THE BRAZOSPORT NEWS

Ron Paul's press secretary: sexy but shy

2009-07-14T12:36:00.003-05:00

Rachel Mills has been the press secretary to our congressman, Ron Paul of the Fightin' 14th District, for two years now.

She's a lover of liberty, an avid YouTuber and once stripped down to bra & panties for a pin-up calendar of Libertarian ladies, but now she's gotten shy all of a sudden, pulling a video in which she appeared after some A-hole blogger asked her about it.

Read all about it in The Houston Press blog Hairballs.

it's all good at H.O.G. rally

2009-07-12T22:26:00.002-05:00

Strange traffic patterns here at The B'port News

2009-07-12T10:44:00.004-05:00

This past week or so we've had an unusually large traffic spike from some very far-away places.

Some days we've had around 3,000 hits on our counter.

They're all looking at a post we put up shortly after the death of Michael Jackson.

What's drawing the far-off readers is not the words we put up (we were just linking to and paraphrasing a story we liked in the LA Times) but a picture we found of MJ on Google images, in which he was all bundled up with a scarf around his face and a fedora on his head, lookin all mysterioso and weird.

The photo was striking to us.

The thing is, if you click on the post now, the image won't appear. One of those copyright problems, I guess.

The confusing part is, the traffic kept coming. From Slovenia, Lithuania and other places I've never been. Thousands of 'em. All from a Google image search to that photo.

So my question is, can those people way over there see the MJ photo on my Web site while us Americans can't see it? Why would that be?

Or do they just see the photo link to my Web site, and when they click on it, they don't see the photo, just the little blue box?

Sheila won't give up on JackO honor

2009-07-11T23:22:00.002-05:00

Sheila Jackson Lee is not going to stop her effort to honor entertainer Michael Jackson with a Congressional resolution.

The congresswoman from Houston even compared the effort, which may take years to accomplish, with the long battle to honor murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday.

She tells all this to Bennett Roth, a former Houston Chronicle reporter now writing for Congressional Quarterly.

In Roth's story, Lee agrees with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to shelf the JackO resolution, then goes on the blame JackO resolution opponents who would "make hay" over it (ie., Republicans.)

Of course, Lee's motives in presenting the resolution wouldn't have a smidge of political motivation attached to it, would it?

Maybe her fortitude in pressing on with the JackO resolution will be well-received in her 18th Congressional District, but in an ongoing poll hosted by the Houston Chronicle's Texas on the Potomoc blog, 88 percent of the respondents say they're opposed to it.

Maybe Lee miscalculated.

Here's a good boat for recreating up and down the Intracoastal Waterway

2009-07-11T18:12:00.000-05:00

Don't say the Astros lack irony

2009-07-10T20:25:00.003-05:00

A nasty, scandal-filled week in the Houston Fire Department was topped off Friday by the Houston Astros, who celebrated the greatness of the HFP by visiting local firehouses before taking the field Friday night wearing Houston Fire caps.

Nine Astros visited 9 Houston firehouses before the game. Astros outfield Hunter Pence, #9 in your program, for example, visited Station House 9 (note the symmetry?)

Is there a #54 on the team roster?

Let's look ...Nope, no #54.

So we assume Station House 54 didn't get a visit from a real, live Astros player (that's center fielder Michael Bourn in the photo above.)

Whew, that was close.

Station House 54, at Bush Intercontinental Airport, is where racist graffitti ("Die Nigger," etc.) was discovered and reported to the appropriate leaders.

Things only grew worse after that, not only for the city's self-promoted reputation as a happy melting pot of multicultural diversity, but for the mayor, who was getting pressure to bring in the feds to solve the problem.

Instead, Mayor White said he wants to bring in a consultant.

The mayor wasn't wearing a Fire Department cap when he said this, but the Astros were Friday night.

There wasn't a word about the Fire Department mess and the weird timing of the Astros' Fire Department promotion during the TV broadcast on Fox Sports Houston. Maybe Milo Hamilton touched on it during the radio broadcast, putting his signature positive spin on the affair, but I didn't have the radio on so I don't know.

We didn't do this in the Episcopalian Church

2009-07-09T23:35:00.001-05:00

Funny, creepy & a lil' disturbing

2009-07-09T00:50:00.005-05:00

Background: Mom cancels teen's Warcraft account.

Teen proceeds to freak out.

Delighted brother of teen hides camcorder in room to secretly tape bro's freak-out.

OK, it's:

1. funny cause ... it just is.

2. creepy cause this gaming shit really does get out of hand for some young people; I have this on good authority from a few people I know. There's gotta be some brain studies somewhere that shows a clinical addiction component is involved. And the utter delight of the younger brother who hides the camcorder and puts the viddy on YouTube is not kindly brotherly behavior (if such a thing exists.) Lil' bro is just a bit too excited to see his brother in such extremis.

3. disturbing cause, well, this kid's reaction is more in line with that of a 3-year-old. Hope that family has a good mental health clause in their insurance policy. LOL.

(Editor's note to our "young readers" -- if you haven't yet made the decision to procreate, consider not doing so. Otherwise, the scenes depicted above may be in your future.)

[YouTube viddy link via "Kangaroo Andy," a commenter on The Z. Report]

The Chia Obama -- go for two!

2009-07-08T19:35:00.003-05:00

Saw a TV ad for Chia Obama just a minute ago during the CNN news and initially thought it was a joke.

But it's not.

Only $19.99.

Comes in either a happy Obama face or a determined Obama face, your choice.

Our suggestion: get both.

Place one in a spot of prominence, like on top of the TV, depending on your mood and/or the politics of the company comin over, or maybe the state of the nation at the moment.

Switch it out with the other Chia Obama if your mood changes or the politics of your company comin over changes or the nation takes a turn for the worse (or the better.)

Sound like a plan?

Walgreen's, it says here, has ordered its stores in Chicago and Tampa to pull the product from its shelves, saying it's racist.

I don't get that.

Joseph Enterprises, the maker of "The Clapper" , is the operation behind the Chia Obama.

It's just trying to turn a buck. That's the American way. And Mr. (or Ms.) Joseph is probably a great American.

If you want your baby to roller dance, don't give them tap water (or something like that)

2009-07-08T15:16:00.001-05:00

Sheila kinda ruined MJ's funeral for me

2009-07-07T15:42:00.005-05:00

I was just sitting there, enjoyin my afternoon coffee along with the Michael Jackson funeral, when it all came crashin down for me.

Readers outside the Petrochemical Underarm of Texas might not know the reputation of US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee for showing up at any and all funerals in her Houston congressional district, but trust us, it's been well-documented, most particularly by The Houston Press.

And then we and others annually take potshots at her for her camera-hogging appearances at State of the Union addresses and other media-heavy events where she always seems front and center when the cameras pan those crowding around the president. Even some of the national cable TV pundits make note of this, so don't say we're exaggeratin.

So I should have anticipated her appearance and subsequent speech at MJ's funeral, but I didn't. I just kept repeating, "I can't believe this. I can't believe this ... "

And then I muttered that some more when she gave MJ a John Kerry-style salute (see above photo.)

Some of my of-the-moment Twitter reactions went like this (presented here in chronological order):

--oh my god

--Sheila of the Fightin' 18th we saaaa-loot yooo! How you manage to do what you do is beyond us.

--this is the 5,345th funeral attended by US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. Believed to be a Guinness record for non-clergy persons

--the show must go on, and it will, either in London, Vegas, Broadway, Tokyo, somewhere ... it's a lock

(What? You're not on Twitter? If you're not on Twitter, you're not a playa baby...)

Alright, so the congresslady did have a "news hook" as they say in the news business. She has introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives honoring MJ.

The Houston Press blog Hairballs has some of the particulars, as does The Hill's Briefing Room blog, which noted the bill has been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, WTF and LOL as we say on Twitter.

Of course, Jackson Lee's House bill and funeral speech, aside from her own self-aggrandizing political reasons, is a response to the comments of Republican House member Peter King of New York, who whined impertinently (in a video!) that MJ was a pervert and a low-life and shouldn't be lionized.

So, in the context of MJ's past legal travails, the Houston congressman's funeral speech, in which she noted all of us Americans are assured by the Constitution to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, is a relevant fact that should not be ignored.

To that we'll add that when a jury returns a "not guilty" verdict, it doesn't mean you're innocent; it means you're not guilty cause the government can't prove it.

And that's the way it should be. Can I get a witness?

(No idea, of course, what the truth is regarding MJ, but that's how we settle thing here in this great land -- in a courtroom, hopefully one in which the judge manages to stay awake and all the attorneys are zealous, certified and well-trained advocates.)

As for the non-Sheila parts of the funeral, Stevie Wonder was really good and Brooke Shield's remarks seemed most genuine. I was also glad John Mayer didn't sing and just played the electric guitar in an understated manner. And it was sad when MJ's daughter spoke.

Coulda done without Sheila, though. Sorry, Congresslady. See ya at the next State of the Union address.

-------------------------------------
update: 5:29 p.m.

Hairballs has tapped into a rich vein of Sheila reaction, both pro and con:

handymankyle: Sheila Jackson Lee compared MJ to people in the bible then said they work with all faiths, and then She called MJ the KING... Retard!!

georgejbrown: finally tweetin bout Sheila "Jackson" Lee ! How & who let her speak! that women is everywhere!

j_andersen: Sheila Jackson Lee says she "grew up with" MJ. First Jackson 5 single: Dec. 1969. Lee born: 1950. "Grew up" indeed! (via @jstrevino)

Dave2112: Sheila Jackson Lee is a political whore of the worst kind.

TweepTheLeg: RT @taylorich My congresswoman at work. Sheila Jackson Lee at MJ's Memorial. Think you could do something about the potholes on our road?

SLGreenJr: I need to recant statements earlier.. Sheila Jackson Lee.. did her thang at the funeral!.. Exactly what was needed for that occasion!

SungSings: BTW, Sheila Jackson Lee is an amazing speaker. behere_now:

RT @Chrystan_ i never thought i would see the day that Sheila Jackson Lee would be a trending topic on twitter......HTOWN BABY! lmao!

natalierose: Sheila Jackson Lee was brilliant! She showed the haters what time it is! littlesayings:

@KatieJarl WOW! Somebody who shares my sentiments. Sheila Jackson Lee spoke very eloquently! I don't know about the Bill, but YOU GO GIRL!!

Look, a spider!

2009-07-06T00:15:00.001-05:00

The 4th of July: God or the Chi-Lites?

2009-07-04T21:35:00.003-05:00

We hope there wasn't an unnecessary amount of evangelizing mixed in with your Fourth of July celebreation today, unless that's your specific cup o' tea and you can't wait til the Christian sabbath, which is what we would prefer, personally speaking.

Can't say the same for Lake Jackson, where some citizens, well-meaning and God-fearing no doubt, take the occassion of our nation's independence to tell us about all our salvation.

Really, how 'bout just a quickie history lesson, to remind all of this day was about a revolution?

But, as the local Clute paper helpfully explained, there was another idea.

"In the spirit of thanksgiving and celebration, community members have united to sing the praises of the nation and the Lord on Independence Day. First Baptist Church of Clute, First Baptist Church of Lake Jackson, Grace Fellowship, the Brazosport Community Orchestra and others have joined in a Community Choir."

Set up in the mall's parking lot, the musical revival took place before the annual local fireworks display, which also takes place near the shopping mall, so a captive audience was assured.

Frankly, we prefer a secular July 4th celebration, like they did in Houston, where the Chi-Lites (see photo above) performed. They're now in their 50th year of providing musical entertainment and they wore bright orange suits. (Thanks to Brazosport News reader Mike for shooting us the image via his Blackberry.)

No history lesson there, either, but at least we weren't reminded that a lot of us are going to burn in hell, allegedly.

Anyway, happy Fourth of July.

Need a new hobby? Learn in your own home. Make money in your spare time

2009-06-28T23:09:00.000-05:00

Understanding Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T17:21:00.003-05:00

If you're having trouble grasping what went wrong in the life of Michael Jackson -- aside from an apparent prescription drug addiction -- there is this story in the LA Times written by its former pop music critic Robert Hilburn.

In the '80s, Hilburn was chosen by Jackson himself to help put together a book, but the deal fell through because the pop star wanted mostly a picture book and the publishing house's editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, wanted a full-scale biography.

During our time together, however, the conversations with Michael led -- once the tape recorder was off -- sometimes to darker moments from his past. One night when we were going through a stack of old photos, a picture of him at 17 served as a trigger for a sudden openness.

"Ohh, that's horrible," he said, recoiling from the picture.

Michael explained his face was so covered with acne and that his nose so large at the time the photo was taken that people wouldn't even recognize him -- a rejection so painful that it contributed to a personality change in him, he said. "They would come up, look me straight in the eye and ask if I know where that 'cute little Michael' was." It was, he added, like the "whole world was saying, 'How dare you grow up on us.' "

After repeated rejection, Michael said, he started looking down at the floor when people approached or would just stay in his room when visitors came to the family house in Encino.

Michael vowed after those wounds to do whatever it took to make people "love me again." The rejection fueled his ambition to be the biggest pop star in the world and to try to make his face beautiful. Unfortunately, Michael's need was so great that no amount of love seemed to be enough.

Parts of Hilburn's story are excerpted from his memoir, "Corn Flakes With John Lennon, and Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life," which will be published in October, according to an editor's note.

In light of Jackson's death, here's guessing the book publisher may want to tinker with the book title and flesh out what Hilburn had intended to publish about the late King of Pop.

Dow Chemical penalized $166K for pollution violations, but it's alright Ma, my asthma will be getting better soon, lol

2009-06-25T13:01:00.004-05:00

We put a story up on the Hairballs blog yesterday about the state regulators assessing a rather large fine (relatively speaking) on the local chemical manufacturing behemoth.

So go over there and read it in full, if you like.

No, it's not anti-Dow. It's about how Dow's pollutin sins really are a benefit to mankind, 'specially the chirren.

That is all.

it's too hot to blog so watch this

2009-06-25T00:37:00.002-05:00

This was on Lance Zierlein's blog. Jose sent it in to Lance, who called it "One of the Greatest Remixes EVER." I can't disagree.

quote/unquote: Twitter, a living will, Googlizing books and Woody Allen subbing Larry David for Zero Mostel

2009-06-17T21:31:00.006-05:00

(Editor's Note: quote/unquote is a regular feature of The Brazosport News. It is compiled by Wilson in St. Louis, the birthplace of "fried ravioli" which is sometimes known as "Chuckle Nuggets.")

“A beautiful Hispanic woman walked up to me and said ‘Senor Amor, may I take a picture with you?' Senor Amor. I like that.” --- tweet on Twitter by Kevin Love, player for the NBA Minnesota Timberwolves

"3. If I am unable to recognize or interact with friends or family members, I still expect gifts.
17. In lieu of flowers or donations, I would prefer rioting.
22. At my memorial service, I would like my clergyman to begin his eulogy with the words, "I suppose, in a way, we all killed him.'"
-- "My Living Will" by Paul Rudnick, New Yorker, 2005

"I enjoyed the fatuous surprise of Google's Sergey Brin discovering that 'There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site.' Translating this backhanded recognition of value into his own debased lingo, he understands that books make for 'viable information-retrieval systems,' information being the only cultural signifier he recognizes, evidently. His company's amazing presumption that book people should simply hand over the keys to their priceless kingdom shows how completely he and his colleagues misunderstand what is at stake. But these Internet people don't care. For billionaires like Brin, accessing the giant river of infinite book 'content' onto which they can glue paid advertising is simply a giant new way to make more money, and they are singleminded about that. The giveaway is not only in their ignorance but in their reluctance to share the wealth."
--- "The Long Goodbye" by Elisabeth Sifton in The Nation about the changing book industry

"It's a film I had written many years ago for Zero Mostel (pictured), and it was in the drawer, and I thought...who could possibly do it, and then it hit me: Larry David."
--- Woody Allen talking about his new movie "Whatever Works" which stars Larry David of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"

Chron.com gets a D+

2009-06-15T21:54:00.002-05:00

The Houston Chronicle's Web site, Chron.com, fared poorly in an analysis of the online versions of the nation's largest newspapers.

We realize such rankings -- in this case grades of A through F were dispensed by Douglas McIntrye of Wall Street 24/7 -- don't amount to a hill o' beans in this crazy, mixed-up world.

Still, in this era of financially challenged newspapers, the thinking is that the online products of the nation's Fourth Estate take on new significance regarding survival in the future.

Chron.com got a D+ grade, but a handful of others fared as bad or worse -- the Dallas Morning News received a D-, the Boston Globe received a D, the Cleveland Plain Dealer a D+, the Philadelphia Inquirer a D- and the Newark Star Ledger an F.

Here's what was said about Chron.com:

This site is a bit of a mess and is as good an example of what not to do with a newspaper site as any in this survey. The navigation across the homepage includes twenty five tabs some of which are labeled poorly enough so that it is hard for the reader to understand what they are. The front page really does not have a headline per se. The stories at the top of the page are features which don’t appear to be chosen to compel the reader to go further into the website. Some of the stories near the top of the page are from the Associated Press, an indication that the editors don’t feel that they have enough compelling content from their own features. The stories do have the basic social network and reader interaction tools including the ability to comment on stories and share them on Twitter or Facebook. The large sections of the paper like “Business” are only a long list of headlines, some of which have brief story summaries. The only illustrations on many of these pages are low resolution headshots of bloggers. The main news page has nearly no illustrations at all. Multimedia features are completely missing, a sign that Chronicle management treats the online paper as an after-thought. Entertainment sections are the only well-designed portions of online newspaper. Most Chron.com sections look like cheap blogs. The site runs a fair amount of local advertising, much of it not very well designed. The Houston Chronicle is owned by Hearst.

For a subjugated gender some of these Iranian women are feisty

2009-06-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

Maintaining your dignity

2009-06-14T13:24:00.002-05:00

I'll bet you don't have one of these devices, described, literally, as "the first improvement to toilet paper, as we know it, since the 1880s."

Toilet paper, we're told on the commercial, is "archaic."

Joe Posnaski, who usually writes about baseball, can tell you more -- maybe more than you want to know.

Today's Bible lesson

2009-06-14T12:34:00.000-05:00

Looking at video from Iran

2009-06-14T00:28:00.003-05:00

You have to wonder if there's another Tianenman Square in the cards for the protestors in Iran.

American TV coverage of events must have been clamped down, based on what I'm not seeing, but you might want to check out the raw amateur footage on this YouTube channel to get a flavor of what's happenin.

Here's a BBC viddy too.

Birds identified as barn swallows (and no, I don't live in a barn)

2009-06-12T17:04:00.005-05:00

Jessica in Clute solved the mystery about the birds nesting inside the front entrance of the porch. (See yesterday's post.)

They're barn swallows, she said, sending along this informative link.

As you can see from the above photo, it should be quite a sight walkin out the front door if all goes according to the swallow family plan.

Wild Kingdom part II -- a new set of birds of building a nest inside our porch

2009-06-11T15:22:00.008-05:00

I believe these birds are part of the flycatcher family because they have forked tails, but I'm having trouble identifying them any narrower than that and I could use some help.

It's been fascinating during the past two weeks watching them build their nest.

Constructed with a mixture of mud and dried grass, it's entirely different from the other birds's nest that went up under the garage eaves last month.

Regular Brazosport News readers might recall that those baby birds hatched in that nest were growing up fine until one of the neighborhood cats lay waste to them. [See posts on May 23and May 17.]

(We've since identified the cat. It goes by "Whiskers.")

Back to the new set of birds. I give them credit for their engineering skills, not to mention their "work ethic" to use a cliché from the tiresome sports parlance of our times.

They started by building a thin ledge composed of moist red dirt. That base went up an inch or so, then they started bringing in black moist soil to continue building upward. Mixed into this, of course, is the re bar -- yellowing dead grasses.

They're at it all day from sunup to sundown.

As far as their appearance, you see from the pictures posted here they have a gray belly and chest and a rust-colored patch under their beaks that extends up between their eyes slightly.

Their backs are dark colored. I'd say black, but in just the right light, there's almost a sheen of dark blue in there.

So what are they? Do you know? Can you send this to somebody who knows a lot about birds and find out?

I've gone through many pages of Google images searching "flycatcher birds" and have yet to find a match.