Sentinel Blogs

The Fearful Football Forecast: Week 6

October 8, 2008 – 8:02 pm
Maybe I was having self-esteem issues when this thing started, I don't know. Or maybe it's a good thing I pick a heavy diet of college games, since I know that game a little better than I do the NFL. Perhaps it's just the pure joy of a baseball postseason with out the Yankees, or maybe some revelation about the presidential campaign. Anyway, 11-4 last week, 53-26 overall and awayyyyy we pick! WAC Nevada over New Mexico St.: And again I ask ... what do the other pundits see in the Aggies that I'm not? San Jose State over Utah State: Spartans enter favorable strtetch of schedule coming off huge win at Hawaii. Southern Miss. over Boise State: Only because So. Miss is at home. Fresno State over Idaho: Because the Bulldogs are hungry for a home win and Idaho may be the worst team in football. Hawaii over La. Tech: Win over Fresno may turn ...

Posted in Going All-in by Richard de Give | No Comments »

Acedia

October 8, 2008 – 8:07 am
It's an old word. Some translate it as exhaustion of the soul. World weariness. Soul sickness. It's fallen in favor, out of favor, disappeared from use, and lately crept again into consciousness. You find the term popping up — in talk shows in the Bay Area, in conversations with friends, in exhortations from conservative thinker William Bennett. I like what Bennett says about acedia. So instead of laboring intensely to sound smart, I'll let him speak here in an excerpt from a longer address. The link to the full talk is http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=1995&month=11 Judge for yourself what relevance it has to our seemingly limitless obeisance to Economy, that deity from whom, some say, all good things come. But now an angry god, pouring out her wrath on us for — what? — not tickling her just right? Perhaps, as Bennett suggests, the primary danger to America comes from another realm, one which is untouched by regulatory fiddling or ...

Posted in Signposts by Seth Nidever | 6 Comments »

The Fearful Football Forecast: Week 5

October 1, 2008 – 6:21 pm
Curse you, ESPN! Thanks to shifting around a couple of college football games to counter playoff baseball on TBS, I didn't get a chance to make a pick on what could be one of the more intriguing WAC games of the season, La. Tech at Boise State. Worse, since morst folks here insist on watching Game 1 of the Dodgers-Cubs series on our lone newsroom TV, I'll have to check one of the online sites or wait for the story to come across the wire on that one. Sooo ... to borrow a line from that other cable TV institution, Vince Van Patten of the World Poker Tour, I had a Dolly Parton week, 9-5, including hitting all my WAC picks. That's 42-22 on the year, but with some real challenges on the table this week. WAC BYU over Utah State: Another feeding frenzy in the Wasatch. New Mexico State over Alcorn State: But don't ...

Posted in Going All-in by Richard de Give | No Comments »

Maybe it’s not the economy, stupid

October 1, 2008 – 7:51 am
Fear grips Wall Street, and we quake. At the Sentinel, we've been living the crisis for days. Eating, breathing, and reading stories with headlines like "How bad the economy really is" and "Fallout on Wall Street worse than after 9/11." Consternation hangs in the air like a cloud. What if our 401(k)'s evaporate? What if the Sentinel goes under? What if indeed? What is happening economically in the United States isn't anywhere near the worst thing that could happen to somebody. The worst is to lose dignity, to lose soul, to be deprived of hope. That could happen if one literally had nothing to eat and no shelter, obviously. But there are many actual tragedies that loom larger than the decline in U.S. economic resources, however problematic that may prove to be. Like losing a spouse to suicide. I wrote a post a few months ago about my best friend's wife hanging herself. I felt wrenching pain for some time, ...

Posted in Signposts by Seth Nidever | 10 Comments »

Crazy items spotted at 99 cent store

September 29, 2008 – 11:15 am
If you haven’t been to the new 99-cent only store in town yet, do make the trip — but do it with extreme prejudice. You may find it extremely entertaining. I’m not usually a big fan of a dollar store of any kind (Being ‘frugalista’ frequenting a dollar store doesn’t necessarily mean saving money, let alone saving the planet. I don’t care if frugality is en vogue or not. I think a dollar store is a waste of my time and earth’s precious resources. I’ve been dirt poor for as long as I’ve been a journalist; I still survive without it) When I was dragged by my friend to the store on its unholy grand opening, which happened to have taken place on 9-11, I wasn’t very thrilled. Light bulbs, cleaning supplies, canned food, greeting cards, all for under a buck — whoopdie doo. But when I trotted along the ...

Posted in Alien Asylum by Eiji Yamashita | 9 Comments »

Order! Order!

September 26, 2008 – 10:37 am
Imagine, if you will, a giant unnamed continent. Much like the continent you are currently sitting on, this nameless land mass shifts slowly as tectonic plates beneath the surface grind together. Thus, the mass moves, but at a rate slow enough for even the oldest of drivers to pass by. Now, encase this continent in amber. Pour cement in its path. Add a couple wind-break parachutes for good measure. There. Now you are moving like the legal system. We’ve all grown up on shows like “Law and Order,” “Night Court” and “Ally McBeal,” which paint the legal system is a wacky place where cases are solved in under an hour and sexy shenanigans are always happening behind closed doors. On some deeper, television-infused level of the brain, we believe that criminal matters are handled swiftly and elegantly, while lawyers and prosecutors trade barbs like warrior chieftains. I guess it goes ...

Posted in Panic Button by Joe Johnson | 4 Comments »

The Fearful Football Forecast: Week 4

September 24, 2008 – 10:11 pm
I don't know what's worse: That I went 5-8 last weekend (33-17 overall), or that I have one less day to contemplate all this with the Pac-10 having a Thursday night game this week, or that unlike the lending institutions, the feds aren't bailing me out of this self-created mess. But enough politics ... on to the football.  WAC Fresno State over UCLA: The Bulldogs win (in) the Rose Bowl! The Bulldogs win (in) the Rose Bowl!  San Diego State over Idaho: The Aztecs couldn't have sunk so low to lose to the Vandals ...  New Mexico over New Mexico State: There goes the Aggies' win streak. Nevada over UNLV: Fremont Cannon stays home. San Jose State over Hawaii: Always tough to win on the Islands, and SJSU is having o-line problems, but Hawaii's been struggling, so stand by the alma mater! PAC-10 Southern Cal over Oregon State: Trojans get a little breather. Cal over Colorado State: Bears feast on another ...

Posted in Going All-in by Richard de Give | No Comments »

Details, please

September 24, 2008 – 4:08 pm
Ok, I'm about to admit something bad: I don't always pay attention when I drive. I mean I do when something forces me to come back to Earth (like today when a truck decided to stop in the middle of 43 out of nowhere right in front of me, so i had to slam on my brakes, and then I had to snake around the truck because there was a semi-truck approaching me from behind at full speed and i was not in the mood to have my car scrunched like an accordian), but I have done my commute from Hanford to Fresno and back 17,923 times. I'm quite certain that I could do it with my eyes closed, hands behind my back and driving in reverse the whole time.  Yeah, commuting is no fun. But it  does afford me one thing I didn't have before, and that is time to ...

Posted in Daydream Island by Shannon Milliken | 7 Comments »

Let’s hear it for hitting the bottom

September 24, 2008 – 8:14 am
America needs this economic crisis. Or so a friend told me the other day. I tend to agree. People have been living high on the hog for so long, it's time for some belt tightening. It's time for Americans to give up the jet skis and the boats and the honkin SUVs. It's time for people to live simpler lives. I read an L.A. Times story the other day about the correctional officer's union threatening to recall Gov. Schwarzenegger. The story quoted a sergeant from Corcoran who said she could barely live on $80,000 a year. And to make matters even more horrific, she has to work weekends. Wow. Eighty thousand dollars a year? In the San Joaquin Valley? I had no idea times were so hard. What kind of lifestyle are we talking about here? Americans have been living in luxury ever since World War II ended. Minus a few bumps in the road, the living standard has gone ...

Posted in Signposts by Seth Nidever | 45 Comments »

The Fearful Football Forecast: Week 3

September 19, 2008 – 1:14 am
Thanks or no thanks to what I'm hoping was just a bad week for the Pac-10, this space tumbled to 13-8 last week, leaving me at 28-9 for the season. You may still be getting better odds in the stock market, believe it or not! The picks: WAC Oregon over Boise State: I'd love to take the Broncos, but I'm starting to get a funny feeling the Ducks are our best hope of stopping USC from running the table. Utah State over Idaho: This may not be a good one for small, impressionable children. La. Tech over SE Louisiana: Our Cajun correspondents say keep an eye on Tech in the WAC. Toledo over Fresno State: Classic trap game scenario alert! 'Dogs coming off a tough loss to Wisconsin and, while  their bodies are in Ohio, heads may be in the Rose Bowl for next week's game with UCLA. San Jose State over Stanford: Always an interesting one, ...

Posted in Going All-in by Richard de Give | No Comments »