From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • An HPD rookie officer was busted for selling 50 pounds of pot in an undercover sting. If convicted the officer could face two to twenty years in prison. • A frustrated Mom left her 10 year old daughter and 8 year old son at a Cy-Fair fire station Friday afternoon. According to fire station officials, the kids were told by the mother......

Update: Yesterday's news of Pimp C's dead shot across the city of Houston via blogs, message boards, and shocked emails. Rumors of foul play, even a mention of fellow rapper Spice 1 also being involved in a shooting, buzzed around town. The two incidents are not thought to be related. Capt. Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County coroner's office said Butler had apparently died in bed. "At this time there's no signs of foul......

Good morning, Houston. Did you know that we're now in a bold new Fluorescent Age thanks to Mayor Bill White and his colleagues in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso? The collective His Honors gathered in San Antonio on Friday to name the compact fluorescent bulb the "state bulb of Texas." If that doesn't make you want to switch to CFLs, try this: December is Compact Fluorescent Light Month in Texas. What's so......

The Rockets have been afflicted with shooting woes on a couple of occasions already this season. But the injury bug had stayed away so far, leaving many people optimistic about the team's chances for a high playoff seed in the Western Conference. But then Tracy McGrady's elbow barged in to the discussion. In the waning seconds of a disappointing first half against the Lakers at Toyota Center, T-Mac collided hard with Lakers forward Luke Walton......

Good morning, Houston. We heard a few weeks ago about a bat infestation at TSU, but now there's something else happening in the halls of academia: a bee infestation at UH. It seems 100,000 of the industrious little critters have taken up residence in the walls of the Cullen College of Engineering, but rather than exterminate, the university is planning to move the bees to a wooded section of campus. Beekeeper Mike Knuckley will......

A recent phone conversation with Houstonist's doctor went like this: Doctor: Houstonist, your tests came back and everything looks great except for your cholesterol. Houstonist: Cholesterol? Really? Doctor: I'm not sure how much you know about cholesterol levels, but what we're shooting for is under 200. Yours is 250. As you can imagine, this has major ramifications, especially for someone like you. Heart disease is the number one killer of women. . . . .......

Henry Dittman and Joan (justjoan) are the hosts of the Internet-based travelogue called The Smart Show sponsored by Holiday Inn Express. By now you're probably familiar with the H.I.E. ads that purports to convey savant-like intellect on its patrons. "I'm not a vascular surgeon, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night," says a broke writer after requesting a scalpel from the O.R. nurse. Despite having a title sponsor, The Smart Show does......

Good morning, Houston. How better to end the week than with a little soul searching — and when better to do it than on Evaluate Your Life Day? Yeah, we know, it used to take hours (days, even) to find your true self, but the good news is that you can get things taken care of much more quickly these days: using online quizzes, you can figure out whether you're CEO material, which celebrity's......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor darkhairedgirl. Photographer's comments from the flickr page: "She saw me taking these shots and just sat there smoking, chatting on her cellphone with her hair wrapped in that towel acting oblivious. She didn't get up and walk away so I figured she must not have cared that I was shooting her so much." We're glad you got a good shot and......

Good morning, Houston. Imagine that you're driving along one day when a traffic light falls from an overhead line and crashes through your car's windshield. You'd think the city would be responsible for the accident, right? Wrong! Just ask Lei Zheng, who was on a shopping trip with his wife and son last year when a traffic light fell on his Volkswagen. Zheng and his family weren't seriously hurt, but they did ask the......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

Eddie Griffin 25, died Friday in southeast Houston when his SUV smashed into an oncoming train. Officials stated that Griffin's SUV exploded on impact after he ignored all railroad warning lights and sirens as he drove around the railroad barrier as the train was crossing. His body was burned so beyond recognition that he wasn't identified until yesterday when dental records confirmed his identity. The Rockets thought so much of Griffin's talents that they......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

A bullet was fired through a window at KPFT world headquarters in Montrose around 1 a.m. this morning, narrowly missing a woman's head. Fortunately, no one was actually injured in the incident. Pictures of the window were posted on the KPFT blog within hours. In the same blog post, station manager Duane Bradley indicated what seems to be the consensus, that he believes the station was expressly targeted by the unidentified shooter: Security considerations will......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

The other day Houstonist popped into the Houston Center for Photography, that haven and support for all things filmic, to see a show entitled, "Japan." What especially intrigued us was the fact that the photographer, an HCP fellowship recipient, had been travelling in Japan while reading some of our favorite contemporary Japanese writers: slightly surrealist Haruki Murakami, cult-star Yukio Mishima, and the spare/smart Kenzaburo Oe. Says Amelia D'Entrone in her artist's statement, "A sense......

Rockets center Yao Ming got married yesterday, or two days ago, or perhaps last month (we're not good with the whole International Date Line thing here at Houstonist) to his long-time girlfriend Ye Li. Lest you think that Ye is going to look like a pixie next to 7'6" Yao, keep in mind that she's 6'2" herself. She's a basketball player on China's national team in her own right. Their children will no doubt be......

As any good sports fan will tell you, the end of the season is just the beginning of the fun. Here's what's going on with the Houston teams that aren't playing games right now: Rockets -Plenty of Rockets news this week, starting with the announcement of their 2007-08 schedule. Their home opener pits them against the Portland Trail Blazers and 74 year old rookie Greg Oden. Full schedule at the Rockets' website. -Yao Ming is......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

So a man named Willie Joe McAdams was arrested Thursday during a traffic stop at Main and Hillcroft — at first glance, not so unusual. But what makes this arrest different is that McAdams was picked up so he can return to jail: Two and a half months ago, McAdams was accidentally released from state prison 36 years early. Oops. McAdams was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2004 for shooting Cedric Thomas in......

Good morning, Houston. Are you feeling particularly crunk today? Maybe you should be: Crunk is among the words added to Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary this year. Also among the 100 new words are DVR, IED, gray literature and smackdown. But we think we'll get the most use out of crunk, which M-W defines as a style of Southern rap music but which has a variety of definitions in the Urban Dictionary. Which brings us to......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor Paper By Design What an amazing capture. What are the odds that you will catch a shooting star? Then what are the odds you will catch a shooting star while photographing downtown? We don't know what the odds are but Paper By Design did it and we are very happy that he shared this photo with us. If you have a......

So, you've heard the one about the condemned killer who decided he would tell a joke as his final statement? Turns out he wasn't as funny as promised: Just before his execution in Huntsville yesterday, Patrick Knight said death is the biggest joke of all. "I said I was going to tell a joke," he said. "Death has set me free. That's the biggest joke. I deserve this. And the other joke is that I......

Police are still trying to piece together the events that led to a shooting on the East Loop yesterday morning, possibly the result of a case of road rage. The victim was 47-year-old Carlos Berdegues, who was found slumped over in his truck after the vehicle crashed into a roadside wall near Market Street between 6 and 7 a.m. Witnesses saw the truck weaving in traffic before it hit the wall, and that — not......

More on Garrett William Mallot, the man who shot a fellow passenger to death aboard a Metro bus back in March: A grand jury decided Friday not to indict Mallot for the shooting because jurors determined it was done in self defense. Details were in short supply when the shooting took place — all that was reported was that Mallot was walking along the center aisle when he brushed up against the victim, Otis James......

A couple of weeks ago, Houstonist was downtown and noticed a film crew setting up lights, cameras — and, presumably, action — at the corner of Louisiana and Rusk. We wondered in passing what was going on, but we figured it was just Time Warner shooting another of its asinine commercials with a guy in a space suit or a businessman who says "Click! Boom!" for half an hour. In reality, though, what we......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever dreamed of designing a neighborhood marker, now's your chance: The Sixth Ward Property Owners group is looking for someone to come up with a sign to mark the historic area. "Right now we have markers in the neighborhood and they're in bad shape," Maria Isabel of the SWPO said. "It would be great to redo those." The design specs seem pretty open — the location and materials are......

The bond for Raymond Shaw, the man charged with shooting an 11-year-old friend of his son's, was doubled to $100,000 yesterday — and following the court hearing, the victim's family said they forgive Shaw for what he did. "We believe in God," Pamela Jones, a cousin of victim Jonathan Dixson, told reporters. "We have to forgive [Shaw] for that. It hurts us. We're hurting deeply, but we have to forgive him." Shaw, you'll remember, shot......

More details today in the Sunday shooting of an 11-year-old boy in north Houston: The accused gunman, 58-year-old Raymond Lee Shaw, was reportedly in a deep depression and told a friend before the shooting that he was thinking about killing himself. Ron Zenon, a friend of Shaw's, said Shaw became depressed after his wife died of a heart attack three years ago. Sunday afternoon, Shaw — who is unable to speak because of throat cancer......