Penguins

"This turtle can snap a broom handle in half with a single bite."

-- a sign at the Newport Aquarium

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Touched African black-footed penguins, horseshoe crabs, various sharks and P. F. Chang's today with my girlfriend's friends. The animals live at the Newport Aquarium in Kentucky; so that one's off the list--the short, short list of nowhere-else attractions Cincinnati has to offer. Honestly not as impressive (in my opinion) as the aquarium at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, but I hear rumors that the Cincinnati Zoo is better than the Doorly. Scholars debate.

After the Aquarium, we searched in vain for the original Montgomery Inn, craving barbecued ribs. Ended up at P. F. Chang's, where the sesame chicken is spicier, the servers dress like unhooded ninjas, and the jugs of water sit on shelves beneath large Chinese statuettes (it looks like these stone ancestors are peeing into the refill jugs).

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About the animals, before the food: Those little critters were interested in everything they saw, from shoelaces to zippers to thermometer straps. Absolute, unadulterated interest, like babies. Such naivete always confronts me with, well, naivete. It stares into my narrow eyes with its wide eyes, challenging me with its inability to challenge. Innocence cannot comprehend guilt, cannot fathom its depths.

After the van discussions of two days ago, I've been thinking more and more about what it means to be a good person, and those penguins were waddling examples of simplicity in its simplest state, the state of being unable to realize one's own simplicity.

As the penguin keeper, Crystal, told us when we first entered the penguin pen, "They either think we are big penguins or they are little people."

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They wouldn't make good pets, though. Apparently they piss or poo about every half hour. Think of the carpets, think of the diapers.