After the Storm

Here's Some Cheer for Your Rainy Saturday

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/gameTrax?gameId=290418110

I'm watching the refresh and it's showing 21-4. Cleveland. Over the Yankees. No, that's not a football score. Or a basketball score. It's a baseball score.

Chien-Ming Wang started. His ERA for the game is 34.50. And he has a 28-something ERA on the year. I love it. I really do.

The reliever? Claggett. He came in and did 1.2 innings of work. His ERA? 43.20. File this under "Epic Fail."

Between the two pitcher and 2.3 innings of work they gave up sixteen earned runs. Yes. Sixteen. In 2.3 innings. Thankfully the next two relievers only gave up a collective total of five runs. Phew. And here I thought the bullpen might be in trouble.....

Suck it Yankees.

The Streets of Downtown Houston

Teabagging Makes It Hard to Do Things

the final seconds are audio gold

thanks jim

Wolf Parade - Modern World

If Michael Bay Made a Lucky Charms Commercial

this is what it would look like

The Hurt Locker

looks pretty good. then again, I like war movies, so what do I know?

The Best Album of the Year So Far

Yeah Yeah Yeahs "It's Blitz"

I've been bored with a lot of music lately. And I haven't been too adventurous with looking for new stuff. But this album has been grossly engaging. It has its rock and roll dance moments. It has its polished, glossy ballad moments. It's dope. I encourage you to check it out.

There's Something Happening Here/What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear

A Conversation with Morgan About Class

Me: I want to gouge my eyes out

Morgan: I think that is a good plan...I would rather watch you gouge out your eyes than listen to this anymore.


yes. class is really that bad.

A Conversation with Brookie about the Street Napper

me: did you read the blog about what happened last night?

Brooke: yes!

what the h?

me: I know!!!!

Brooke: what time did this occur?

me: like midnight is when I was coming home and discovered mr. street nap

me: it freaked me out man

Brooke: mr. floor nap meets mr. street nap

me: mr. floor nap is a safe napper

mr. street nap, not so much

Ain't That the Truth

The Drama at 105

So, if you live in Houston or you're pretty familiar with it, you know that my current residence is in a very upstanding and safe neighborhood. Young professionals, large townhouses, young families. It's great. Actually, my roommates and I are probably the worst of the bunch [unless you count our neighbors and colleagues (I hate that word) Bobby and Ahmit]. We have the occasional parties and a lot of our friends are loud and it absolutely pisses off our neighbors. But I digress.

So, driving home from a long day of work, school, and studying, I'm about 100 feet from the house. And low and behold, there just so happens to be a guy lying on the street. I turn my car to the left to avoid him. At this point, I'm freaked out. Don't know what to think. Why is there some dude laying on a dark street. Is he dead? Is he passed out? Foul play? Well, me being where I'm from, I immediately think, "the moment I get out of my car to check on this guy, he robs me." So I quickly pull into the garage, close it, and dial 911. Fight or flight? Flight!

I give my information, which by the way, if you're ever in a true emergency, the protocols will drive you nuts, and I wake up Sal (one of my roommates) to come down and investigate the situation. We walk out on the deck (as I'm still giving the information) and I see a very nice Mercedes pull up. First inclination? This driver is going to run this guy over. But the car stops. And it stays there. So, well, the guy isn't dead. That's a plus. Sal and I decide it's a good idea to go down and investigate, only now that we've seen it's safe. In the meantime, an ambulance and police car are on the way.

We walk downstairs and onto the street. Sal in his robe, me in my dress shirt, slacks and tie. And what do you know, a woman pops her head out of the Mercedes and starts asking questions. Funny, two grown dudes were afraid to stop while this woman has the balls (or is naive enough) to pull over and deal with the situation. Never send a law student to do a grown woman's work. She starts to ask questions and tells us she pulled over to make sure that no one ran the guy over. Strike two against the law students.

Sal begins to tap the guy. Telling him the cops are on their way and he needs to get going. The woman also voices her concern about him getting a public intoxication citation or worse, a DUI. I'm thinking, dude gets what he deserves for passing out in the middle of the street. After about a minute or two, the guy finally comes to. He's kind of giggly about the whole thing. He mentions something about his girl calling him a cab and how he lives on Pedro. A quick search of "Pedro, Houston, TX" shows this which, if you're familiar with Houston, is imaginary land as far as this area is concerned.

The ambulance pulls up. He gets up to talk to them. The three of us reiterate that he should not tell the paramedics he was driving, as he had initially intended to do. The lady pulls over, and gets out of her car. Her name is Kelly. Not more than in her early 20s. For shame law students. For shame. This young lady had the gall to deal with the situation while I hid in the house. I feel great about myself right now. The guy starts talking to the ambulance driver (who thought it was Sal who was lying in the street - he was wearing a robe, so he looked kind of sketchy). Kelly proceeds to tell us how she discovered the guy and how she just broke up with her boyfriend of five years. Hey, tragedy brings people together, right?

I guess the guy lied and said he lived across the street cause he gave us the "I just lied" grin and booked down a driveway of townhomes. I walk over to the ambulance driver to ask what happened. And then I tell him he doesn't really live there. Yes, I snitched. But I don't Mr. I-Just-Passed-Out-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Street to get behind the wheel again. So they walk down the long drive way, flashlights in hand looking for the guy. He's nowhere to be seen. Apparently, he jumped the fence and took off into an apartment complex. A cop finally shows up (way to be late) and starts to help. A tow truck driver also shows up to assist. I won't go into the details of how they shined their lights to the second floor of the abanadoned apartment complex to see if he went there, because obviously that was retarded. Houston's finest, at your service. The tow truck driver decides to shine his light down a sewer grate, noting how intersting it is that it goes so deep. It's like it's the eighth wonder of the world buddy.

The ambulance driver tells us that this is a common occurrence for people to pass out in the middle of the street. Could have folled me.

We stand around, casually making conversation about what a strange occurrence this all was. The ambulance eventually leaves, as do the police and tow truck driver. Sal and I walk in. Strange, strange things. Moral of the story: don't pass out in the middle of the street cause I'll call the cops on you.

Why Won't Red Bull Do This For Me?

all I get is the end of the run feeling. Maybe it's cause I drink copious amounts of caffeine.

props to Erin aka Ern, aka Wifey

This Song Restored My Interest in Ace Riggidy Rock

Aesop Rock, the beat is just too ill.

A View to...Something Different

Most of us who hover around the internet on a daily basis find ways to waste time (hey, look, it's my blog).

So, I'm sure a lot of people have used google street views. Often times they pick up weird things when they're using the google mobile (I made that up) to go around and get real images of real streets.

case in point:
Check out 19 other crazy images caught by google here. And a much more in-depth message board here.

This Is Kind of Cool

My sister sent this to me yesterday with the message: "I thought you might link this on your blog...."

just for you sis.

These are some pretty awesome dioramas. I'd post pics, but it's all done in flash.

Check it out

What We Thought We Knew: Remembering Columbine

Dispelling the myths is often a difficult thing. Particularly when the memories are embedded in our heads. They were in the "trench coat mafia." They were outcasts. It was the video games. I still remember when it happened. The dark classroom we sat in. Sherry Pratt making us all go around the room and talk about it. Forcing us to think. I miss you Pratt. I think it's been 8 years since you passed. I still have the newspaper clippings (thanks Mom) around my (cluttered) room back home. Somewhere.

The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver's Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren't in the "Trenchcoat Mafia," disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn't been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags."

It leaves me asking questions. Who was responsible for the faulty information? The press? Jumping on a story too soon? Failing to verify the facts? Why, when looking back on a situation that happened nearly 10 years ago, am I so unwilling to accept that these reports may have, in fact, been inaccurate?

Many of the Columbine myths emerged before the shooting stopped, as rumors, misunderstandings and wishful thinking swirled in an echo chamber among witnesses, survivors, officials and the news media.

Police contributed to the mess by talking to reporters before they knew facts — a hastily called news conference by the Jefferson County sheriff that afternoon produced the first headline: "Twenty-five dead in Colorado."

A few inaccuracies took hours to clear up, but others took weeks or months — sometimes years — as authorities reluctantly set the record straight.

Former Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass, author of a new book, Columbine: A True Crime Story, says police played a game of "Open Records charades."

In one case, county officials took five years just to acknowledge that they had met in secret after the attacks to discuss a 1998 affidavit for a search warrant on Harris' home — it was the result of a complaint against him by the mother of a former friend. Harris had threatened her son on his website and bragged that he had been building bombs.

Police already had found a small bomb matching Harris' description near his home — but investigators never presented the affidavit to a judge.

They also apparently didn't know that Harris and Klebold were on probation after having been arrested in January 1998 for breaking into a van and stealing electronics.

The search finally took place, but only after the shootings.

Strange. Disbelief? Failure to acknowledge failure? Miscommunication?

Their rampage put schools on alert for "enemies lists" made by troubled students, but the enemies on their list had graduated from Columbine a year earlier. Contrary to early reports, Harris and Klebold weren't on antidepressant medication and didn't target jocks, blacks or Christians, police now say, citing the killers' journals and witness accounts. That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.

How do they now know that this things never happened? So what really drove these kids to the edge? What made them want to murder so many people?

According to Cullen, one of Harris' last journal entries read: "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no don't … say, 'Well that's your fault,' because it isn't, you people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no. No no no don't let the weird-looking Eric KID come along."

Social outcasts? Was it so simple? A Princeton sociologist claims to have the answers.

Princeton sociologist Katherine Newman, co-author of the 2004 book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, says young people such as Harris and Klebold are not loners — they're just not accepted by the kids who count. "Getting attention by becoming notorious is better than being a failure."

While I've grown accustomed to terrorism, shootings, tragedies...I step back and think about what really happened. Despite a sense of jadedness towards the world, an apathetic view to what happens to those who I have no personal connection with, this is deeply troubling. Columbine itself. The aftermath of poor reporting and myth monsters, so to speak. It's a disturbing world we live in.

And finally, a different perspective on what to think about their parents and why they didn't intervene.

Cullen, who has spent most of the past decade poring over the record, comes away with a bit of sympathy.

For one thing, he notes, Harris' parents "knew they had a problem — they thought they were dealing with it. What kind of parent is going to think, 'Well, maybe Eric's a mass murderer.' You just don't go there."

He got a good look at the boys' writings only in the past couple of years. Among the revelations: Eric Harris was financing what could well have been the biggest domestic terrorist attack on U.S. soil on wages from a part-time job at a pizza parlor.

"One of the scary things is that money was one of the limiting factors here," Cullen says.

Had Harris, then 18, put off the attacks for a few years and landed a well-paying job, he says, "he could be much more like Tim McVeigh," mixing fertilizer bombs like those used in Oklahoma City in 1995. As it was, he says, the fact that Harris carried out the attack when he did probably saved hundreds of lives.

"His limited salary probably limited the number of people who died."

It really makes you think. About what, I'm not sure.

source: USA Today

Two Motivating Factors

Quote of Today

You might remember that when the Hornets lost in Dallas on Friday night despite Chris Paul's 42/9/7, Paul said: "It's not about how I do. It's about how we do." Well, CP3 proved himself wrong during Sunday's rematch with the Mavs in the Big Easy by going off for 31 points, 9 rebounds and 17 assists...pretty much single-handedly destroying Dallas in the process. And I don't mean just the team, I'm talking about the entire city of Dallas AND the entire 357-episode run of the TV series (retroactively).

via basketbawful