Shhhhhh, don’t look now but the Texas Rangers are actually in First Place in the AL West!  It sounds weird doesn’t it?  Usually, anyone who follows the Rangers can count on three columns in any given year about the team’s chances.  The first is about how the pitching staff still sucks and breaks down why they are off to yet another “slow” start.  The second usually comes around the All Star break, when the Rangers somehow manage to pull together and threaten to make a race of the AL West, while the final column is the obituary for another season of futility.  In a nut shell it sucks cheering for a team that never spends money on pitching and who hasn’t won a pennant in almost ten years, but even die hard pessimists have to admit that this years team looks like the real deal...at least so far.

My mother didn't believe in "signs" in the cosmic, the-universe-is-telling-you-something sense. Say, for example, an eagle landed in the back yard and stared in a penetrating, unwavering way directly at you and then plucked out a breast feather and dropped it at your feet while emitting an urgent call and tapping out some code with its talons? My mother would have probably exclaimed, "What's with the screeching, hopping bird shedding on the patio?" Signs, schmigns.

But she did, however, subscribe to the full range of Catholic voodoo, and she did her best to instill it in my siblings and me. We knew from an early age that we had guardian angels hovering around us whose purpose was not entirely clear. We hoped that they were like Ninja angels who were prepared to throw themselves in front of runaway trucks bearing down on you, or hit your enemies with invisible numchucks. Take that, Charlie, for cutting in front of me in the lunch line! We imagined them smiting our opponents like celestial Batmans and Robins, while invisible Pow! Smack! Bop! signs floated in the ether around us. But in practice, what the guardian angels seemed most prepared to do was to give you a metaphysical smack up the side of the head when you lied about stealing your sister's last Easter basket chocolate egg.

There’s a storm brewing in the Metroplex and I’m not talking about the Microburst that destroyed the Cowboys practice facility.  Back in the Cowboys heyday it was said that the reason why there was a hole in the roof of Texas Stadium was so that “God could watch his favorite team play on Sundays.”  If that is true then maybe the destruction of the practice facility was the Big Guys way of letting the Cowboys know that he expects more from them.  It’s been 13 years since the Cowboys have won a playoff game and with a less than stellar draft and the team facing a tough schedule, Jerry Jones would be smart to keep a look out for lightning bolts from the skies.

I read a book recently called Apocalypse 2012: An Optimist Investigates the End of Civilization. The author, Lawrence E. Joseph, digs into the numerous theories and predictions that seem to all point to the year 2012 as the "big year." Something surely is going to happen in 2012, whether it is a catastrophe or an explosion or an intergalactic collision or something. Why the year 2012? Because, for the love of God, all the smarty pants throughout history reference that year in their visions for the end of the world; it's that simple. Is it really THAT simple? Well, no. But is it creepy that 2012 keeps popping up? Hell yes! Queue the iPod. We're going to party like its 1999! I better start stockpiling cases of beer and cartons of cigarettes in my garage.

Check this out. The ancient Mayans were some pretty observant people. By just sitting on a hill and watching the night skies obsessively, they calculated an extremely accurate calendar that has predicted all major intergalactic events. What does 2012 mean to them? The end of the world and a new beginning. What else? The sun has been farting out solar flares more than any time in the last 11,000 years. Solar physicists believe it will peak in (you guessed it) 2012 and microwave our planet. Russian geniuses believe our solar system has entered an interstellar energy cloud that threatens to destabilize our sun. When do they think catastrophe will affect us? Somewhere between 2010 and 2020. Is 2012 in there somewhere? Christianity, the I Ching, and Hindu theology have all been interpreted by someone who believes 2012 is the end of time. The sky is falling! Several physicists believe we're overdue for a major catastrophe like the one that evaporated the dinosaurs. And the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park is due for a major eruption which could result in the death of ninety percent of the world's population. WTF?! This book was really making an effort to ruin my day. Did somebody say "Miller Time?"

Most of us - even the most vociferously Amurikan Americans - have incorporated some foreign words or phrases into our vocabulary, whether or not we even realize it. Pizza, for example. It's become a national meal, for gosh sakes, yet it may surprise you to know that the word pizza comes from a foreign country. Italy, to be exact. "Pizza" is short for the Italian word pizzabemakingyoufatta, or as they say in Old Italia, "looka her-a, she gotta butt the size of the moon-a, she must-a been eatin too mucha the pizza pie-a."

Many of our words are a pastiche - which, come to think of it, is another foreign word. The French say it's theirs but their claim is being rigorously disputed by a small town in southwest Missouri named Iche, which insists that it coined the word when giving directions to the next town over: it's past Iche.

The Latins (whoever they are!) gave us all sorts of root words. Snooty know-it-all people are always waxing profound about words that come from some Latin root, and they delight in pointing it out, saying things like, "it might interest you to know, Bob, that the phrase ‘hung like a horse' actually derives from the Latin dickius maximus equines or as it was referred to in the days of Julius Caesar, ‘Julius peckerus bigius.'"

When it comes to boxing, two names come to mind, Jesus Chavez and James “Mandingo” Kirkland, but on Saturday night at the Frank Erwin Center Austin was introduced to the Lightweight division in what was one of the most action packed fight cards of the year. Lightweight Lightning, as the card was billed, definitely lived up to its name and even if it did start out like frozen molasses, hopefully it will encourage more promoters to bring their fights to the city of Austin.

As my wife and I entered the Frank Erwin Center we found out that our tickets were in the nosebleed section, not that it mattered much since the first five fights were so boring the round card girls were getting more cheers than the boxers in the ring. Of course you can’t really blame the fans; boxing matches are only place other than a strip club where you can see a woman wearing a bikini and high heels. If you don't believe me just try asking your girlfriend to throw on a pair of heels the next time you go to the beach and see what happens.

There are regular birthdays, and there are big birthdays, and somebody we all know is about to have a landmark birthday:  Barbie.  Barbie, the fashion icon; Barbie, the girl with a one-inch waist; Barbie, the doll with feet the shape of high heels, is turning 50.  That's right, it's the big 5-0 for Midge's best friend.

Barbie will be a half-century on March 9.  She was "born" at the 1959 New York Toy Fair, the product of Ruth Handler, who happened to be married to the co-founder of Mattel Toy Company.  Ruth gave the world an image of female perfection that has made Mattel - not to mention many therapists - millions of dollars from girls who grow into womanhood obsessed with Barbie's unachievable proportions.