i moved into my house two years ago. it's in an old, economically diverse neighborhood near the middle of town. the first day i lived here, i met a stray cat. this cat was very friendly (and skinny and dirty). she played with the neighbors' chiweenie all the time. they would frolic in my yard, the street, pretty much everywhere. this being an economically diverse neighborhood, sometimes residents move out in the dead of night, right around the first of the month. this cat's dog was among those disappearing residents. the cat was not invited to their next residence.

i began feeding the cat when the weather turned cold. when the weather turned colder, i fashioned a porch bed for the cat from some ratty old beach towels. when the weather turned REALLY cold (as cold as it ever gets here in south-central texas), i began bringing the cat inside for the night. pretty soon the cat had a name: olive. not long after that, olive had been to the vet. immediately after that, olive no longer went outside. olive was converted into an indoor-only cat. my neighborhood is full of cats related to olive. for all i know, olive is related to herself many times over.

i would like the stray cat population to stabilize and hopefully decline someday . i also do not want the existing cat population to starve to death. conundrum: how does one keep the local cat population from starving and, at the same time, not attract every cat for miles?

simple: trap. neuter. release.

this past august, me and the girl began putting a dish of cat food in a humane trap. after several weeks of putting food in without setting the trap, several cats had grown comfortable with eating in the trap. then came t-day.

on t-day, we successfully trapped our first cat. it was really really easy. in fact, when the door closed behind her, she looked back, looked around and then decided to finish her breakfast. we covered the trap with a blanket and took her to the vet. later that day, on the ride back home, we noticed that she had a cold. we put her in the back bathroom with a complete set of kitty supplies. for the next two weeks we nursed her through a cold, an eye infection and a false pregnancy. i named her beckah. we released her and began planning the next trapping.

the trap mechanism never again worked as well as the first time. we've since outfitted the mechanism with a string that extends into the bathroom window so we can trap 'em ourselves when the time is just right. altogether, we've trapped six since august. there are about three regulars that are on our list to trap, but for the most part the population has stabilized. we don't have nearly as many new faces rotate through the back yard. we feed them every day which keeps them from starving and has cut down on the number of dead bird parts we find in the yard. in general, the regulars all look healthier; not as dirty, not as skinny and not as beat-up-looking.

i'm trying to get the girl to start a stray cat blog for the budding cat rancher, but for the time being here's the line-up: beckah (f), diego (m), tom tom club (m), bobbi (f - previously spayed), meatball (m - previously neutered), zorro (m - not previously neutered, but completely infested with lice!).

I thought I’d write about all the homophobic morons in my state who showed up in droves to insert a clearly religion-based law into my state constitution. I thought I’d write about the nausea I felt in reading that the Kansas Board of Education now officially supports intelligent design, thus making sure they get a shot at turning students in their state into the good God-fearing citizens they need to one day become.

Instead, I’ll just mention that you need to check out a band from the UK called Bloc Party. The closest I can come to a description is (and don’t quote me on this) a pop-rock band making liberal use of electronic instruments and devices for effect. And their drummer is ridiculously creative.

Since that really doesn’t help, this is what they say about themselves:

Bloc Party is an autonomous unit of un-extraordinary kids reared on pop culture between the years of 1976 and the present day. Like many such kids, between them they eventually concluded that their own attempts to imitate what had informed them could be construed as a worthy variation on the many forms that preceded. They do everything that's required to conform to the currently received ideas of what a band is: ostensibly to play instruments at the same time, but also have a title for the work created.

The Supreme Court decision came down in June, but it looks like action is only being taken now.

From a legal standpoint, the Supreme Court’s analysis is a little wacky, but the result is right. Grokster was actively promoting its product as a way to help people infringe. They circulated internal documents that basically said, “Let’s ride on all this copyrighted material to sell advertising and make lots of money. We’ll be the next Napster.” That was pretty dumb. They deserve to be shut down. The worst of it is that they actually said the goal was to get taken to court and sued. They got their wish.

While I’m all for nixing the current structure of the music industry in place of a more DIY approach, I’m not for blatantly ripping off music and laughing in artist’s faces. Though the lower courts in the Grokster case sided with Grokster, the Supreme Court swiftly and thoroughly vacated their logic in favor of something that made more, though not complete, sense.

Part of why the Grokster case was so big is because everyone was hoping the Supreme Court would explain an old case it decided in 1984 about VCRs (then called VTRs). In Universal City Studios v. Sony, the plaintiff said Sony was secondarily liable for people recording their movies because Sony provided the tool to infringe. The Supreme Court disagreed, concluding there were “commercially significant noninfringing uses.” In terms of establishing a workable test that can be applied to other situations, that sucks. It doesn’t mean anything. What’s a commercially significant noninfringing use? Who decides? Do we need market experts? Technology experts? Since the Grokster case is similar to Sony, copyright geeks everywhere were hoping the Court would expound a little bit on what it was talking about when it wrote Sony in 1984.

Alas, it said Hell No. There is no reason to go into Sony. Since in this case there is direct inducement to infringe, we don’t even need to look at what a substantial (significant, whatever) noninfringing use is. They’re guilty simply because they so strongly advocated an infringing use.

On the bright side, I did detect a little skepticism on the Court’s part that this process – make new technology, help people infringe, get sued – will result in a never ending cycle. Technology will always find a way. It always has. Coders love a challenge. I also found it funny when Justice Souter made references to both Wilco and Modest Mouse in the decision.

With that, Grokster leaves with its tail between its legs and a posting on its website that looks like something they were instructed to say: “There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.” Ouch. But, they do plan on creating a legal iTunes-ish service. As soon as they figure out how to pay that fifty million dollar settlement.

hola amigos, skorloff here again. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but the p-man hasn't been sick in awhile.

i'll be posting here for the next three weeks or so. if you're a long time particleman reader, you'll remember the last time i blew up this joint (or maybe just blew). it seems like only yesterday, but in fact it was last june.

this time will be pretty much the same: movies, booze and dishwashers.

in the longtime particleman tradition, here's a special holiday video from the patented "particleman-time-machine-from-two-weeks-ago". see you again soon.

if you live in houston, and you have an urge to see a skinny white Jewish guy bang on a piano, you need to go see ben folds this friday night at numbers. it's an early show that starts at 6:30 and will be over by 10 or 10:30. i know finals are rolling around and all, but c'mon, it's BEN FOLDS.

Like most people, I maintain a spreadsheet containing a list of all the movies I’ve watched over the last 4 1/2 years. I'm drawing from recent months of that list to bring you two movies to avoid at all costs.

1. What the #$*! Do We Know!?
   particleman.org is the place to bring bold new ideas to the world. I'll go way out on a limb here and postulate that science and religion don't mix well. Especially when that religion is dressed up as quantum mechanics. imagine spending 2 1/2 hours at a dianetics convention that had mostly phrenologists and astrologists on the guest-list. then imagine poking yourself in the eye with a fork. that's pretty much what watching this movie is like.
2. The Stepford Wives
   about two minutes into this movie i found myself wondering if i was suffering from a case of amnesia. how had i arrived here? who were all these people? what was up with this tiny bit of throw-up in my mouth? seriously, why had i rented this pos?

   the only theory that made any sense was the inclusion of nicole kidman in the cast. apparently, at some point in the past she had been in a lot of movies that I really liked. this movie has made me forget what those movies might have been, but according to the internet, she was, indeed in some really good movies: To Die For, The Others, The Hours, Dead Calm.

   if i had studied her filmography a little closer, i would have noticed that her inclusion was no assurance of a quality movie: Practical Magic, Far and Away, Batman Forever, Days of Thunder. Let's face it, with her track record, it's a wonder she hasn't been in a Smokey and the Bandit sequel. I'll be a little more careful in the future.

as always, the comment board is open.

traditions hold a strange fascination for me. for most of my life i'd felt relatively tradition-immune. when other people would talk about this family tradition or that family tradition, i would imagine some sort of group-participation OCD( "we simply must touch every banister on the staircase and eat ambrosia. it's a family tradition"). i would rest smug in the notion that at least i'm not so lame as to feel compelled to wake up early to watch giant balloons float down some street in new york.

then i got old.

i realize now that you can't really avoid traditions, nor can you easily fabricate them. you find yourself doing something because it makes you feel good, because it reminds you of how you felt when you were a kid, because you see others enjoying it as much as you did and that makes you happy.

sure, my traditions are every bit as lame as those i historically derided in others. i'm not gonna watch the Longhorns stomp the Aggies (yet again), but i really really need to watch "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" on Thanksgiving day. on christmas eve i don't sing carols with my family and drink eggnog, hell, i don't even really celebrate christmas, but i really really need to eat a plate of my mother's stroganoff, just like i did last christmas eve and every other christmas eve for my entire life.

yes, i still think your traditions are lame. but yes, now i know, i have traditions and they are lame, too. probably lamer.

have a happy thanksgiving (if you're into that sort of thing).

- skorloff

Warning, if you don’t like blood, stop reading now.

I took a break from studying this afternoon to get a haircut. Lame break, I know, but believe it or not, this right here is a break. So there I am, getting a haircut, chatting it up with the haircutting-person and I feel a slight knick on my left ear. She was using one of those machine clippers and I guess she goofed. It didn’t hurt and she dabbed it with some powder to “stop the bleeding,” so I figured all was ok.

Later in the day, I take of my classes and notice the earpiece is encrusted with dried blood. Hmm. I head off to the bathroom and bend my ear back and crane my head to try to get a look at my ear. HOLY CRAP SHE CUT THE SHIT OUT OF MY EAR. What, was she trying to maim me? I tipped her $3 for this!!! The entire back of my ear was all red.

Since I can’t see much of what’s behind my ear in the mirror, I do the next best thing. Take pictures of it with my digital camera, which is no easier than looking at the back of your ear in a mirror. After a few fouled attempts, I saw a cut about two inches long back there. That harmless ‘nick’ I felt was one hell of a cut. So much for that haircutting person. If I ever go back there, I’m not letting her come anywhere near with anything designed to cut hair.

Wow. Wow wow wow. Ben folds was AMAZING. The set was over an hour and a half long. He played old ones. He played new ones. He played new ones that haven’t been recorded that were written in sound check two weeks ago. He even played Brick, which is one of those songs you figure an artist would never play again. After playing Jesusland, he told us that they should have “dumbed-down” the production of the new album and that this was how it should have been recorded, and they then played a version of Jesusland you might hear, oh, on church TV? They were poking fun at large-scale televised church music and it was a riot.

For anyone that’s heard The Gourds’ version of Snoop’s Gin and Juice, you’ll appreciate this. Ben and the band played a Dr. Dre song called Bitches Aint Shit. Oh my god, it was so freaking hilarious. Hearing those lyrics come out of his mouth, with that loungy music, was so funny I was laughing out loud. But of course it was executed flawlessly without any hint of sarcasm, and after the song ended, he got up from the piano and started talking shit to it (the piano). If you can imagine a scrawny guy with glasses raising his arms and balking at a piano, yeah, that’s pretty much what it was.

Somewhere towards the middle of the set, the drummer and bassist left, leaving Ben to serenade us solo. This was when Brick showed up, and also Army, which had Ben doing some of the best audience participation I’ve ever seen. There’s a portion of the song that includes horns, and since he didn't have any horn players, he used us. I’ve seen bands try to pull this off before, and most of the time no one really gives a shit. A select few will participate, but most of the crowd (me too) just stands there. Ben got up from the piano and waved his arm at half of the crowd and told us to do this [insert bah-bah-bah type singing] and then told the other half to do more such singing, so that the two parts layered on top of each other. He essentially became a choir director so that we sang the stuff that the horns play on the recorded track. So when it came time to sing, all he had to do was look at us and every single person sang. I couldn’t believe it. He really got everyone to sing, and it sounded good, and it made my night. I was really hoping he’d play Army, but I didn’t expect he’d try something like that. Mad props to Ben.

He also did something similar on Not The Same, teasing both sides of the audience by having them start and stop in the middle of their part. Other highlights of the night included Don’t Change Your Plans, The Ascent of Stan, Annie Waits, Gone, Still Fighting It, Zak and Sara, Landed, Gracie, You To Thank, Trusted, Prison Food, and a version of Narcolepsy that absolutely rocked. The place lit up and the sound system could hardly handle it. They closed (the encore) with a high-powered version of One Angry Dwarf that taxed the sound system again. Rock.

But the music snob in me made a couple observations. 1) The intro to Landed sounds a hell of a lot like the intro to James Taylor’s Fire and Rain. 2) The main riff to Prison Food sounds like Brick, but speed up; the key even sounds the same. Anyway, those are small complaints. The show was great, Ben was great, the band was great, and I’d do it again even if I had a final the next day. Ok maybe not the next day, but they day before the day before the final.

It seems RSS is the new HTML table. At least back when HTML tables were cool (1993?). RSS, if you aren’t geek enough to know, allows you to read blogs without actually having to go to the blog and deal with all their graphics and links and stuff. It’s the ultimate lazy blog-reader’s heaven. Read multiple blogs, in one place, in like thirty seconds flat. No having to click around the internet.

Several of my favorite blogs are available in RSS or some similar device. Does that mean I’ll make mine available in RSS? Not so fast there, spanky. That takes work, and we here at particleman.org are notoriously lazy – and swamped with school work. We also don’t know if a blog needs to be hosted by blogger, typepad, moveable type, or some other purveyor of blogging software to work with RSS. If you had a chance to look at the code that runs this page, you’d scream, cover your eyes, and run away. Far, far away.

In conclusion (we love concluding paragraphs), it remains to be seen whether particleman.org will ever see the light of RSS. Maybe this winter. Maybe this summer. Maybe when I get a legal job in Austin.

Maybe not.

Here at particleman.org, we don’t keep up with the news much nor do we give a damn (unless the news is a swirling mass of storm headed our way). But we feel a comment or three are in order about the recent brouhaha over supreme court justices.

#1: judges, like presidents, are too busy wondering how the hell they got the job to spend much time on the job itself. Government work is pretty cool. Arrive at 9, leave at 4:30, take a one-hour lunch. Sure, you’re paid less than in the private sector, but look at those hours!

#2: most supreme court decisions are decided, and written, by law clerks. Law clerks are law students looking for a posh summer gig that looks good on the resume. Which means all supreme court decisions are written by equally unqualified and unlicensed law geeks at the top of their class who decide cases based on what they ate for breakfast. Thus, chances are equal the decision will be “conservative” or “liberal,” whatever those words mean.

And most importantly…
#3: if a judge (law clerk) writes an opinion we don’t like, WE EGG THEIR HOUSE. Justice is served.

Yeah, I’m losing it. I was thinking how cool it would be to have a telescope and to take it out into the country and look at stars. Then I remembered something I learned in Astronomy that looking at stars is looking into the past – the light takes hundreds, thousands, millions of years to get here. The light takes time to travel, so what you see up there is not happening right now. Which made me wonder about looking at things that are closer, like the moon and the sun. When we look at the moon and the sun, we’re not seeing them right now. Extrapolated further, when you look at anything, you’re not seeing it now. Everything you see is the past, not the present, so we’re constantly looking into the past.

So yeah, four weeks till finals and I’m already losing it.

we all know the drill. the faculty page at every school has a picture of the professor and his or her chosen quote. most choose some wise quote from a famous person, likely an author, politician, great leader, so on and so forth.

but one professor at my school chose an unlikely quote. he quoted a song lyric by Gibby Hanes of The Butthole Surfers. he gets mad props.

I guess I forgot to write about the Social Distortion show. It was good. It was loud. The guys are getting’ old though. There’s just something weird about a 40-year-old guy with tattoos wearing black eyeliner.

They played some songs I recognized and some I didn’t. Of course they played Mommy’s Little Monster, The Creeps, and closed with Story Of My Life. But thrown in there were a couple surprises. Near the beginning of the show, they eased into a song with a very familiar melody. I swore I hear it just the other day, but Social Distortion’s only radio song is Story Of My Life, so something was up. After a few more bars, I realized I was listening to a Rolling Stones cover. It was Under My Thumb. I thought they did a good job giving it their own special Social D touch.

The other major crowd-pleaser was the first song in the encore: Ring of Fire. Man that place lit up. Rocking out a Johnny Cash song is a guaranteed way to get an audience going. It really, really suited them, more so than Under My Thumb. When a band bent on maintaining its teen angst with brooding lyrics, sneering vocals, and a twinge of blues gets its hands on a song like Ring Of Fire, success is the only result. I know it’s blasphemous to say so, but they could have pulled it off as one of their own songs.

Like most people, I maintain a spreadsheet containing a list of all the movies I’ve watched over the last 4 1/2 years. i'm drawing from that list to bring you a list of ten movies that i've seen that have soundtrack albums that i really like.

1. Boogie Nights (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: disco. 70s groove rock. 80s cheese. great party music. the deal: maybe i've lost perspective. maybe i like the movie too much. nevertheless, i love the soundtrack album (even though it happens to feature songs by both night ranger and rick springfield). both volumes. i've even bought extra tracks featured in the movie but not on the albums (i'm a compleatist, i needed "sunny" by boney m). even more, when i put all the tracks on the girl's ipod i reordered them to play in the same order as they appear in the movie. yes, i'm insane. bonus track: "feel the heat" as performed by dirk diggler and reed rothchild. the heat will rock you. also, don't forget, the heat will roll you.

2. City of God (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: dreamy and often funky brazilian. has one of the saddest, simplest songs that i can't understand any of the words to. the deal: wicked raw movie shot on location in some of the poorest places in the world. music the soundtrack album really stands on its own. so much of the music as used in the film is textural. i had to watch it twice to notice my favorite song (mentioned above). it's not like it's one of those tracks in the background that happens to be playing on someone's radio; it's used as score. the scene just happens to be so intense that the music is like foley. bonus track: the soundtrack also has two volumes of remixes. each sold separately. each interesting in their own way.

3. The Royal Tenenbaums (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: score by the guy from devo and mostly disaffected 70s new york and london rock
   the deal: wes anderson gets a lot less credit for his song selection than quentin tarantino does. i'm not sure why that is. sure, tarantino is more likely to use the theme from hong kong phooey and we all know that that would be friggin' hilarious. but wes anderson seems to actually get inside his characters heads for the music that he chooses. this record is rich. the score alone is worth the price of admission. bonus track: "look at me" by john lennon

4. Monsoon Wedding (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: all-over the map indian and pakistani music. from acoustic film music to indian techno
   the deal: the movie is pure sweetness and heartbreak and joy. the soundtrack album delivers the same. the album features the bridal shower song from the movie, "Mehndi/Madhorama Pencha". i have no idea what the lyrics mean or what the words are but i sing along every time i hear it.
   bonus track: "aaj mausam bada beiman hai (today the weather plays tricks on me)" by mohammad rafi

5. Rushmore (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it.
   music: score by the guy from devo and 60s british invasion.
   the deal: wow. it's like a movie all by itself. my theory is that wes anderson made this as a mix-tape when he was 17 and frustrated in the ways of love. there's just too much pathos invested in each track for this to be simple accompaniment to a moving picture. i've never been been that into the who, but "a quick one while he's away" is worth the eight minutes, if you've seen the movie that's all you'll be able to think of while hearing it.
   bonus track: "nothing in this world can stop me worryin' bout that girl" by the kinks.

6. 54 (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: among the worst movies i've ever seen.
   music: disco. straight up. ok, not that straight.
   the deal: i can't think of anything to say about this movie. it was the turd that wouldn't flush for two hours. in 15 years, when mike myers is trying to get roles wherein people take him seriously as an actor, someone will trod this pos out and they'll give the role to a serious actor like seann william scott.

   except for those weird mashups and remakes they made just for the movie. the soundtrack album (both volumes) is great party music, the song selection is impeccable. really iconic songs like "i need a man" by grace jones, "vertigo/relight my fire" by dan hartman and "spank" by "jimmy 'bo' horne" - as big a disco fan as i am, i'd never heard these songs before. then again, i am lazy. bonus track: "contact" by edwin starr. yes, the guy that did "war" (as in "huh, what is it good for?") is responsible for one of my desert island songs and it's not "war", it's a disco song.

7. Garden State (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: it was what it was. maybe it wasn't so much for me.
   music: hip introspective rock for navel-gazers. like me.
   the deal: man, why is this record so cheap? i spent like $8 on it. it's almost like some record companies are trying to promote some relatively smaller bands with a movie. wait a minute...

   my two favorite tracks on it are "in the waiting line" by zero 7 and "lebanese blonde" by thievery corporation. the former reminds me of the movie. the latter just rules. bonus track: "the only living boy in new york" by simon & garfunkel

8. 24 Hour Party People (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it.
   music: late 70s punk and early 80s electronic
   the deal: what a great telling of an interesting micro-moment in music history. the scene where joy division records the drum for "she's lost control again" was eye-opening and wonderful for me.

   i have a real soft spot for joy division. i have another soft spot for the earliest new order (before they forgot about ian curtis). and to think, before i saw this movie i knew almost nothing of happy mondays. bonus track: "she's lost control again" by joy division. i swear, i've heard like 30 different versions of this song. this is version 31 for me.

9. Jackie Brown (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it.
   music: quentin tarantino
   the deal: No self-respecting list of post-modern soundtracks would be complete without a quentin tarantino movie. Sure, i liked the Pulp Fiction soundtrack a lot, but Jackie Brown is the record i'd put on at a party when i want to seem cool and knowing. bonus track: "Longtime Woman" by Pam Grier

10. Dead Presidents (movie | soundtrack)

    movie: not so much.
    music: 60s and 70s r&b the deal: the movie was all over the place. it suffered from a serious identity crisis. it's a story of someone who is dealing with life in the 60s (a movie by itself), lives through hell in viet nam (a movie by itself), engages in a serious heist (a movie by itself). unfortunately, there was not the space to accomplish any of those three missions with any clarity in this one flick.

    the soundtrack album (both volumes), on the other hand, stands on its own. it's great r&b, it's powerful music. sure, it has james brown, but you'll remember it for curtis mayfield; from a live version of "we people darker than blue" to "if there's hell below" to "right on for darkness". it's also unique for two great isaac hayes songs (i believe they were released specifically for this movie): "the look of love" (originally popularized by dusty springfield) and "walk on by" (originally popularized by dionne warwick). bonus track: "if you want me to stay" by sly and the family stone.

yes, there others that i like and maybe even others that i like better. i didn't even have time to go into Saturday Night Fever (movie | soundtrack).

as always, the comment board is open.

I needed a break from the onslaught of studying I’ve been putting myself through, so I went to a local pub last night with the roommate and his buddy. Five pints of Paulaner and Belhaven later, we struck up a conversation with a gaggle of girls - one of whom started bragging about her two-year-old nephew. I chimed in that I have a two-year-old niece. Within seconds, we were claiming that our respective sibling’s child could beat up the other’s respective sibling’s child.

Score 1 for the maturity squad. My niece can kick the crap out of anyone’s nephew. Hey, and I’ll have one more pint of Belhaven please.

From one of my study guides:

"After all, much of transactional lawyering consists of building a paper record so that a dubious position later can be defended with a straight face."

NB: a transactional lawyer is basically one who never (or rarely) sees a courtroom, which, as it turns out, is most lawyers.

"[A]s long as he gets one more vote than the other side, he seems happy."

what was i just saying the other day about government jobs?

Remember flashcards? The ones with an animal on one side and the name on the other? Yeah, I don’t much remember them either, but this is a website and most things here are fictional anyway, so what the hell.

I’ve had the luck to write out these flashcards of my Evidence course.

That’s right. An entire law school Evidence course jam packed into 30-something flashcards. They contain fun factoids like, “Where a witness from a former trial is unavailable for the second trial we admit the transcript from the first trial.” If you like that and want more, let me know, there’s lots more where that came from. In fact, I could even make it harder by translating it into a foreign language like Latin or Pig Latin, both of which are still widely used among lawyers and judges (which is why only Catholics and pubescent pre-teens know what they’re saying).

The best part is that I get to write four more sets of these wonderful flashcards! Four times the fun! Four times the eyeball-poking! My ass has created a permanent indention in my desk chair and they have begun to fuse, which really wouldn’t be all that bad because then I could roll around everywhere and this chair has nice padded armrests too.

So all in all, my hand may cramp up into a mangled mess, but I’ll have these sweet flashcards to show for it.

My third set of law school finals start the 30th and the last day of class is tomorrow, so I must leave you for a few weeks as I duke it out with studying. But fear not. Your favorite pinch-blogger Skorloff will make an appearance once again. The last time you heard from him, I was battling it out with the infamous ‘kissing disease.’ I’m sure he’s traveled far and wide and amassed a great amount of stories to regale you with since he was last here. For all I know, however, he might just talk about dishwashers and the odd bottle of wine.

With that, I leave you to Skorloff’s devices (vices?). Enjoy. I shall return circa December 13th.

Before I go, I must say Thanks to Tarfia and JB for swinging by and saving me from more studying. They drove in from Austin for a belated birthday visit and we went out for sushi, beer, wine, and more beer. Much Belhaven was had by all. Belhaven is now the official beer of the Fall 2005 Semester. Hooray! Tarfia also brought her laptop and we performed a massive musical exchange, which sounds a little dirty but was totally kosher. I promise. Just don't tell the RIAA (bastards). Later!