sfaJack

So John Smoltz says he's willing to pitch elsewhere next year. Any thoughts on where he might end up if the Braves don't want him back?

That's incredible. Even the most staunch "THEY SHOULD HAVE DRAFTED VINCE MARIO SUX" Texans fans have to finally come to grips with it now, right?

Plus Atlanta played the Lions. THE LIONS. They haven't been good since 1957.

Not the ones that are trying to make a team (i.e. Colvin). And, uh, did you read: All I'm saying is that there are serious concerns about the Texans' pass rush and, if they don't get it fixed, it will probably cost them a real shot at a playoff spot.

Have you actually watched or otherwise followed them this preseason? Yes, they have Mario and yes, it's only the preseason--but they have ONE sack. One. And it was by Tim Bulman. Mario is getting doubled and has been mostly ineffective. Amobi Okoye has been a serious disappointment. Roosevelt Colvin, who was brought in specifically to rush the passer, is probably going to get cut today. Anthony Maddox is probably cut. Travis Johnson is a solid bust of a #1 pick. I mean, no offense to N.D. Kalu, but when he is your second best D-lineman at this point in his career, you have serious issues.

I'm not too sure about that. Their defense has been pretty bad; the pass rush is non-existant and their secondary, especially with Robinson out, is terrible. Because of the injuries, Schaub is still mostly unproven so you really don't know what they have there. Ahman Green can't stay on the field and it's undetermined how the first year of Alex Gibbs's chop-blocking scheme will go. Add in that their schedule is tough (on paper) and I just don't see much more than 8-8 again. I definitely think they finish ahead of Tennessee though. The Titans have 5-11 written all over them.

Only drunk people commit rape?

My dad refuses to do bag his own stuff because "bagging my groceries is something I'm paying them for." It's the same logic by which he refuses to use a self-checkout of any kind.

Yeah, last year's loss to the Giants was all on Romo. Yep. It's all his fault!

So around 11:30 Sunday morning, I'm sitting at the house just fucking around with the rosters on Madden football when our neighbor from across the street knocks on the front door, two tickets for the 1:05 Astros/Diamondbacks game in his hand. He says he and his wife didn't feel like going and he thought we might be interested. Never one to turn down free baseball tickets, I said hell yes. As it happened, yesterday was also the retirement of Craig Biggio's #7 jersey. By the time we made it downtown, parked, and made it inside of Minute Maid Park, it was two minutes before scheduled first pitch (not bad, considering it's a 20-25 minute drive and sfaJill had to get showered and dressed before we could leave) and the ceremony was just finishing up. Ah, gee, we missed it. Oh well. To me, retiring numbers is one of the most stupid things in sports. I know fans eat it up and teams sell a few extra tickets and make a few extra bucks selling commemorative t-shirts so more power to them, but, to me, it takes the 'hero worship' of pro athletes just a little too far. Don't get me wrong--I'm all for honoring a team's great players. Lord knows as a fan that I appreciate the great ones when they help my teams do well. But do we really need to make sure that no other player ever wears a certain number again, as if that number is magical and had anything to do with his success?? If you absolutely MUST retire a number or honor a player or whatever at least have the decency to follow the Dallas Cowboys' Ring of Honor model--that way, the player is honored forever (with their number) and the number is continued to be circulated. This also allows for Bob Hayes and Emmitt Smith to make #22 great, just as Drew Pearson and Michael Irvin made #88 great. As for the game: well, Roy Oswalt had his best start in probably three years--8 IP, 1 H, 10 K, 2 BB. He got the last 15 batters he faced out. Randy Johnson really only made one mistake all day--a 3-run HR to Ty Wigginton in the 1st--but it was more than enough to lose it for him. I've never seen a pitcher dealing like Oswalt was dealing yesteday in person. Just ridiculous. On a side note, Biggio's is the EIGHTH number retired by the Astros (nine if you count Jackie Robinson's #42). This makes no sense. You're talking about a franchise that's been around for only 47 seasons, has won only one pennant, and zero Hall of Famers (for now, anyway). Are there really eight Astros worthy of number retirement?? Houston Astros who have previously had their number retired: 5 - Jeff Bagwell 24 - Jimmy Wynn 25 - Jose Cruz 32 - Jim Umbricht 33 - Mike Scott 34 - Nolan Ryan 40 - Don Wilson 49 - Larry Dierker

You think Bagwell is a dead solid lock for the Hall? Not to say he doesn't belong; I think he does. But there are many folks who hold all the playoff 'chokes' against him and Biggio, and, at least around here, there have been many questions about him and steroids and many point to his sharp decline after steroid testing was put in place. Some even question the legitimacy of the shoulder injury that ended his career. The fact that Bagwell came up short of 500 home runs in this era isn't helping his case any either. The fact that J.R. Richard's number isn't retired, especially given the Astros' other retirees, is goddamn criminal.

Tagliabue had Upshaw on a pretty short leash already.

Yes he is, but he's wearing a Texas Rangers cap.

Not to derail the thread, but this is bugging me: So one of my coworkers had her TV die a couple of weeks ago and she saw this as an opportunity to upgrade. Last week, she bought a full 1080p set...and then hooked her regular old digital cable box up to it. I asked her if she planned to get a HD box and HD service; she said no, because it cost an extra $15 a month for the box and service and "I wouldn't know what to watch in HD anyway." I asked her if she planned to get a Blu-Ray player; she said no, because "the movies I watch probably won't ever be in HD." I then asked her why she bought a HD set at all and she said, "Well, don't we have to have one in February of next year?"

Weird. I wrote this post at least a month ago, but apparently forgot to actually publish it. ----------------------------------- Posting about pets is the latest craze to sweep the TSM blogosphere so I thought I'd blatantly steal the idea and post about our pets. Sassy I'm not really a cat person. I don't mind them, but, if given a choice, I would opt for a dog. That said, this is Sassy. Sassy is about 8 years old. sfaJill got her after seeing a posting on a campus bulletin board back in 2000, which means she's had Sassy about a year longer than she's had me. Sassy is a very 'talkative' cat and used to be pretty tolerant of other kitties/animals--until she became an 'only cat' after sfaJill and her sister stopped living together a few years back. I know this because when we were keeping her sister's cat a year and a half ago during their move, Sassy would spend all of her time keeping Cocoa (who isn't very well adjusted and thus terrified of just about everything) "trapped" in a particular corner of the kitchen. It was so bad that we ended up having to put another litter box in that corner because Cocoa--too afraid to leave the safety of her corner perch and risk getting attacked by Sassy--would just do her business on the kitchen floor. Stupid cat. Where was I? Oh yeah... Sassy's had a pretty charmed life: all the food she could want, constant attention from sfaJill, sleeping on the bed with us, etc. She's even managed to make some strides in getting my general household rule of "no animals on the furniture"--a rule that held firm for about 5 days after sfaJill moved in back in December 2006--relaxed by constantly testing my patience with it to the point where it's not worth the effort to fight it anymore. Sassy probably felt like she was the queen of the world. So imagine her dismay this past New Year's Eve when we brought home... Wrigley Yes, he is named after Wrigley Field. We got Wrigley when he was 8 weeks old from sfaJill's aunt, who breeds Huskies, Akitas, and Bernese Mountain Dogs. Wrigley was free to us because he supposedly has some joint defect in his leg and was thus unable to be sold (note: thus far, there is no sign of that defect). sfaJill, who has never had a dog before Wrigley, had been pushing to get a dog for a while (supposedly because I 'needed' a dog); I was against the idea because, as someone who's had dogs most of my life, I know how much work it can be to take care of one--especially a puppy--and our lifestyle (gone 12-13 hours a day for work) might not be a great fit for a dog. Certainly not one that requires a lot of attention like huskies do anyway. But because she was so insistent and I would have had to put up with an unprecedented level of whining if we passed on a 'free' dog, I went against my better judgment and agreed to get the dog. The results? Mixed, at best. Good: - He is fun to play with. - He is always thrilled to see anybody and is usually happy to just be in the same room with you. - Gives me an excuse to go to the dog park and semi-flirt with the MILFs that bring their dogs there. (I'm kidding. Sort of. I just like looking at the MILFs.) Bad: - The dog has seperation issues. We actually had to start leaving him outside during the day because he was either destroying the kitchen or climbing over the gate into the living room and destroying stuff there, in addition to pissing and shitting on the carpet. He's been better since he's been staying outside, but still...way too anxious about being by himself. - Nothing in life is free. What I mean is that, within three months of our getting him, he had to go in for surgery because he ate a piece of bark mulch out of the flower bed and it got lodged in his intestine, making him unable to digest anything and/or poop. Total cost? $2600. At least we were able to get him neutered at the same time. Since then, the 'tab' has kept on growing. For instance, just yesterday, sfaJill told me that after I had left work and while she was in the shower, he ate $4 worth of winning scratch-off lottery tickets. - He has dug a few holes in the back yard and absolutely destroyed the back door with his constant jumping and scratching at it. This has not made me very happy, for obvious reasons. - There are other things to list here, but I doubt anyone gives a shit and I'm going to have to get back to work here. Suffice it to say, I'm not totally impressed with the dog.

- Not paying too much attention to the Olympics, but then again I never really do. I'll probably watch a little more once the track and field stuff gets going but until them, eh. Whatever. All I know is that Phelps is fast in the pool and the Chinese are apparently cheating at gymnastics. - FUCK AUDITORS (sorry, Smues). Seriously, I've spent the last five weeks basically leading our company's response to 993 seperate questions raised in a client audit about all of our 2007 invoices for this one job we have. Don't get me wrong--it's important work, especially since it's this company's second-most profitable job. But when I have to waste my time trying to track down what an $11.62 charge at a little bodega in London on some dude's expense report from March 24 of last year was for, well, let's just say that it's not exactly a great use of my time. - Story of the week in Houston has been Victoria Osteen vs. a Continental flight attendant. At least the jury came back with a sane decision. The only way it could have been better would have been to award Ms. Brown $1. - Cubs in first place, 4 1/2 up on Milwaukee. Times are good. - We've hired a contractor to paint the inside of our house over Labor Day weekend. Normally I would be opposed to doing so, but 1) I hate painting and 2) we've been talking about painting it ourselves for 4 months now. Clearly, hiring someone is the only way it is actually going to get done.

I'd say Sassy has gotten used to Wrigley being in the house and has accepted the fact that he won't be leaving. We don't think she likes him very much and she isn't too interested in playing with him (much to his dismay), but she no longer sits there and hisses and growls at him for no reason like she did when he first got here. Wrigley tries to get her to play constantly but Sassy usually runs from him if she's on the floor. It's a little better if she's on a chair or the bed because she'll sit there and hiss and swat at him as he jumps up towards her. That will go on for a couple of minutes until Wrigley gets frustrated and barks right in her face--at that point, Sassy has had enough and will end the 'game'. I think she would be much more tolerant of him if he were not still fully in his puppy phase and instead chose to mostly ignore her and let her be. Unfortunately for her, that won't be for at least a couple more years. What's this about white kitties and cancer?

For real. I asked my boss why our client (Shell) audited every single item on each invoice instead of taking a sample and was told it was because their client on the job (Qatar Petroleum) willl do the same when they do their audit in October and Shell will want to be prepared for that. Apparently the Arabs are extremely strict on these things and require every T to be crossed and I to be dotted. Thus, I am left having to go through and respond to why there is no receipt for a certain meal on a particular day. It is ridiculous on multiple levels, especially when you consider how much they're paying me versus many of the amounts I'm spending time trying to justify.

Eh, since the Cubs get both the Reds and not-the-Expos at Wrigley next week, I'll take my chances with a Brewers sweep. Especially if said sweep means the annoying bandwagoners around here finally pack it in and resume paying full attention to the Texans. They're (mostly) insufferable.

Dear God, Please let the Brewers sweep the Astros next week so that I no longer have to listen to Astro fans (and Ed Wade and Drayton McLane) chatter about "another second half run" and other assorted playoff nonsense. Sincerely, Jack

He doesn't really believe that. That's the ESPN Favre-Hype Machine talking.

The Astros' continuing infatuation with 'hometown boy' Brandon Backe astounds me. He is NOT a quality starting pitcher.

Anyone want a running back? The Texans are going to cut Chris Brown very soon.

I might punch a storage chest to get two extra months of paid vacation if I were stuck on that nowhere Padres team.

SI is saying Manny is going to the Dodgers.