Morning Roundup: Your writing looks like crap edition

Good morning, Houston. If you've been working on a list of things you can do with cow patties, we've got another item for you: You can make pens out of them. Just ask John Lopez of Poteet, who has gotten semi-famous in South Texas by making pens from ground-up cow patties. No, really — the ground poop is mixed with a plastic resin, milled into cylinders and fitted with pen parts; the finished product, which the AP describes as "looking almost like wood from a distance," sells for $45. Lopez said he got the idea for the poop pens when he was thinking about making handmade pens, but couldn't find exotic materials in Poteet. So he turned to one of the most abundant natural materials around, and he said he's proud of how the pens reflect his surroundings. "That's where I live, and I'm not a Yankee," he said. "I've been up north once. I've been to Oklahoma, and I didn't care for it."

>> Bad cop: Kevin Bruce Byrne, a Dickinson bailiff, has resigned after confessing to pulling at least three women over in League City at night without reason — and investigators are still trying to figure out why he did it. Byrne has a peace officer's license, but he wasn't working for any law enforcement agency within 95 miles of League City when he pulled the women, who were driving alone, over and questioned them, KTRK reports. One of the women told the AP that a man who pulled her over — apparently Byrne — wasn't wearing a police uniform, though he did have on a T-shirt that said "Police" and was carrying some kind of badge. Officials are conducting an investigation; they say Byrne didn't do anything illegal, but he seems to have taken his power "a little too far."

>> McCombs: Glover's murder was my idea: Matthew McCombs, the 19-year-old who was sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing Sugar Land teen Ashton Glover, testified Friday that he acted alone in the murder. McCombs was in a Fort Bend County courtroom testifying in the pretrial hearing for co-defendant Sean Brown, 19, who is also charged with murder. When prosecutor Sherry Robinson asked McCombs if he and Brown had ever talked about killing anyone, McCombs answered, "No, ma'am." He went on to say that Brown had no idea he was going to kill Glover; in his confession last summer, McCombs said even he hadn't planned the murder, but the thought came to him as he, Brown and Glover were driving to a Sugar Land field to go "mudding." Brown's trial is set to begin Jan. 8.

>> This week's weather: Yes, we're starting the week out cold, but things should warm up nicely over the next few days. Today, look for a high of 60 with increasingly cloudy skies; a chance of rain will develop tonight as temperatures dip into the low 50s. The rain chance will stick around through Wednesday night, and temperatures will warm into the mid-70s by then. Look for a mild finish to the week leading to another cool snap just before Christmas.

It's beginning to look a lot like headlines, everywhere you go ...