Is That a Wandy on Your Face or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

• In one of those blatant cases where the team's athletic trainer should have made up a lie to tell the press instead of revealing the true nature of the injury, it has came to light that Astros' pitcher Wandy Rodriguez was recently troubled by cold sores on the inside of his mouth that only allowed him to eat liquid food. Ever had (or heard of anyone having) cold sores that bad? Me neither. To me, this clearly screams "vicious side effects from STD." In any case, I shall now heretoforth refer to cold sores as "Wandys," and I hope you will take it under consideration to do the same.

• Have you ever played that game with your friends, "I wonder which pro athletes are gay?" Just admit it -- of course you have (not that there's anything wrong with that). I bring this up because I recently came across this story about former NFL lineman Esera Tuaolu, who is now openly out of the closet. Was interested to note that the article was written by one D. Orlando Ledbetter. Do you suppose he's of any relation to the song with the first name of Yellow?

• I'm a couple days late in reporting this, but I think that I should be allowed some lee way since I first reported it months before the New York Times broke the story: Pedro Martinez likes playing with flowers. I think this is one of those cases where the headline speaks for itself and nothing more needs to be said (except of course that flowers are for girls).

• Earlier today I was debating what to order for lunch, and was openly discussing the issue with a person nearby. My choices: The always delicious cheeseburger and fries, or a Greek salad with grilled chicken. I presented the nature of my dilemma (tasty and unhealthy versus virtuous), and the woman nearby responded, "Oh, forget healthy. You're going to feel real stupid when you get hit by a dirty taxi later. Get the burger." Other than finding this to be pretty sound advice from an existential standpoint, for some reason, the phrase "dirty taxi" struck me quite funny. And, for the record, I wussed out and went with the salad. Kind of expecting a dirty taxi to strike me down for my disappointing order any moment now.