{ bobharris.com }

Two days late, but worth the wait: a mama mara (a sort of giant bunny / guinea pig / inexplicable furball) and her baby mara, spotted in a Barbados wildlife reserve:

The cute… can’t breathe… the cute… it is crushing me…

Prisoner of Trebekistan gets a nod in this Detroit News story about the way quiz shows seem to have changed over the years.

I’d like to elaborate, btw.  There’s a frequent charge that our country has dumbed down, and if you compare the questions currently asked on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? (which I didn’t even know existed) to the questions asked on, say, Twenty-One, there seems to be a prima facie case.

And granted, there are days when I think the future of quiz shows will be a show called Who Can Push The Big Red Button, with ten beautiful girls standing next to ten three-foot-wide buttons, nine of which are blue.  Pushing the lone red button gets the contestant $50,000.  Can the contestant do it?  Join host Don Imus and find out.

But the big-money questions on Jeopardy! are still pretty damn tough.  The big-money Millionaire questions are, too.  Just like in the 1950s.  I think shows like Deal Or No Deal don’t tell us anything about any possible changes in our knowledge or intelligence; people have enjoyed games of chance since long before TV was invented.  Deal Or No Deal’s current popularity may only tell us that our culture intuits luck as a factor in economic success a bit more, and if so, that would be a logical reflection of some of the structural changes we’ve seen in the last quarter-century or so.

There was a time when working-class people like my dad could very predictably get a good, stable job, buy a home, and have a relatively stable life, purely through hard work, which was extremely well-valued.  Not quite so much anymore.  Interesting to notice that Deal Or No Deal’s contestants seem to be consistently working class.

Talking out of my ass, as usual.  But that’s what I think, anyway.

Oh, and none of this is in Prisoner of Trebekistan.  Which is barely even about Jeopardy! in some ways.  But a lot of you know that already.

There’s a certain economy to this building in Basseterre, which contains representatives of Italy, Austria, the UK, France, Switzerland, the US, Canada, and, yes, The Athlete’s Foot:

When The Athlete’s Foot sends troops to liberate Foot Locker, we already know who’s in the coalition.

Spotted on the island of Nevis.  Clearly, some human being has been enchanted and recast in the form of a goat.

Seems happy enough about it, though.

I could probably use a few long days in there myself.

Thought I’d be fresh out of pudus this week, given where I am.  I’ve got plenty of pretty cool pics of geckos and iguanas and even sisserou parrots, but no fresh pudus.

But then Phil sends me this satellite surveillance photo of a pudu plotting something nefarious in south Florida.

Coiled and ready to strike.  Good thing the Pentagon is keeping an eye on the little guys.

This is what cemeteries looks like in Guadeloupe:

Some are the size of entire neighborhoods.  I know nothing about the whys, or the significance of the checkerboard motif, which you see everywhere.  Will ask.  Fascinating.

This is the view from on high in Antigua’s new cricket stadium:

Between gloomy weather, surly security people, an ill-conceived park-&-ride system that is far more park than ride, and a deeply disappointing West Indies team to cheer for, by the afternoon of only the second game here, sometimes it looked like there were more sheep and goats wandering about than cricket fans.

Most depressing couple of hours I’ve spent around a sporting ground of any kind in years.

I know exactly zero about local politics, but even with massive Chinese investment (something you see everywhere in the Caribbean), I can’t imagine how Antigua can afford this mistake. They just moved one of their downtown’s main attractions to the hard-to-reach middle of nowhere. How that helps the economy here I have no idea. I may be completely wrong, but it sure looks like somebody in power here should be facing serious consequences.

Just sad.

Meet two members of the Royal Scotch Guard, whose uniforms never need cleaning:

Don’t ask what’s in the groin-level fanny pack deals. Unless you’re up for a Justin Timberlake thing.

In which case, you might need some ScotchGuard of your own.

PS — yes, I know the fanny pack is technically called a sporran.  But it’s still a fanny pack.  That’s what sporrans are.

At least that’s the World Cup’s official song, which is admittedly catchy as hell.

And generally, yes, that’s the experience.  Unless you play for India or Pakistan, two cricket powers, both eliminated in the first round of play.  (In their place in the second round: Bangladesh and Ireland, two countries few would have given a chance.)  And the impact of cricket in India and Pakistan may be greater than all American sports have in the US, combined.

So India’s players now know that their property is being pelted with stones, they’re being burned in effigy, and police have had to begin guarding their homes 24/7.

Oh, and the Pakistan coach didn’t drop dead on the night his team was eliminated after all — he was strangled in his room.

Everybody sing: It’s the game of love and unity…