Streets will be clogged, cars will be backed up, frustrations will rise.

Why? Because the town is getting a Sonic Drive-In restaurant.

As one commenter to the Star-Tribune put it: "Needing traffic management because of Sonic opening sounds ridiculously funny to a displaced Minnesotan living in Houston, TX."

Apparently, Minnesotans have for years been seeing those ubiquitous Sonic ads without really having any place to sample the stuff.

And this must be after people make their initial visit. Then again, Minnesota is not known for its cuisine, unless you like lutefisk.

Anyway, Minnesotans, come to Houston; we've got all the Sonics you could want.

-- Richard Connelly

I mean, not to totally freak out, fer sure, but this whole Georgia thing is, like, way crazy to the max. You just waltz over to Georgia, deck them, and act like total dickweeds about the whole thing. Like, did you ever think for one second that maybe Georgia wanted to just do their own thing without having y’all have, like, a complete and total cow over it? God! Totally harsh, man.

Okay, he totally does. “The Day After” is somewhere in our collection too, so we can totally wig out on the couch together.

Y’all are acting like real hosers, you know that? Yer buggin’ out thinking you can get all rude with Georgia and all. I mean, seriously, Russia, do you hear me? If you don’t do something about this soon, you can totally get bent. I mean it. Because this Georgia shit is just heinous. Like, way. – Jennifer Mathieu

Here are a few examples of what Paulie Walnuts might call “mayham” from the countryside…(Stories drawn from the police blotters of the Galveston County Daily News, Lufkin Daily News and Victoria Advocate.)

Oh well, if I’m a felon, I might as well get on the sex offender registry too…
A Texas City juvenile reached over a female motorist to try to snatch her purse from the passenger’s side. Scared off by the prospect of her angry and rapidly approaching boyfriend, the would-be robber dropped the purse and ran towards his apartment, where on the threshold of his home, seemingly as an afterthought, he decided to drop his pants, expose his penis and deliver a few choice words to the woman. Still in full view, the teenager then entered his apartment, which was where police found him after his intended victim led them to the door. He was charged with attempted robbery and indecent exposure.

What? Was that wrong? If I knew that this was frowned upon in this suburb, I can assure you, it would never have happened…
A Lufkin woman reported seeing a young man masturbating in the bushes Thursday afternoon near a suburban intersection, a police report stated. The complainant told police this was the second time in the past few days she had seen the man going to town al fresco.

Can You Hear Me Now, Motherfucker?
A La Marque man bit his cousin’s ear off in a 3 AM Sunday-Morning-After-Saturday-night free-for-all. Doctors have said they cannot reattach the victim’s ear, but his attacker was luckier: they were able to counteract what police said was a large amount of Xanax coursing through his veins.

We ain’t lion: This thief shouldn’t be hard to find
Someone stole a bunch of plain white T-shirts and this totally bad-ass custom-made jacket from a Lufkin haberdashery. Lufkin cops have issued an APB on this one-of-a-kind lion coat. If your tip to lufkincrimestoppers.com leads to its return to its rightful owner, you could earn up to a $1,000 cash reward.

The Lone Rider of the Drunkopalypse
A 63-year-old Victoria horseman was arrested for public intoxication after police said he failed field sobriety tests after dismounting from his grey steed. Neighbors said the man never hurt anybody and used to clop through the streets all the time, though he had scaled it back a bit in recent years. Although police said in a report that he could barely stand, the Victoria cavalryman claimed to have consumed only two beers. After the man’s arrest, a designated rider took the reins and steered the horse home.

Is this East Texas or East London?
A Lufkin woman complained to police that her ex-boyfriend doused her with tea.

Okay, Afghanistan or Lufkin?
Lufkin police came upon the sort of pastoral scene often witnessed on the outskirts of Kandahar: three unsupervised children frolicking outside with a fully-loaded AK-47.

Pancho was a bandit boys, his horse was fast as polished steel, wore his hat on his head for all the honest world to feel…
Management at the Café Del Rio restaurant in Lufkin were chagrinned to discover that a man celebrating his birthday had absconded with the loaner sombrero they had furnished him. We have a feeling tequila might have abetted the theft.

– John Nova Lomax

Bellaire city council was happy about the new Bellaire Route No. 2 Quickline service that METRO will be inaugurating later this month – until it saw the street poles and street signs that came with it. As part of the service, there were supposed to be banners announcing the service (three banners before each stop, followed by three banners after each stop) and Q bunnies (drawings on the street of bunnies formed around the Metro Q logo) along the street. The trouble is METRO installed the poles and bunny signs without telling Bellaire officials.

Bellaire City Council members James Avioli, Sr. and Pat McLaughlan complained about the poles and METRO’s failure to inform them of the signs. The Bellaire Examiner reported that McLaughlan said, “It’s hard to describe how outraged I am when METRO comes into our city, pops a pole in our sidewalk, puts a post in, with no regard for the mobility of the sidewalk.”

“Who do they think they are? Where do they get off?” he said.

We rode up and down Bellaire this afternoon and saw several blank poles that seemed to be up near bus stops, but maybe those are other blank poles and not METRO’s. — Olivia Flores Alvarez

The Woodlands has already done so. Lisa Gray at the Chronicle wrote about the sylvan suburb’s charms in Zest over the weekend.

And as with all things The Woodlands, Sugar Land is envious. And they are doing something about it.

So too does the group that has been planning the C.E.D., a 24-person panel of Sugar Land’s Politburo commissars, sorry, politicians, called the “Visioning Task Force.” (Visioners include former Sugar Land mayor David Wallace, and Cyril Hosley, an ex-city councilman now serving as the Visioners’ Grand Vizier, which is not his official title but should be.)

At any rate, the nuts and bolts of this Fort Bend County Five Year Plan include a minor league baseball stadium, indoor concert venue, a festival site, a cultural arts venue/performing arts academy, a full-service hotel/convention center and other amenities.

Best of all, they say it won’t cost Sugar Land taxpayers a dime, at least not via property taxes. They say they can raise the money through ticket and parking taxes at the venues and a two-cent boost in the hotel occupancy tax.

Minor league baseball -- hell, any outdoor pro baseball in the area at all -- is a smashing idea. Frisco, a Sugar Land-like Dallas suburb, is now home to the Texas Rangers’ AA affiliate, and the games are extremely well-attended, even with the multitude of competing sports dollar options in D-FW. In fact, Frisco has had the top attendance of all AA franchises the last three years running. Yeah, yeah, it’s hot there too, so spare us the crap about outdoor baseball not working here.

As for the other elements of the Sugar Land Great Leap Forward -- a festival site also seems a good idea, and that “a cultural arts venue/performing arts academy” is at least in keeping with that weird suburban Soviet motif.

But with the Meridian, the Verizon, Warehouse Live and soon the House of Blues all downtown, not to mention tonier arts places like Jones Hall and the Hobby Center, and both the Stafford Centre and Arena Theatre within ten miles of Sugar Land, does Greater Houston really need a brand-new, far-flung indoor concert venue? -– John Nova Lomax

Knock-off coffins, especially those made by a Chinese tractor company, are new to local consumer groups, who say they haven’t heard of any similar complaints. Donna Potter, Administrator of Consumer Affairs and Compliance for the Texas Funeral Commission tells Hair Balls, “I have not ever see that before. We haven’t had any complaints regarding this.”

Dan Parsons, head of the Houston BBB says, “If you believe the critics, they tell you [funeral home fraud] is off the scale. But based on what I see here at the Bureau, it’s very minor. It’s not high on our complaint list."

“When you’re putting someone in the ground, you’re in an emotional state, sometimes you’re lacking a support mechanism. Our advice, get someone neutral, someone detached, looking over your shoulder. Even though the caskets may be dramatically reduced in price because of the way they buy it, still make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, or if you will, box to box.”

The accused funeral homes are Crowder Funeral Home in Webster, Paradise South Mortuary Services in Channelview, Forever Group International in Cypress and Newport Co. in Hidalgo, Texas.

— Olivia Flores Alvarez

Santiago Perez, 26, of Edinburg, plead guilty to the use of excessive force on two undocumented visitors, or people-without-papers, or night-time tourists, or whatever it is we're calling illegals these days.

Perez was no slacker at the whole violating-civil-rights thing, either, if the DOJ spokesperson is to be believed:

On Sept. 14, 2007, while on duty and transporting an undocumented alien, who had been arrested for alien smuggling, from the Premont, Texas, Police Department to the processing station, Perez drove and parked in a secluded area. Perez then restrained the alien's hands behind his back and removed him from the government vehicle. Once outside, Perez instructed the alien to kneel on the ground. Perez began interrogating the alien, asking where he intended to pick up the illegal aliens he was supposed to smuggle. The alien denied being an alien smuggler.

In an effort to scare and coerce the alien into incriminating himself, Perez drew his service pistol and repeated the questions. The alien continued to deny being a smuggler. Perez then pointed his weapon at the alien's head, touching the pistol to the alien's temple or forehead, and again asked for incriminating information. Perez intended the alien to fear for his life. He did. The alien believed Perez was going to kill him as he knelt handcuffed in a secluded area in South Texas.

When his threatened use of the pistol failed to elicit an incriminating response, Perez holstered it and grabbed his police baton. Perez placed his baton behind the alien's neck and back and again questioned the alien. The use of the baton caused the alien bodily and mental injury. Perez also threatened to put the alien "in a hole" if he did not answer his questions. The alien understood the threat to mean that Perez would kill him. When the alien continued to deny his involvement in smuggling even after being threatened with both a pistol and a baton, Perez put the alien back into the patrol vehicle and transported him to the processing station.

Hey, he eventually got the guy to the station, didn't he? Don't these prosecutors ever watch 24?

In the other incident hit an unarmed and un-resisting Guatemalan over the eye with his pistol.

"An injustice has been recognized and accepted by this former agent's admission today," U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle said in a statement that didn't really make much sense when you look at it.

Perez will be sentenced November 5 and faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count.

-- Richard Connelly

The gasoline-making wasn't going well, we knew, when the phone rang at home and he announced, "I'm not here," which meant whoever answered the phone would have to tell whoever was calling from the plant that, nope, Dad wasn't home.

So now it's 2008 and those compressors and turbines are still breaking down at the world's largest refinery -- the ExxonMobil facility in Baytown.

Yes, the benzene (and other pollutants) was released to flares so it can be burned up, but that doesn't burn up all of it, just 99 percent -- allegedly.

Which I guess is why my old man, a smart engineer who was said to know every nut and bolt in that facility, had us live way on the east side of Baytown -- far, far from where the compressors and turbines would stop humming.

-- Steve Olafson

OK. Then here's a news tip for you -- H-Town will be in the house for the 13th season of the award-winning series, which begins September 28.

The producers have announced the 11 two-person teams that will be competing this year, and among the contestants is Houstonian Kelly Crabb (on the left in the picture).

Crabb, who has never, ever heard a joke about her name, is a 26-year-old sales rep and former dancer who founded the Houston Aeros dance team.

So in between trying to bribe their way onto ferries and taxis (they do that on Amazing Race, right?), we guess Crabb & Cook are expected to bitch about their ex-husbands.

At any rate, Crabb has to be a better rep for Texas than American Idol Aggie Jason Castro.

-- Richard Connelly

Yesterday, the phones were busy all day, too. A lucky 1,200 people broke through to talk to someone, according to Eric Gerber, spokesman for UH. That’s out of a 35,000-plus student body so we’re guessing there were a few more people who – like us -- would have liked to have gotten through.

Today, it’s worse. Early morning busy signals have been replaced by the off-hours message. You know the one that tells you what to do when you’re calling before or after they are open for business. The one that tells you the hours they are open. The one you’re not supposed to hear repeatedly at 10 o’clock in the morning.

Here’s the Catch-22: For all the students waiting on loans, the loan money isn’t disbursed to the school until August 25 – six days after today’s deadline.

So does the loan money count now? And if it does, then why don’t the totals in a student’s activity account reflect that? Do students somehow need to come up with the money today and get a refund later? But if a student applied for a loan, that usually means he doesn’t have the money now. Huh.

We passed on all these questions to Gerber yesterday. Gerber, a meticulous sort who doesn’t want to get anything wrong and add to the confusion, was still working this morning on deciphering the bureaucratic rules with a UH administrator. We’ll update as more information becomes available.

The UH Board of Regents is having a meeting today. Along with the deserved round of congratulations they’ll be giving themselves for an uptick of 15 percent in this year’s student enrollment, maybe someone can talk about getting an adequate phone system and one that is staffed to meet the surge of calls created by the university’s own confusing deadlines. And hey, the phones don’t even have to be Tier 1 yet.

Update -- A Q&A with UH Director of Communications Eric Gerber:

Houston Press: If the university knows the loan funds won't be disbursed until August 25, why is August 19 the deadline for complete payment?

Gerber: The university treats “pending” funds as though they were actually paid into the account and this satisfies the August 19 deadline.

There appears to be some confusion surrounding that term and we could do a better job of explaining this seeming anomaly to our students and their parents. That is something we are taking under consideration.

HP: Would a student, in fact, be dis-enrolled from his classes because he hadn't paid the total on August 19 -- even if the loans coming in on August 25 more than cover his bill?

Gerber: In the scenario you have just given, the answer is “No, the student would not have his enrollment canceled.” Remember, pending aid is treated the same as if it had already been disbursed.

HP: Why don't the two dates match, or better yet, have the loans come in before the final balance is settled?

Gerber: Texas Education Code states that “payment or payment arrangements must be made prior to the first class day.” At UH, the Payment Due date is set early enough so that students who do not have sufficient “pending” financial aid will have enough time to make other arrangements before classes begin.

The date for disbursement of financial aid is set for the first day of class as a practical consideration. Many students do not show up for classes. Disbursing financial aid to them prior to the start of classes can create serious financial complications for them and the university. This means they would have been enrolled, shown as paid, and probably received failing grades. Additionally, the university would have to reverse the aid, and seek to recover any refunds that had resulted.

HP: If in fact, there is nothing to worry about if loans are set up to go, why then all the (unnecessary?) stress caused by conflicting dates and messages?

Gerber: We will have to do a better job of explaining this to our students and parents.

HP: Are you aware it's practically impossible to get through the phone lines to UH now?

Gerber: We are aware of the huge call volume at this time and are constantly trying to address this issue. We have been receiving thousands of calls and we recognize that it can be very frustrating to our callers. We have added a second phone number (832-842-1010) to help address this problem.

-- Margaret Downing

Something called the Amethyst Institute, obviously named by a drunk 18-year-old, has gotten more than 100 college presidents -- including those from Duke, Ohio State, Dartmouth and Whittier -- to sign a statement calling for the drinking age to be lowered.

Why?

Actually, the presidents boringly contend, lowering the age would reduce binge drinking and contempt for a law that is routinely ignored.

In case you're wondering, no local presidents signed the document. The only Texan we could find was J. Patrick O’Brien of Texas A & M University-West Texas.

And with a name like J. Patrick O'Brien, of course you're gonna be endorsing drinking. Slainte!

-- Richard Connelly

The huge-pain-in-the-ass changes on that heavily traveled highway were scheduled to take place August 25; now, says project spokeswoman Tanya McWashington, they won't occur until September 1.

It sounds like it's a little late in the project to be discovering new work activities, but then again we are most definitely not engineers.

So the bottom line is that the pain-in-the-ass has been put off. For one week.

If you arranged your entire work schedule so that you could avoid the Katy for the week beginning August 25, you're screwed.

-- Richard Connelly

Because there ain't going to be any more Fingers.

The company announced today they're abandoning the family name in order to concentrate on the Ashley Home Stores they run.

"Ashley"? Sounds pretty damn sissified to us. Give us a tough-talking, digit-pointing, oddly enthusiastic, strange-haired guy telling us something is "at your fingers," not "at your Ashley."

"It's an extremely difficult decision, one I've wrestled with for a while,'' he said, but Ashley stores have been outperforming his Fingers stores for quite a while.

What's next -- Gallery Furniture will no longer "SAVE YOU MONEY!!!!!!!!"?

-- Richard Connelly

The school district had a deadline of August 15 to notify CEP whether they planned to renew the contract. Or to drop it, like the Dallas and Pasadena districts have.

So what did HISD do? They punted.

Why?

"The district wants more time to review the matter," Abbott says.

Seems reasonable. CEP's only been working with HISD for more than 10 years.

-- Richard Connelly