sfaJack

kkk is worried about the invasion creeping into his neighborhood? It could be worse... Link That's right. Harris County, my home, is not so white bread anymore. I guess it's time for us to pack up from and head for The Woodlands. Or, if we can't afford that just yet, Sugar Land will do. In the meantime, let's examine some highlights from the article: Big surpise. Immigration is a huge issue/problem here and with the ridiculous amount of new, entry-level/cheap housing that has been built throughout the area, I suppose it was only a matter of time. The dramatic increase in crime in Houston over the last two years can be attributed to Katrina too, but nobody is allowed to say that out loud. In fact, I expect the PC Police to come kick down my door moments after I post this. Assuming anyone is reading, that is. That's a lot, but not as much as I would have thought, considering Houston absorbed nearly 60,000 Katrina refugees immediately after the storm. If this is the same "new" United States that will make Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama the next President, you can shove it up your ass. Ok, what the hell does this even mean? "New Texans?" If you weren't fucking born here, you are not a Texan. Period. Besides, true Texans do not have the goddamn Mexican flag flying in their front yard or hanging off the back of their roach coach taco trucks and do not look at you dumbfounded when they ask you something in Spanish and your only response is to stare blankly back at them like all these "new" Texans do. Education? Check. Houston ISD schools are terrible. They're like 90% minority. Coincidence? Health services? Check. A recent report that ran in this same newspaper (I wish I could find the link) claims the average wait time at an emergency room here is about 6 hours and that the city was mobilizing an effort to encourage people to take greater advantage of new free clinics located in "selected" areas of town. And I'm sure George Bush still hates them because they escaped his Hurricane-O-Matic. On second thought, maybe one of these two counties will do.

Whew. It’s been a busy few days with precious little time for goofing around on the Internet. All the blame for that goes to married life. I’m quite certain nobody missed me here but here’s the recap nevertheless... So last Friday, at 5:15 in the morning, my wife was in the shower when the phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID and both the caller name and phone number were showing as “Private.” Now, normally, such calls get either ignored or hung up on within two seconds because it’s usually somebody peddling some crap, but I picked it up thinking it could actually be an emergency since we don’t get many calls at any time of the day, much less at five in the morning. “Hello? *Silence* “Hello? If you say nothing in two more seconds, I’m hanging up.” Female voice I do not recognize, “Hi, Jack?” (not my real name) “Uh, yeah? Who’s this?” “It’s me.” … “Who?” “You don’t know who this is?” “No, ‘fraid not.” “You don’t recognize my voice?” “No, I have no idea who you are.” … “You really don’t know who this is?” “No, I don’t.” “Oh. Well, fuck you then.” *Click* Whatever. I still don’t know who that was. I’m gonna guess that it’s someone who was looking for someone with the same name as I and just picked the wrong guy out of the phone book since I would remember her if it was someone from my past. Could just be some prankster looking for a mark at five in the morning, I don’t know. Whoever it was, I’m just glad my wife didn’t answer the phone because that would have been an endless three-hour cycle of interrogation/denial of charges that I didn’t need. ------------------------------- So what was I doing to keep me busy this weekend? Moving furniture! My wife’s company was bought recently and her office was moved to the west side of town a couple of months back. The new company only wanted the people to move to the new office so they left all of the office fixtures and furnishings behind in the old building, on which the lease isn’t up for like two more years. A few workers (including my wife) asked what was going to be done with the old furniture and, after being told whatever was left over was going to be sold wholesale to whomever wanted it (without an inventory of it taken), it was let known that they could take whatever they wanted as long as it was done very discreetly and the building was not left barren. So my wife acquired a key and badge for the old building with the idea being that she and I would go up later Friday evening and quickly take as many bookcases as we could get in one truckload for us to use as desperately needed shelving in our garage. The problem came in when she told her family of our plan; their insistence that they come along and get some stuff for their own houses (they NEVER pass up free stuff—no matter how crappy that free stuff might be) coupled with my wife’s inability to ever tell her family no led to ten hours of moving fun (spread over two days) that left me and my brother-in-law sore from lifting all that shit as we were the only two physically capable of carrying it. Thus, our original plan of “four or five bookcases” for our own house turned into six bookcases and a heavy-ass desk for our place (don’t ask), five bookcases, another heavy-ass desk, and a credenza for my sister-in-law’s house, and seven more bookcases and a table for my wife’s parents. Christ. ------------------------------- I bought a new mp3 player on Saturday morning as my old, faithful one of nearly three years gave up the ghost late last week. I settled on this one after a bit of searching. Now, I know lots of people say avoid Creative products like the plague but fuck them. My first one lasted almost three years with heavy use/abuse; that earns Creative my business again. ------------------------------- Barry Bonds tied Hank Aaron at 755 with a home rum off Clay Hensley in 2nd inning last Saturday night in San Diego. I’d been taking advantage of my Extra Innings package and recording every Giants game last week hoping to catch the record-tying/setting homers. The one night I didn’t set the TV to record? Saturday. Oh well. I’ll get #756, which is the one that really matters. ------------------------------- Saw The Bourne Ultimatum last night. I absolutely love the first two Bourne movies and was not disappointed with this one. Nice, tight story, great action, and an awesome villain makes me very happy. The shaky camera thing everyone is bitching about is noticeable but didn’t bother me too much; certainly not enough to damped my experience anyway. ****, though you should probably watch the first two if you haven’t seen them yet or you risk being a little confused at a few points in the plot. ------------------------------- I’m going to the Cubs/Astros game at Minute Maid tonight. Pitching match-up is Rich Hill v. Wandy Rodriguez. Normally, my presence would be bad news for the Cubs as I’ve only seen them win once at MMP, but I don’t think even my jinx can stop them from losing to the shitty Astros. Or at least I hope not…

That kind of nosing around is just one reason why I rarely invite people over to the house.

Make sure you add the entry as "Published" rather than "Draft" before you post the entry. Look just above the 'post' button to the left.

It's ESPN, so I'm gonna guess that they were serious about it.

Astros have apparently gotten something from the Padres for Morgan Ensberg. EDIT: the deal is Ensberg and cash for a PTBNL.

Today could be really historic in Major League Baseball as there is the possibility of three huge milestones being reached on the same day: - Barroid ties Hank Aaron at 755 - Alex Rodriguez reaches 500 home runs faster than anyone in history - Tom Glavine gets his 300th win I won’t bore anybody with my opinion on Bonds and his pursuit of the record because, frankly, there isn’t anything I can say that hasn’t already been said. He cheated, he knows it, we all know it…that’s it. No matter how disgraceful it might be, there will be no asterisk next to his name or any erasing of his statistics so getting too morally outraged over it seems pointless to me. Instead, I’ll set my DVR to record the Giants/Dodgers game tonight because, as a baseball fan, I want to see history. The potential theatrics of Bonds not only finally tying Aaron but doing it in LA against the Dodgers where the crowd will be ridiculously hostile should be fantastic. I only wish the game didn’t start at 9:10 CDT tonight because, unless Bonds hits it in the first inning, I probably won’t get to see it live. You’d think that MLB would bump the start of the game up an hour so that a few more of their fans in the eastern and central parts of the country would get to see it, but the baseball powers that be aren’t known for making great decisions very often. ------------------------------ Bill Walsh died yesterday. I didn’t really get into football until I was about 10 years old, so his great 49er teams were a little before my time but his impact on the NFL was tremendous. Not that I would have been a fan since ours was and is a Dallas Cowboys house, but I can’t deny how the game evolved because of him. RIP Bill, but I’ll always wonder what would have happened if the Cowboys had had 30 more seconds in that 1982 NFC Championship game. They were at midfield and driving when time ran out as it was. 30 more seconds and I’m thinking they win and we don’t have to suffer through endless highlights of “The Catch” to this day… ------------------------------ Finally, it looks like Kevin Garnett has been traded to the Celtics for a bunch of guys. The only NBA teams I pay any attention to are (in order) the Rockets, Spurs, and Mavericks so I have no idea if it’s a good trade or even who any of the players Minnesota got in return are. However, I hope it works out for Boston. I’ve always felt bad for Garnett because he’s been a great, selfless player stuck on some shitty teams in Minnesota for most of the last 12 years. I want to see him get another shot at winning big and, if this trade works out, he should have that shot. Good luck KG, and go Celtics.

Bruiser, should I contain myself from getting too excited after the Cubs catch the Brewers tonight? I want to be absolutely pumped about it...but I can't shake the feeling that a crash is coming.

I discovered this morning that the Nazi bastards in charge of our Internet firewalls here have suddenly decided to block YouTube. Sons of bitches. ---------------------------------- Local TV news legend Marvin Zindler died yesterday from inoperative pancreatic cancer. He’s best known nationally for being the reporter that led the drive to have the Chicken Ranch shut down back in the 70’s, but I’ll always have a soft spot for ol’ Marvin because of his weekly reports on which restaurants around town got busted for health code violations. My brother and I used to watch those with my grandpa when we were kids and would all shout his trademark “SLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME IN THE ICE MACHINE!” line along with him at the end of each one. Even now, as someone who rarely watches TV news (outside of local weather/traffic in the morning), I always tried to make sure and tune in for that just so I could hear Marvin deliver that line. Good times. RIP, Marvin. ---------------------------------- Kroger has this promotion where they offer you $0.10 off per gallon of gas (for one fill-up) for every $100 worth of groceries/stuff you buy each month. So yesterday I went to do the weekly Sunday shopping where I pick up the things I need to put together the lunches I bring to work with me everyday. Upon handing me my receipt, the stupid kid running the register noticed that I had accumulated $94 of the next $100. Maybe I was just in a bad mood (likely, since my house was full of in-laws that had shown no signs of leaving any time soon) or he was just new at his first job and was a tad overeager, but this just irritated the hell out of me: Him: "Look at that. You only need six more dollars to get ten cents off your gas purchase." Me (indifferent): "Oh, yeah. How about that." Him: "You want me to hold your spot in line so you can go get some more stuff?" Me: "For what?" Him: "So you can get to $100." Me: "Why would I do that?" Him: "So you can save money when you fill up!" ... Him: "Don't you want to save 10 cents on your gas?" Me: "Not if I have to buy $6 worth of crap I don't need to get it." Him: "But you'll save WAY more than that when you fill up." Me: "How? I only buy maybe 20 gallons each time I fill up. That's only like $2 saved; how does that get to $6?" Him (thinking): "Hmm...I guess it doesn't." Me (shoving receipt in pocket): "Nope. Can I go now?" Him: "Have a nice day, sir."

WOW. And here I thought the hottest feud on the Internet was kkk v. niskie... Link --------------------------------- My wife and I both had the day off yesterday so we went "rock climbing" at this place as the final piece of her birthday celebration (don't ask). She's climbed before, as there was a climbing wall at the YMCA camp she used to work at. Yesterday was the first time up such a wall for me though. It was fun, but I'm not sure I understand why anyone would partake in an activity where your main objective is to not die. The good news is that I didn't fall and break my neck like I thought I might. In fact, other than getting "stuck" on the wall a couple of times (i.e. not being able to reach the next foot/hand grip) and having to come down and start over, my experience wasn't too humiliating. Well, unless you count the time we had to yell for help because my shirt had come untucked from my harness just enough that it got itself wedged into the belaying device, rendering me unable to feed the rope back through (and leaving my wife dangling 50 feet in the air) or the time when the 9-year-old girl who was climbing next to me reached the top of the wall in about half the time it took me to do so as humiliating. If you count that as having a bad day, then I had a bad day. --------------------------------- 12 pages (out of 20) of that damned wedding album have been put together. There is hope yet...

So I was rudely awakened a little past 4:30 this morning by my wife (who NEVER wakes up before me) suddenly turning on the overhead light in our bedroom and yanking most of the covers off of the bed. Her reason? She thought she felt a bug crawl across her leg, freaked out, and felt the need to find and destroy said bug. After a couple of moments of frantic searching for the bug and a few incoherent ‘what the FUCK are you doing??’ grumblings from me, she gave up, turned off the light, and went to take her shower telling me, “Just go back to sleep, honey.” What the fuck ever. There was no way I was getting back to sleep after that. My alarm goes off at 5 a.m. anyway so it’s not like I lost a lot of sleeping time...but still. She’s got to be kidding. I blame my being (according to a coworker) “more grumpy than usual” today on this incident. -------------------------------- Speaking of my wife, her birthday was yesterday. I got her a sappy card, one of those chocolate chip cookie cakes, and a couple of necklaces. She was thrilled with all of it, which was good. Despite her being relatively easy to please with gifts, I'm always nervous whenever I give her anything. That's probably because I never EVER want to relive the time I prepaid three months worth of a gym membership as a "bonus" gift for a birthday of hers a few years back. Even though she'd been mentioning a couple months prior that she wanted to start working out again that was a HUGE mistake that I paid a hefty price for. Still have horrible memories of that fight to this very day...

Yeah, I know. I have no idea why I got the gym membership. I think I rationalized by saying "well she's been wanting to work out so it's ok". Combine that with the fact that I was REALLY an idiot when it came to women back in those days and there you go. Not that I am much better with women these days. But at least I've learned a few more lessons.

Nationals pitcher John Lannan got ejected in his major league debut for plunking Chase Utley and Ryan Howard consecutively in the 5th inning. Which begs the question: anybody know how many times in history has a guy gotten tossed in his ML debut? I'm willing to bet it's not many.

Craig Biggio will announce his retirement at 3 pm today, effective Sept. 30.

My wife called me an ass last night because I had the audacity to basically slam our front door in the face of a guy who was trying to sell carpet cleaning - at 8:45 p.m. "It's 8:45! That is too damn late to be knocking on somebody's door selling shit." "You still should have just told him 'no thank you' and been nice about it." "Or maybe he should learn not to bother people with his crap so late." *Sigh* "I love you anyway, even if you are a jerk." "I know." ------------------------------------------------- HA HA HA I saw this on the local news this morning and (after I finished laughing) was left a little baffled as to exactly how this is racist considering the number of dumb/lazy white people we have living off of welfare in this country. That is definitely not a "problem" exclusive to black, brown, albino or whatever other people. But, of course, they had an angry black woman on camera (not quoted here) decrying this as one the worst things she's ever seen because her daughter saw it and it hurt her very much to have to explain to her kid why this sign is so offensive. Nevermind the fact that she herself instantly assumed that the sign was aimed at black people. I can't wait to see how long it will be before she or someone else sues Mr. Ransom for his horrible display of inhumanity. ------------------------------------------------- Ewwww You know what? I'd go retrieve it, too. $650 is $650. If you wear rubber gloves, it's not much worse than cleaning a litter box.

I can't figure out who is the ugliest of the two.

I am what you could call, at best, a casual fan of the NBA and/or the Houston Rockets, but two little news items have caught my eye today. First, Stevie Franchise is coming home. I’m ecstatic. With this news, all the fond memories of watching him fire up absurd 3’s, dribble out the clock without getting off a good shot, and turn the ball over at every inopportune moment, all while leading the team to the playoffs (and losing in the 1st round) exactly once in five seasons came flooding back into my mind. Oh, how we’re all on the edge of our seats here, watching, waiting for Stevie to return with his hero’s cape on to lead the Rockets back to the promised land. Or not. What are the Rockets thinking? Yeah, he’s a talent and is relatively cheap ($2.4 mil for the first year), but this is the same guy couldn’t share the ball with Cuttino Mobley and Yao before. And now you want him to take a background role behind T-Mac, Yao, and Mike James?? Really? Doesn’t make much sense to me. --------------------- The bigger story of the day is the news that the feds apparently have uncovered a referee’s involvement in the gambling on and fixing of NBA games. It’ll be interesting to see the fallout from this, though anybody who watched the Lakers/Kings series in 2002 knows the league’s been fixing games for years. Har har… --------------------- 10 years? Why isn’t this guy already strapped to the gurney, arm exposed, with the needle at the ready?

Everything that can be said about the Michael Vick/dog-fighting thing has been said, so I’m not going to throw in my two cents. I’ll just note that since everyone is saying he’s unlikely to be suspended (at this point in time anyway), I’m really hoping that the Falcons make the Super Bowl so that the league will have that over their heads during the biggest moment of the season. At the very least, it would give everyone an actual topic to beat into the ground during the excruciating two week layoff, instead of the same old “5 reasons why ‘Team A’ can’t win” crap. Plus, it’ll be fun watching the boys at ESPN try and spin it to protect their second-favorite black quarterback. My wedding was a little more than three months ago and it’s still giving me grief. A couple of nights ago, the missus declared that it was time we started going through all of the pictures taken by our photographer (who sucked) and pick the ones we want for our official wedding album. I’ve been successful in delaying her on this for a month, but suddenly she’s gotten it in her head that this must be done NOW. Whatever. Anybody who has been through the process of doing this knows how much of a pain it is: you go through the thousand pictures that were taken, make note of the ones you like and then try and pick what sizes and layouts you want for the various pages in your album. In our case, there were 976 pictures to sort through to get a 20-page album. FOUR AND HALF HOURS after we started going through all the pictures, we emerged, cross-eyed, with a list. Now, even if we were to pick only the layout templates that can fit four 4 X 6 pictures onto each page, we’d have a maximum of 80 pictures for the album. How many did we have on our list of “pictures wife would like in the album” after our 4 ½ hours of fun? 159. Oh, Christ. And speaking of wedding bliss, my in-laws are coming into town this weekend. This means that I can look forward to hours upon hours of my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and wife watching HGTV (at max volume) while my father-in-law sleeps on the floor and the 3-year-old nephew runs around destroying shit because his mother is too engrossed in HGTV to give a shit. And this is after we have gone to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at fucking McDonald’s because that’s the only place that has a playground. Oh boy. My only possible saving grace is that my wife’s birthday is next Wednesday and one of her friends wants to go out and celebrate on Saturday night. She’s hesitating to agree because her parents are going to be in town and she “doesn’t feel right” about not spending every waking moment with them. I said fuck that and am strongly encouraging her to go. Her going out would give me a whole evening to myself as the in-laws won’t want to hang out with me without wife around. So here’s hoping…

I think we're going to do something very similar. Our her biggest problem is going to be narrowing it down to only one picture of each little "event" to go in the book (i.e. I've argued it's excessive to have three pictures of the whole wedding party in the book). Then there's the problem of actually picking which photo to use for each. This happened last night as she was thumbing through the pictures we picked out the other night. I'm sure you can guess who is who: (Looking at pictures of the wedding party taken in the chapel immediately after the ceremony) "Hey, which of these do you like better?" "Huh?" "Which of these two do you think should go in the album?" (Looks at photos) "I don't know. It doesn't really matter; there isn't much difference between them." "I know that. But which one do you like better??" "Well, in this one, I'm not smiling. And in this one, I'm smiling, but your sister's eyes are closed." "Yeah..." "So I guess you need to decide if you want me not smiling or your sister's eyes closed. Personally, the one of me not smiling is the most 'real' one, so I'd pick that one." (Pause for a moment) *Sigh* "I don't know why you couldn't just smile in ALL the pictures." At least she's gotten over the idea of paying to have extra pages put in this thing. Those would cost $50 each.

4 hours? I can't even get 1/3 of the way out of my state in 4 hrs. Sometimes I wish I lived in some of the smaller states on the east coast for that very reason. My favorite is that sign on I-10 just past the state line from Louisiana that says "EL PASO 897".

I'm in. I can't wait to win the North for the fourth straight time and go out with a whimper in the divisional round again!

So this is it—the first entry of what is sure to be one of the least-read blogs on TSM. I’ve had a couple of web adventures like this before. In college, shortly after I quit writing for the student newspaper, my then-roommate and I collaborated on a little website (hosted on Angelfire) that focused primarily on the sports news around our campus. It was a mild success; we had a small group of dedicated readers and even gained a tiny bit of infamy when my roommate wrote an editorial listing 23 reasons why the football coach shouldn’t have been fired (reason #12: “His wife is hot and we don’t have enough hot women around here”). That lasted about nine months before we had to shut it down because 1) I had to get another job because I needed cash and we were not earning a dime from the website and 2) it was taking a little too much time to maintain properly. Fast forward about four years and I opened up my own personal blog. I think all three of my friends read it…once. After a year or so, I lost interest and erased the blog from existence. It wasn’t that good anyway. So now, I’m giving this whole blogging thing another go. I won’t promise to update on a daily basis, but I do promise to try and make a few posts a week while also making said posts interesting. Given that most of my blogging will be written while I’m “working,” there’s a decent shot of at least the former happening. If it ends up being neither, well, bite me. It’s not like anyone’s paying me to be entertaining.

Mods, BAN PLZ~!

Word. The Natural Bridge Caverns are pretty cool and definitely worth the short drive.

For the Cubs: Alex Gonzalez doesn't bobble the ball hit by Cabrera after Bartman did his thing in Game 6. Instead, the Cubs turn that double play and go to the World Series.