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 Friendswood 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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In the 80's hit movie Stand By Me, there's a scene where the four main characters, teenage boys (including a young Corey Feldman!), are sitting around a campfire and one of them (Gordie) tells a story about a fat kid named Lard Ass participating in a blueberry pie eating contest at the county fair.

As the story goes, Lard Ass is so fed up with the teasing he gets about his weight that he decides to exact revenge on the town by chugging castor oil before the contest, and after consuming a truckload of pies, vomiting on the other participants.

Perfectly executed, the plan then results in the "watching someone vomit" effect overtaking the crowd and everyone at the event ends up puking on each other in a big nuclear explosion of purple vomit.

Completely satisfied and beyond proud, a content and puke covered Lard Ass just sits back and watches the carnage he created unfold.

Oftentimes, I wonder if anyone still alive with the Houston Rockets in 1984 watches the NBA Draft lottery the same way Lard Ass watches the county fair puke-fest.

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As noted here yesterday, the NFL awarded Super Bowl LI to Houston. The game will be played at Reliant Stadium in February 2017. There are plenty of you out there who could care less about football and sports in general. Frankly, the Super Bowl is often anticlimactic as a sporting event, but it is still the single biggest sporting event day on the planet and it is coming to our city.

So, before we get bored with the topic and ignore it until a month before it happen -- at which point I assume we'll all complain about the traffic more than usual -- I figured I'd remind everyone, including those of you who hate sports, why getting a Super Bowl is a good thing for the city of Houston.

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Courtesy HCSO

Walter Martinez (from left), Christian Perez, Yourdanis Cruz, Lopez-Mendez, Miguel Saavedra, Alex Martinez and Carlos Ventura: Busted.

A group of men were arrested by the Harris County Sheriff's Office for after 29 vehicles were found at a salvage yard in northwest Harris County. The men allegedly brought them to the yard where they swapped the serial numbers. All seven are charged with placing serial numbers with the intent to mask the vehicles' true identity. There was no indication, however, that one of the vehicles was indeed Batman. The crime is a third-degree felony and bail was set at $55,000 for each of the not-so magnificent seven.

As with surprisingly quite a few mugshots, at least a couple of the suspects decided that life wasn't all bad when being booked. Obviously, Miguel Saavedra found something damn funny (or smelled a fart) and Carlos Ventura looks like he was posing for his work ID photo.

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