COMMENT OF THE DAY: SQUIRREL WARS “That is exactly how my arch nemesis taunts me from my front porch! He is brazen but sharp. I saw him recently bending over a large pot once filled with aloe vera plants. He was hanging half out of the pot because he ate all the plants and couldn’t drag his bloated self out. He did, however, make it to the oak when seeing him through the window ran out to confront him. No luck. I’d sware he sat there grinning at me and flicking me with his tail! We’re going into our 5th month. Going to be a long Fall. . . .” [Jai Woods, commenting on All the Cool Squirrels Are Doing It]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THINKS HIS POOP DON’T STINK 
“That’s weird. [pot-bellied pig] poop doesn’t really smell much (not like a hog farm, where the hogs are fed to bursting). It’s kinda similar to rabbit or deer (remember these are prey animals). Wilbur may be overfed? Or not eating proper PBP food, which is like rabbit food pellets – alfalfa + protein mix. We rake the poo up & put on the compost pile or mix it directly into the garden soil. It does not burn the grass. Or attract flies, really. Maybe the neighbor is smelling something else? An 8-month-old PBP will produce about 20 little balls of poop a day on the proper diet. Sorry if this is TMI, but I feel I owe it to Wilbur to produce some facts from a long-time responsible pig owner. I can smell our neighbor’s dog’s poop next door – and the wandering cat’s – but the pigs’ is not nasty at all. I was kind of worried when we got our first one that it would be a problem, but it is not. And our neighbors will tell you that too.” [Flake, commenting on Spring Potbellied Pig Dispute Hits the Courts] Photo: Wilbur Sardo
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NOW EVEN THE SQUIRRELS ARE PLANKING “The other day I watched as a squirrel dug out a spot at the base of a smallish red oak in my front yard. I must have been about 10 or 12 feet from him. After he got it just as he wanted, he splayed out belly down in the depression he had created. I wondered if it was cool to his stomach, or what would make him do that. He didn’t seem to care about me. Was not the least bit frightened.” [PYEWACKET2, commenting on Houston Tree Massacre Body Count]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: RETAIL JUSTICE “I agree . . . It would have been much more efficient for the county to have just rented space in a strip shopping center. Maybe they could have found some place with a drive through. May we affirm your conviction? Would you like fries with that? Just imagine the possibilities.” [J., commenting on Inside Downtown’s Brand-New 1910 Courthouse]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOURISM, THE FINAL FRONTIER “Let’s face it, if you’ve ever been to Space Center Houston, it’s mostly geared towards elementary school field trips. It wasn’t til just a few years ago, one of the *real* crown jewels of America’s leftover space hardware, a complete friggin Saturn V, was even given a roof to protect it from the elements for posterity. I love NASA and remember being able to run around all over the campus with nary a locked door as a kid, but JSC simply hasn’t kept up with being a top toursist destination, domestically or internationally. Much like other ‘attractions’ in Houston, people see them incidentally when here visiting relatives or on business, they’re not destinations in themselves. I swear I think more people come down 45 and 59 from other states to see Galveston than Houston. Maybe we need to build that giant dome over the Loop after all to get some tourist cred.” [SL, commenting on Why No Shuttle for Houston? Because Space Center Houston Isn’t So Big with the Tourists]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: YOU GO RIGHT AHEAD “When I first visited Texas in 1980, the TxDOT signs said ‘Drive Friendly.’ I thought this was a charming sentiment, so when the opportunity came to move here, I looked forward to ‘driving friendly’ with all the other Texans. Imagine my surprise when I got here, and went looking for those ‘Drive Friendly’ signs, only to find they had been replaced by ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ . . . whoa. OK. My then-new husband told me that just meant that a gunrack gives you the right-of-way.” [Claire de Lune, commenting on Don’t Mess with Don’t Mess with Texas]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: JUST MESSIN’ WITH YA “More than once, a non-Texan has cited ‘don’t mess with Texas’ to me as an example of what they perceive as Texans’ aggressive, arrogant superiority complex. I love the sheepish look I get when I tell them, ahem, it’s an anti-littering campaign, and not something we made up to sound like bad-asses. . . .” [Katk, commenting on Don’t Mess with Don’t Mess with Texas]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT WILL KILL THIS “We are excitedly discussing the replacement of bookstores with clothing stores (no matter how generic the former or how euro-cool the latter) . . . I’ve been rooting for an H&M in Houston for years, but I never thought it would be moving in to the empty shells of half the city’s booksellers. This is sad.” [Ares, commenting on H&M in Houston: All in the Malls]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BOWLED HIM OVER “I learned to swim there too, some of my fondest memories are from the Westland Y. My favorite: I was leaving swim lessons without my glasses (I was blind as a bat) and was running to my mom who was waiting in the car. I plowed into a really tall guy and knocked the wind right out of him. Hit him right in the breadbasket with my head. Couldn’t see him but I heard him laugh. There was no mistaking that laugh…I had run over Channel 2 weatherman Doug Johnson. I was mortified. My mom saw it all happen, but refused to get out of the car. She had the hots for Doug and she was on day two of “no washing your hair†after getting her giant bouffant permed at the Beauty Bunch. You know what they say, the higher the hair the closer to God, and my mom was really, really close to God back then.” [Heights Weirdo, commenting on More Rides to Gym]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LOOKING FORWARD TO MISSING YOU TOO “It’s weird to think that Rice Village had, at various times, a porn theater, a reggae bar, and a former gas station converted into a barbeque place called the Poor Man’s Country Club. A lot of the funkiness has gone, but that’s what the residents in the vicinity want. It’s an upscale neighborhood–and that tends to push out some of the more marginal businesses. But new funky neighborhoods are always coming into existence, so while I mourn the disappearance of great, unique neighborhood businesses, I welcome new ones elsewhere. Who knows — 20 years from now, Radical Eats might be a beloved neighborhood institution in a gentrifying neighborhood.” [Robert Boyd, commenting on Po’ Boys Priced Out of the Village]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE LOST SCENT “It broke my heart when they closed down the location near my high school on Hilcroft many years ago. [It] was a great place for ‘off campus’ dining. Don’t even get me started about the closure of the original Taft location without warning. Don’t they know it takes decades to achieve that wonderful aroma from all those imported cheeses, olives, etc.? This is a smell my children (and I) will never experience again.” [jgbiggs, commenting on Po’ Boys Priced Out of the Village]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: REMEMBERING BENNIGAN’S “It gets me thinking. I don’t remember when the original Bennigans closed. I can’t say I remember ever missing Bennigans. While I admit I ate at Bennigans a few times, I don’t remember a thing about it. It was neither good or bad–a remarkably unmemorable experience. I’m not sure about the new ones. . . .” [Will, commenting on The Texas Bennigan’s Begin Again]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE CASE FOR BUILDING CRAP “i’m no developer, but being that this is off Yale (and not washington) across from a wal-mart it’s safe to assume they’re not going to be pulling in high-margin clients. there’s no point building a nice shopping center catered to the area if you can’t lock-in clients that can afford the rent. rent’s are already going to be well above average for houston. better to have a generic crappy strip center than a bankrupt high-end strip center. they know they’re building in the middle of a double-dipping economy in an area that certainly has high average incomes, but is still in flux none the less. better to build crap and establish a proven income stream with sensible margins before going overboard and losing money. as for the store selection, it’s certainly nothing i’d patronize but it’s an expected utilitarian lineup. we live in the internet age, what do you really expect, an amazon pick-up storefront? it’s easy to criticize, but it ain’t my money so i’m not going to call people out for doing sensible things with theirs. you can’t run a business and support employees livelihoods by taking risks for communities that may never support you in the first place.” [joel, commenting on Piggybacking on the Washington Heights Walmart: Stripalicious Yale St. Retail at Heights Marketplace]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SHOPPING CENTER PARKING LOT OF THE APOCALYPSE “This is how I imagine the end of the world begins.” [Justin, commenting on For the Glory of Old Navy: Purple Martins’ Majesty Meets 59 Feeder Road Shopping Center Parking Lot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SALVAGE VALUE “I am not attached to the nice appliances, wood floors, etc. . . . but they have a very large and easily accessible resale market . . . its not being sentimental it is just not wasting money on something that can easily be resold. A mod house like this has a very small market. Only a select few like this style of house, and even fewer are willing to pay for them.” [Marksmu, commenting on Battle Over Swank Sugar Land Supermod Won By Komatsu Excavator]