This Blog Is Full Of Crap

Thanks to Garf for not locking and barring the door to the studios yesterday. I enjoyed our time with Russell and McGuff.

Lots of friends caught the show while it was on the air and on the stream, and yes, we saw all of your messages and it's really helping hit the point hard that radio is much more than just a stick and a signal. Keep those emails and videoconference and tweets coming.

Missed the show? Well, go to Clear Channel's podcast page and download the 9/1 show's three hour-long segments.

Oh, and the Fire N Spice smoked jalapenos he gave me (THANK YOU!) are awesome on homemade pizzas. Gina was making one when I got home from the studio, and slicing these up for baking on the pizza really hit the spot. I strongly urge you to give these things a try.

And so, it begins: The Crap Monologues at Yes But No But Yes.

Thanks to Gideon Television for the opportunity to spectacularly flame out on a massive scale, just add lighter fluid.

(Yeah, I'm working on firing up a new meme to get me going again at IMAO again.)

I figure I'll have a few posts that don't quite meet YBNBY's standards, which is what IMAO was all about, right?

And then, the ones that truly suck, well they come home to die here.

See how it works?

METRO says that today is a "Sunday Schedule" day for routes. (Not that The Chronicle remembered to put those two words into their rundown of services today)

Here along the 9's route, that means no service at all.

Three-day holidays mean that from Saturday evening to Tuesday morning, there's no service at all.

And y'all want to build a multi-million dollar rail system that goes along this part of the 9 route?

Genius, folks. Pure genius.

I woke up this morning, knowing that I hadn't done the Carnival of the Cats the night before like I was supposed to have done.

I didn't think there'd be too many entires, since I didn't get to the server admin all that early in the week to clear up the mailbox issue.

Yadda yadda yadda... whatever... it'll get done eventually.

I know it's Labor Day Weekend, sure, but I had time for other things and got them done.

I vacuumed up a bit, did the dishwasher, loaded it up with the stuff in the sink... didn't fix the catcams...

By the time I got back to focusing on this thing, it was well past Noon.

Then I looked at the opening statement from the website:

The Carnival of the Cats is a weekly roundup of cat-related posts on weblogs. Its purpose is to provide a non-political respite from the vehement echo chamber that the Blogopshere spins itself into during the week, demonstrating that even the mightiest and meekest of pundits have a love of cats in common.

I was pondering whether I should hand this carnival off to someone else at the end of the year, and I'm feeling like that's going to be the right thing to do.

So, folks... how should I determine who gets control of this Carnival? Who should it be handed off to? Should it be an individual effort, or should I leave the door open for corporate-types to come in with suitcases full of cash?

The comments are open, but so is The Carnival Of The Cats for the 180th time...

Will someone please explain why our tax dollars earmarked for public transportation are being spent on transporting 3 million year old bones to a museum and displaying them there?

I didn't realize that METRO's charter called for the promotion of the public arts, museums, social activities, etc.

Dear Dick,

PS: I start every day by listening to Daily Gizwiz, Podictionary, and History According To Bob.

So, why did Tony Snow quit his job?

IMAO has the scoop.

I've been thinking about the podcasts that have podfaded that I'd love to see come back.

• Let's face it - IMAO took a mortal wound when Scott left, FrankJ and SarahK got busy, and the excitement cooled off. There was some chatter about shorter, individual segments, but in the end it's been silent.

• King Bonk was a mix of quiet, creepy background music and a hypnotizing delivery of strange tales and thoughts. I really miss it.

• Aussie Dave has been blogging, but I miss his observations on daily life as well as his take on the headlines. Israelisms keeps churning along... oh boy... another point made by Carol countered with a snap remark by Charley... (yawn).

• The View From Here - What would you give for just one more Oh, Harry!

I'm sure there's more, but I think my mind has forgotten their presence. So easily we forget the ones we mourn so strongly.

What podcasts do you miss that you wish would come back from poddeath?

Back in my KTRK days, John O'Malley up at ABC used to say "This stuff runs on voodoo. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a chicken to make it work."

When I came across something that would resist a chicken sacrifice, I'd mutter "This blows goats."

All along, I should have been sacrificing goats.

I had a little extra time this morning as a result of cleaning up some last-minute cat barf, so I decided to tinker around with the catcams' drivers and... they're back.

And there was much rejoicing (put the rejoicing in the comments, eh.)

I guess early-adopters only got screwed out of $100 instead of $200.

I'll stick to my iShoe.

Let's see how David Carr has done this preseason...

Pittsburgh 8-12 for 85 , 1 pick and 1 sack
New England 8-11for 58 1 pick and 1 sack
Philly 7-13-111 for 1 sack
NY Giants 6- 8- 83 for 1 TD and 2 sacks

Ah, the usual David Carr: lots of completions, more picks than TDs, and never a game goes by without getting turfed.

Hrm... where's the fumbles... fumbles... bah. It's preseason. Who cares?

It should be interesting to see how he does once the season begins.

Turkey is demanding an explanation of the so-called IAF flyover of Syria.

Tough words, coming from:

• The illegal occupier of Western Kurdistan.

• The illegal occupier of Northern Cyprus.

• The perpetrators of the Armenian and Kurdish genocides of the Twentieth Century.

• Diplomatic friends to both Hezbollah and Hamas.

If the Turkish government consisted solely of centipedes, they'd each have a hundred feet in their mouths.

There's a slight backlog with the podcast because of the server upgrade and some DNS wobbliness.

So, I'll just post up my drafts of the stories for this week right here and then you can check them out on the podcast site when things are a bit more stable, okay?

We're all gonna die!
We're all gonna die!
We're all gonna die!
We're all gonna d-
Um... never mind.

Anybody else sick of the Cycle Of Madness that erupts any time more than three drops of rain falls anywhere within 500 miles of Houston?

Yes, it's dangerous when a storm erupts and builds in the Gulf like Allison did.

It's also dangerous and annoying when everybody gets whipped into a panic by the local media, only to watch the storm swerve into another community that is somewhat unprepared for it.

There should be some sort of punishment for broadcasters that misinform the public like this.

Since the FCC is too cowardly to enforce the whole "to inform the public and server the public interest" part of the license, perhaps the public can form lynch mobs or something?

Okay, okay... lynching's a bit extreme. Maybe building carnival dunk tanks that people can pour all that bottled water they ran out to buy when the weathermen scared the piss out of them, and then let everyone try to dunk the weathermen.

Three throws for a dollar, all for some kind of charity. Umbrellas For Bums or Champagne For Slade something like that.

Or, better yet, forget about the bottled water, and just fill the tank with all the piss that the weathermen scared out of folks from their lousy, panic-inducing forecasts?

What do you think?

So now that intelligence is showing that Syria and North Korea have been collaborating on what appear to be nuclear projects in Syrian territory, how long before The Syrian Embassy in Texas The James A. Baker III Institute For Public Policy hammers out an editorial for the Houston Chronicle saying that intelligence was wrong before Gulf War II, so obviously this intelligence must be wrong, AIPAC is dictating American foreign policy, yadda yadda yadda...

I still think that if Israel's going to attack Iranian (and now North Korean and Syrian) nuclear sites, it's going to be with their Dolphin subs equipped with nuclear-capable Popeye cruise missiles.

But, hey, I could be wrong.

And as long as those nuclear sites are wiped off the map somehow and some way (along with the countless Russian technicians and VIPs crawling around), I don't mind being wrong.

She could try to make the argument that you need to have nice things to help entertain potential donors, but Prinscilla Slade is going to have a hard time getting the jury to swallow this one:

Ousted TSU President Priscilla Slade racked up a $100,000 bar tab at Scott Gertner's Skybar and Grille during her tenure and stuck Texas Southern University with the bill, prosecutors said Wednesday.

TSU routinely paid for $100 bottles of wine for Slade and drinks for her friends and staff, despite a prohibition at that time on state monies being spent on alcohol, Assistant District Attorney Donna Goode said.

What's her argument for this? They couldn't afford a luxury party-zeppelin to give aerial tours of TSU, so Gertner's place was a tolerable alternative?

After I finished putting together The Weekly Challenge, I grabbed my tote bag and walked to the studios for the High Tech Texan Show.

As usual, I stopped by Starbucks for some random frapuccino and some cookies to give out to folks. I hadn't baked any bread that morning, so I figured I should bring cookies this time.

When I got to the studio, it turned out that a football game was pre-empting the show.

Oops.

Instead of getting angry or pissy, I laughed. Because it was such a nice day outside, I had a good walk, and god a chance to talk with some very nice folks, and all-in-all it was a good afternoon.

And I enjoyed the walk home very much, too. Especially after I put the Qualls jersey on and two people on the feeder road honked and yelled QUALLS SUCKS! (Chadley had given up 3 runs the night before, screwing over Roy O.)

Then there was the wedding I missed because someone had an old evite.com profile for me, or maybe it was a wrong address in the system - something like that. Perhaps Spam filters caught the little booger and trashed it.

I didn't know of the wedding until I got a few messages from folks asking if I was alright, where was I, how much of a horrid piece of shit I was for not going, etc.

My response: huh?

Then I shrugged it off. Some folks got all worried and helpful and stuff like that, wanting me to hit the evite.com bug head-on.

On the other hand, there's my attitude - I dealt with it when I had a moment, checked out the profile, cleaned up what I could, and if people have the old address in there, well, that's their issue. The Old Me at that address will be happy to attend when he gets his mail at his long-dead email account.

No anger. No frustration. No worries.

It just is what it is, and whatever can be done gets done, but I'm not going to get all worked up over it. And I'm certainly not going to get infected with the Worry Bug from everybody else wanting me to get all worked up over it.

Let 'em spin, eh. Spinny spinny spin.

So there you have it. A little something to brighten your day and confound the people who thing I'm all Mister Negative and such.

What's for lunch?

OJ was arrested for threatening to shoot a hole in one.

Okay, so Dan Rather is suing Viacom.

Yeah, I'm sure he'll be sharing some of that imaginary millions with Mary Mapes, who produced the baseless trash that Rather rode into the wastebin.

If Viacom wanted to play hardball, they could release Dan's wild takes and blooper reels from his long career behind the desk and in the field. Especially material that pertained to his true feelings about colleagues and co-workers, like Connie Chung for instance.

I'm sure the core executive group will give the order to settle, cry poverty, order up a round of layoffs of rank-and-file, and then give themselves record-setting bonuses.

(Meanwhile, Katie Couric wonders how much she can sue for when it's her time to get the axe.)

Once again, Jesse Jackson makes a racist statement and does his best to put as much distance between himself and... um... himself:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson called Tuesday on Democrats seeking the 2008 nomination for president to give S.C. voters "something to vote for" when they go to the polls in January.

On a statewide tour to register new voters, Jackson said South Carolina will determine "who has momentum" in the primary when it votes Jan. 29.

Jackson sharply criticized presidential hopeful and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for "acting like he's white" in what Jackson said has been a tepid response to six black juveniles' arrest on attempted-murder charges in Jena, La. Jackson, who also lives in Illinois, endorsed Obama in March, according to The Associated Press.

"If I were a candidate, I'd be all over Jena," Jackson said after an hour-long speech at Columbia's historically black Benedict College.

"Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment," said the iconic civil rights figure, who worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 Selma civil rights movement and was with King at his 1968 assassination.

Later, Jackson said he did not recall making the "acting like he's white" comment about Obama, stressing he only wanted to point out the candidates had not seized on an opportunity to highlight the disproportionate criminal punishments black youths too often face.

Yeah, he doesn't recall. Or he denies saying it. Or he doesn't remember.

Uh huh.

Hey, MSM... help jog the jerk's memory and play it back for him. Whip out a portable player or a monitor, sit his dumb ass down in front of it, and rock that video back and forth a few times.

Let him see the look on his face when he made that statement. The anger in his eyes.

Or is it greed?

Then ask yourselves this - why do you keep pointing cameras and microphones at this jerk?

Hopefully, for these moments of rubbing his nose in the gigantic verbal turds he leaves on the national carpet time and time again.

"Look what you did... LOOK WHAT YOU DID... don't look away... DON'T LOOK AWAY! BAD RACIST! BAD RACE-BAITING JERK! NO!"

Don't try to claim that "Hymietown" is a thing of the past for Jesse. Every day is Hymietown Day for Jesse as long as there's money and headlines to be made from it, even if it's preying on folks with a similar skin tone to him (regardless of how they act).

I'm surprised he doesn't list "Professional Racist" on his returns.

Yet another race-baiter on the loose in the media today: Al Sharpton:

Thousands of chanting demonstrators filled the streets of this little Louisiana town today in support of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.

The crowd broke into chants of "Free the Jena Six" as the Rev. Al Sharpton arrived at the local courthouse with family members of the jailed teens.

Sharpton told the Associated Press that he and Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and William Jefferson, D-La., will press the House Judiciary Committee next week to summon the district attorney to explain his actions before Congress.

This could be the beginning of a 21st century's civil rights movement challenge disparities in the justice system, he said, and said he planned a November march in Washington.

"What we need is federal intervention to protect people from Southern injustice," Sharpton told the AP. "Our fathers in the 1960's had to penetrate the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, we have to do the same thing."

Southern injustice? Um... like what you did back at Duke to the Lacrosse players, right?

How about some Yankee Justice... you know, like up in Crown Heights?

*sigh*

What next? Desmond Tutu hugging Iranian President Ahmadinejad and calling for Israel's destruction?

Someone, please send me an example of a decent, hardworking grassroots civil rights leader who isn't a shameless, hypocritical publicity whore.

The comments are open.

Caleb asked a very important question in the comments.

How much do I know about the situation there?

My answer is: not enough, and the MSM isn't doing a good job of providing me with more information that isn't tainted by the usual commentary, garbage, and screaming madness of the camera whores.

Lots of references to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, but few true fact-based actual comparison-and-contrast.

Okay, so it's easier to organize rallies like this with blogs and youtubes and facebooks and such, MSM, but will someone please just sweep all this aside for a moment and lay out the basic facts of the situation?

*sigh* So not happening. More Jesse. More Maxine. More Sharpton.

Yeah, we saw what happened back at Duke. Not falling for that again.

Time to research for myself.... and what I've managed to determine by looking through newspaper archives before the circus came to town is:

• The "victim" was an asshole for being a part of a hate crime.

• His attackers are bigger assholes for answering a hate crime with a violent crime.

• Even bigger assholes have recognized this as an economic opportunity and have flown down to Jena to whip the locals into a frenzy like they did at Duke and countless other places.

• The biggest assholes of all are telling their cameramen to point their cameras at them.

I'm not sure which rung the prosecutor sits on this Ladder Of Assholes.

I mean, in hockey, the instigator gets time in the penalty box, but if you retaliate, you get more time. Same should apply to those who react to a nonviolent racist act with a violent (racist or not) act.

But attempted murder? Does someone have the justification for that handy everywhere?

Yeah yeah yeah... the clowns are screaming for the DA to get reviews on this one, someone to intervene, fine. Broken clocks are right twice a day, too. Make your request, quit screaming at the camera for a bit, and make a rational argument.

Attempted murder... a deliberate attempt to kill... hrm.

Of course, I have the philosophy that if someone's standing by a burning cross shouting hatespeech like a moron, it's perfectly fine to splash gasoline at the cross so their robes catch fire, but that's just turning a hate crime against the perpetrator and a safety issue. And that has a certain style to it, don't you think?

Now if the Jena 6 had somehow arranged for the guys hanging nooses to somehow slip and hang themselves from those nooses, well, it was an accident, right? Sure, accidents can be caused if you take a little time, use a little creativity.

But just beating the shit out of someone? Nah. No style to that at all. I'm unimpressed with the brutal application of Thug Culture.

Gene Upshaw is urging the Houston Texans to "adopt" Kevin Everett as an unofficial teammate:

Upshaw said his priorities now will include getting in touch with the Houston Texans players and making sure they know that "they have to become [Everett's] teammates" as treatment continues.

It should be perfectly natural for the Texans to adopt Everett.

After all, they got used to David Carr being flat on his back all the time, right?

The three-topic Weekly Challenge is up!!

No walking to Clear Channel today. Early repeat.

But next week... yeah, I'm so totally there!

Um... never mind.

While Joe "The Astros Are Racist" Morgan was blithering about how Brad Lidge had good stuff:

Cairo hit a single
Ludwick walked
Pujols singled, scoring one
Ankiel jacks a triple. scoring two
Game over.

The day before, Lidge faced down Pujols and... um... walked him.

*sheesh*

Folks, if Brad Lidge is in an Astros uniform next year, Cecil Cooper won't be for long.

Think Cecil put two and two together when he was Crapiron's Right Hand Man?

"To me, he's our closer and will be our closer," Cooper said of Lidge. "I think his stuff is still good. I have no doubt that he'll run out there and he'll be the guy. He'll be the guy that he was in '04 and '05, and he'll be good. "

Nope. And the fact that he doesn't have Jason Lane out parking cars while he evaluates some of the kids in the 40-man mob on the bench doesn't speak well of his future either.

Yeah, Timmy Poo and Crapiron promised Jason that he could put on his Astros underoos and go play with the big kids.

Doesn't mean he get a bat, a glove, and time out there on the field, right?

Something that should have been done back in 2006 just happened today:

With Milton Bradley and center fielder Mike Cameron likely out for the rest of the regular season with injuries, San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers called the Astros to inquire about Jason Lane.

Astros general manager Ed Wade obliged Monday, sending Lane to the Padres in exchange for a player to be named or cash considerations.

Yeah, I can hear it now.

WADE: So, what player do you want to trade to us for Lane?

TOWERS: (muffled sound)

WADE: Who?

TOWERS (muffled sound)berg

WADE: Something Berg?

TOWERS: Yeah.

WADE: Um... who again?

TOWERS: Morgan... um... En-

WADE: No.

TOWERS: OH COME ON!

WADE: No.

TOWERS: The guy sucks!

WADE: Well, you shouldn't have asked for him. And besides, you still owe use a player to be named for Ensberg.

TOWERS: How about Lane?

WADE: You get traded for him!

TOWERS: Yeah, well, um... I want to trade Morgan Ensberg for Lane and Lane for Morgan Ensberg. So you've got them both now.

WADE: Oh Hell no.

TOWERS: Please?????????

(click)

Today is Pepsi Day.

Pepsi Day is the one day in the year when I drink Pepsi instead of Coke or Dr. Pepper or RC.

I hate Pepsi. I think it tastes awful.

But once a year, I drink it just to remind myself how awful it is.

Sure enough, with the first sip, I sense the awfulness spreading across all my senses.

I can't wait for this can to be finished and Pepsi Day to be over.

(Via BlogHouston)

In case you needed reminding that Frank Wilson, the CEO of METRO, is a hypocrite, just watch Wayne-o in action.

Although, I always wonder how much METRO pays the station to air these ads.

Oh well. Worth a laugh. And I wonder if he'll realize that METRO raised the age for senior citizen rates to generate more revenue, but gladly shelled out a buttload of money to help move some 3 million year-old bones to a local museum for a while.

New motto: "METRO - There ain't no such thing as a free ride. Unless you're fossilized."

Apparently, one of the two recent prison escapees tried to save the taxpayers the cost of a trial and warehousing him for 10 years while a bunch of bleeding heart liberals tie up the court system with appeals:

One of the two Texas inmates who briefly escaped from a prison work detail this week in Huntsville attempted suicide today, officials said.

Jerry Duane Martin, 37, tried to hang himself at about 5:25 a.m. using boxer shorts he attached to a light fixture in his Estelle Unit cell, according to Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Sadly, his attempt to kill himself was as successful as his attempt to escape.

Why are they not providing ropes and cells with sturdy crossbeams to these people?

Somehow, all three evenings this week I've gotten from the 102 to the early 9 at Milam and St. Joe's.

Instead of getting home a little before six, I've been home a little after five.

The 102 driver's gotten a little more aggressive, which sucks for the people who she's supposed to wait for at Greenspoint. And the handoff at the Texas parking lot stop has gotten smoother, with that driver getting more aggressive about passing the other commuter buses loading up.

Here's hoping this trend continues...

Okay, so Cecil Cooper's gotten the manager's job for the Houston Astros.

Congrats, Cecil, but I'm still wondering about this:

"To me, he's our closer and will be our closer," Cooper said of Lidge. "I think his stuff is still good. I have no doubt that he'll run out there and he'll be the guy. He'll be the guy that he was in '04 and '05, and he'll be good. "

Garner and Purpura's failing was a loyalty to the players that was a bit too deep for a manager to have.

For instance - When Biggio whined about losing the leadoff position, Garner dropped down on all fours and licked Biggio's spikes clean while putting him back at the top.

And i"m still a bit concerned about Cooper letting Jason Lane do anything more than wash cars in the parking lot and make change for the beer man. That was only corrected by Lane's getting passed to Sand Diego like a bottle with an inch of backwash. (Wednesday: Warm body to fill the outfield, Thursday: Rode the pine.)

Now let's take a look at Lidge's recent outings:

Heading over to Clear Channel Palace to hang with my homey, D.J. Garf for the High Tech Texan Show.

13:00 to 16:00, he'll be spinning the latest grooves and news from the technology world, and I'll be there to lay down a few backing beats.

It's streamed throughout the world, so even if you're out from udner the loving blanket of the antenna's broadcast area, you can still catch us rapping.

Or, if you're busy with other White and Nerdy goings on, well, catch the podcast later on.

Diggity?

If you're listening to the radio show and wondering where those photos of the virtual sukkhot are, well, check out the post on my Second Life weblog.

Also, those ErgoWrap wristrests are extremely comfortable and my wrists, hands, and elbows feel a lot more relaxed as I type. My shoulder are still a bit hunched, but over time I'll relax those.

Also, what's Twitter for? Well, I know that Matt and Erica are okay instantly. No more "Wait, you were in a car accident? Were you hurt?" kind of post-event embarrassment kind of thing.

Oh, and I'm going to be posting about the wrist rests over the week as well as picking up a U3 to test the security on the thing.

Has Jimmy Carter seen This incident showing Hamas' complicity with the honor-killing murder of a 16 year-old girl with the girl's family?

Maybe he ought to be trussed-up Clockwork Orange style and shown that video until he changes his mind about negotiating with terrorists, "democratically" elected or not.

What? It's just Hamas and not the community?

A five-minute video obtained by the Post over the weekend reveals the savagery and mercilessness of the killers.

What's really disturbing is that none of those at the crime scene tried to intervene to save the girl's life.

More than 20 young men are seen beating, stabbing and kicking the little girl before smashing her head with large stones.

I bet the French media is seething because they can't edit this video Mohammed al-Dura-style to make it appear that it was the IDF that killed the girl.

I was walking to the Clear Channel studios yesterday when I saw a stretch-limo hummer that had a full-color overlay on the back window, a URL, a phone number, and huge block letters extolling the virtues of the vehicle's three axles.

The vehicle was downright ugly. There wasn't a single inch of it that didn't scream "repulsive."

And, no, this has nothing to do with some eco-nut viewpoint of Hummers being gas-guzzlers, stretch-limos being land-based transportation's embodiment of arrogance, yadda yadda yadda.

It was a rolling, shining white eyesore.

Isn't the point of a limo to arrive in style? Maybe with a little extra legroom and headroom, too?

Well, the last thing you could say about this stretch limo is style. It was just a rolling advertisement for its services.

Never did see the interior. Perhaps people inside of it are so overwhelmed with opulence that they don't realize that the exterior is hideous.

Kinda beats the bum with the drooping eye who threatened to kill me because he thought I was poaching his turf, eh.

Welcome to Houston!

Doug Mansolino is not returning in 2008.

Good.

Unlike the bootlicking columnists of the Chronicle and the fanboys in the Fox News Southwest booth, I thought Doug Mansolino was the equivalent of a kamikazie pilot trainer, waving runners into suicide missions to home more often than not.

The recent swerve-stretch-and-score by Carlos Lee is a perfect example. If the catcher had hung back at the plate, Lee was dead to rights. But the catcher decided that having a face full of El Cabayo was not a good thing for the end of the season, so he moved up.

So, Manso, would a face full of catcher have been just as devastating to El Cabayo?

Ponder that for a moment, a crippled Carlos Lee carried off the field by still on the payroll. How many millions would Uncle Drayton have been on the hook for with that one? And for how long?

Kinda makes the 27 million he paid Baggy for riding the pine after the aborted comeback look like chicken feed.

Oh well. At least he was quicker than consulting a Magic Eight Ball on the sideline.