THUN-DAH!!!

As a general rule, unless your team is in the NBA playoffs (I'd say NHL, but most of you wouldn't even know what I was talking about), this time of year can be pretty boring for sports fans. Baseball is still early in the year. There isn't the hint of football save OTAs and college sports are nearly dead as kids prepare for a summer of slurping tequila out of the belly buttons of co-eds and sneaking smokes and free beer behind the crappy restaurant they work at to make money for more partying.

For the northern half of the country, people are just beginning to fully emerge from there cocoon-like hibernation. For them, this is a time of fun in the welcoming warmth of the sun. For people who live in the south, we're just trying to stave off dehydration, usually with a mix of water, alcohol and air conditioning. But there are still things to do in sports even if it may be a tad slim pickings. Here are the best of them for this extended Memorial Day weekend.

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If Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial beginning of summer, our weather is certainly going to cooperate. After a few unseasonably cool weeks and a couple good rain storms to help ease concerns over drought, it appears as though we have finally broken through into typical Houston summer weather. Once we clear through the next couple days when some unstable air could produce a shower or two, the heart of the holiday weekend will be hot and sunny.

Friday and Saturday are forecast to be partly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of rain. The same unstable air that has generated the devastating and violent weather across Tornado Alley is still lingering and might generate a shower or two for the Houston area, but chances are low and, if it does, it will more than likely be isolated.

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Just...no.

In the era of cell phone technology, virtually nothing goes unnoticed. Such is the tale of a sno cone vendor at Minute Maid Park this week who heard the call of Mother Nature during his shift at an Astros game. A fan in the bathroom at the same time noticed the rainbow-colored sno cones sitting on the ground inside a stall next to the vendor who was obviously in the middle of "seeing a man about a horse."

The video was passed along to channel 2, which aired a story. It has since gone viral and been picked up by Deadspin and Yahoo! Sports among others. Since the incident, the vendor has been fired by Aramark, the ballpark's food services provider. Ironically, the video was filmed on new team president Reid Ryan's first day on the job.

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Photo courtesy of Mercy for Animals

One of the nearly 3,000 pigs at Country View Family Farms in Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania. The far mis a supplier for Hatfield Quality Meats, which is sold in twelve Northeastern states.

This week's story, "The Ag Gag War," goes behind the scenes of the guerilla fight between animal rights groups and Big Agriculture.

For years organizations like the Humane Society and Mercy for Animals have being going undercover at America's largest farms, using hidden cameras to show exactly how our food is produced. The footage hasn't been pretty.

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We like our shark fin soup with a dash of salt -- it helps mask the overpowering flavor of douche.

Hair Balls is scratching our head over Republican Senator Larry Taylor's recent flip-flop on a bill that would effectively ban the already federally prohibited practice of "shark finning" in Texas waters -- i.e., catching a shark, cutting off its fin for use in a very expensive soup and then tossing it back in the water, where it dies an agonizing death.

Taylor, whose district covers parts of Harris, Galveston and Brazoria counties, first introduced the bill, would would prohibit the sale, trade, purchase and transportation of shark fins in Texas.. But after fellow Republican Senator Troy Fraser came out against it, Taylor followed suit. Yep, he reversed his position on his own bill, and it died in committee.

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I pity the fool who hails my cab!

Beginning the first week of August, if you need a flight to DC, it just got a little easier. Southwest Airlines is launching nonstop flight service between Hobby Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport according to a release. Recently, the airline began nonstop service to Pittsburgh (yay?) and Charlotte (yee haw?), and it will begin nonstop flights to New York's LaGuardia Airport in June.

Let me just say that while I personally hate to fly, if I am going to go somewhere I absolutely want to go nonstop. Layovers suck and a nonstop means one less takeoff and landing. They can sometimes be a necessity, but when it comes to flying to large airports around the country, there's no good reason to have layovers unless you either love airport lounges or absolutely must save every penny you have because that extra $20 you saved having a layover in Little Rock for four hours was so TOTALLY worth it, right?

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I started playing around on the Internet back in the early '90s before there was a fully formed World Wide Web. At that time, the GIF (Graphics Exchange Format) was the image of choice for many things. As the web grew, so did the GIF. Soon, animation was added and you got things like animated "under construction" graphics and hamster dance. The GIF evolved.

But as the web changed, the GIF slowly began to fall out of favor. Sure, you could animate it, but most legit websites didn't use that and went with more "modern" technologies like Flash. Soon, the PNG would all but replace the GIF in normal use throughout the web for graphics on websites. Then, a resurgence. The animated GIF was back and stronger than ever thanks to software that easily allows conversion of video clips into the files. Now, the ubiquitous graphics file litters Tumblr and blog posts. They are used to make people think and laugh, and replay sports highlights.

And the creator of the GIF had to go and ruin it by telling the world it's actually pronounced "jif."

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Judge Roach decided to force two North Texas lesbians to live apart from one another.

A couple in McKinney, Texas, has been together for nearly three years. They've been together following one's messy divorce. They've helped raise the two young children that were on the receiving end of the acrimony following that split. After living under the same roof, the couple has, according to one, "a very happy and healthy home. Our children are happy and well adjusted."

But earlier this month, a Collin County judge, citing a "morality clause," decided to force one to move from the house in the course of the following 30 days. And while most couples would be able to circumvent such ruling by getting married, thus abrogating the morality clause the judge cited, the two in this relationship don't have that option. Same-sex marriage is still illegal in Texas. And per Judge Jon Roach Jr.'s ruling, Page Price and Carolyn Compton will be forced to lived separately until the state's gay marriage ban is lifted.

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Photo by shannonpatrick17

If you're the leader of a sovereign nation meeting with another sovereign nation to discuss a pipeline that will tote thick, sticky tar sands oil through your land if the project is approved, you might be just a little put out when the head of the other nation doesn't make time to sit down and talk this whole thing out. You might even walk out of the meeting.

Historically the Native Americans have never fared too well when they go up against the United States. Mainly because they get horrible new-to-them diseases like smallpox, fight and die, fight and are forcibly "relocated", or simply assimilated into the culture. It's a painful history of broken promises, slaughter and the steady ebbing of an entire culture.

But, the thing is, the ones who were relocated to South Dakota and other areas now find themselves in an interesting position - namely, their land is where a company, TransCanada, needs to go through putting in and expanding pipe to make the Keystone XL Pipeline. The project has been an issue of contention with landowners and environmentalists concerned about the impact that a pipeline transporting viscous bitumen, a thick heavy type of crude oil, more than 1,700 miles from the Alberta Tar Sands to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

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Ain't no adoption weekend like a Houston adoption weekend.

PetSmart Charities has named Houston one of the top ten pet adoption-friendly cities in the country.

Houston nabbed the honor after rescue groups here, in conjunction with PetSmart stores, helped find homes for 111 critters over National Adoption Weekend (May 3-5).

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