground. He'll leave office with an expensive, endless, unpopular war, an even wider gap between rich and poor aided by his crony capitalism, absolutely no progress on health care, global warming or education, trillions more in debt, an attack on the American homefront on his watch, Bin Laden still at large and a crippled economy, but he went to church and didn't approve of gay people kissing, so no problem. Bill Maher is right, we're too stupid to be governed.

Between the stock market crash, the price of gas -- better but still bad -- the housing crash, which was inflated from the previous years truth be told, I'm not sure I've ever seen the American economy this bad. I also don't see this country having much ability to cope with these problems, either. This country as a whole seems very past its prime and incapable of doing anything other than creating more debt and heading further in the wrong direction -- appealing to the dumbest, most base instincts. Our movies are bad, our music is bad, disgusting fast food abounds, an absolute ditz could end up vice president -- don't get me started on the state of parenting or the raging anti-intellectual attitudes of the youth. It's starting to feel like I'm in Saipan five years ago.

Baby cover model

I've had a very long week of awakening to duck noises at 5:30 in the morning. Fortunately this baby is such a sweetie. My wife is keeping herself entertained with taking or tweaking baby photos.

The man and Bobby Feller

There are going to be two major league teams having spring training in the town I'm living in here in Arizona, the Cleveland Indians and the Cincinatti Reds. The players apparently will be on hand for workouts throughout the off-season. They had the dedication ceremony last night and Hall of Famer Bob Feller was on hand to sign autographs. I got a picture signed of Feller pitching to Joe DiMaggio during a Feller no hitter 1-0 at Yankee Stadium on April 30, 1946. Most people just got a signature and left without a word, but I naturally had a few questions. I just found it really cool to talk to someone involved in so much history and told him so, and he seemed happy to hear that. Watching him put on his baseball Hall of Fame sport jacket I was just in awe, and I really enjoyed chatting with someone in such a cool and exclusive club. I asked Feller's opinion on the classic Joe DiMaggio versus Ted Williams debate, and he gave the fairly traditional appraisal that "Williams was the best hitter and DiMaggio was the best ballplayer." I also asked him who he had the toughest time facing, and he said Tommy Henrich gave him fits. Henrich was known as "Old Reliable" for his clutch hitting. Feller also told me he was part of the Navy unit that shelled Garapan, and I found his choice of the word Garapan, not Saipan, interesting. Alex and Carl had fun running the bases, and I'm so looking forward to spring training next year.

Couple of good quotes

One of my favorite shows of all time is the West Wing. I was reminiscing about that show and read an interview with creator Aaron Sorkin, who had this quote on the internet.

"It’s a bronchial infection on the First Amendment. Nothing has done more to make us dumber or meaner than the anonymity of the Internet."

And on the topic of interesting quotes, I loved this quote from Bill Maher on last week's Real Time:

"It seems like our society has two reactions to problems: paralysis and panic. Paralysis would be big long term issues like social security, immigration, health care, energy, the environment. Nothing ever gets done, paralysis. Panic is our other response. 9/11 would be a good example of panic. Attack the wrong country. Start torturing people."