wow, what a weekend. a beautiful couple, a beautiful wedding, amazing people, and of course... a bounty of delicious cuisine.

i don't know where to start. it was 52 bours of sensory bombardment. watching two close friends get married put me in a state beyond happiness. i love these two people so much, it made me happy to be present as they solidified their relationship. the world is a better place for it and we should all rejoice that these two crossed paths. ok, so i'm gushing. weddings do that.

there were over 300 attendees on saturday night, and throughout the weekend i met people i had only heard of second-hand who turned out to be everything i had imagined - and more. i seem to have a knack for making new friends. it's saying goodbye that i'm not so good at.

when the alcohol began to flow at an after-party, there was a little bit of a "particleman roast" of sorts, except that it wasn't on comedy central and it wasn't about my career. i'll say no more. i'm glad the comments aren't working right now.

what else... the groom, decked out in traditional Bengali groom's garb, rode in on a horse with the requisite cowboy hat. the bride's father, a devout and knowledgable muslim, greeted me and said "shalom! do you have any hebrew music with you?" the power went out on friday night leaving the guests at their outdoor tables with nothing but candlelight to illuminate their conversations. i thought it lent the occasion an intimate feel. cops showed up friday night. old ladies next door complained of noise saturday night. wedding partiers wandered downtown in search of bars that would stay open past 12:30. afternoons were spent compensating for the previous night's debauchery. cake was eaten. the really spicy foods were avoided. arabic was sung. henna was applied to hands and feet (not mine).

all in all, a weekend to remember. my sincerest thanks to the bride's parents, the groom's parents (ahem), and of course the bride and the groom. mazal tov!

i've regained my composure after finding that pleasant "Particleman.org is coming soon!" message. A quick heart attack and freak-out session later, i managed to drop my old server, find a new one, upload all my stuff, cross all my t's and dot all my i's, and get everything working. all the old posts and comments should be there.

sorry for the abrupt break in service. this was a long time coming, anyway.

in other news, i went mountain biking yesterday and got stung by a huge bee. or a hornet. or a yellowjacket. it was black and yellow and enormous. scared the hell out of me.

In 1990 I was not yet a teenager. The internet age was about to start. The Wall had just come down. And a band called The Breeders released an album called Pod. On Pod was a cover of Happiness Is A Warm Gun.

Sixteen years later, I discovered this song. Can life get any better? The Breeders covering The Beatles. The cover song to end all cover songs.

There is a subculture of cyclists out there going back in time to when bikes had one speed. These people are rigging their bikes to have only one chainring up front and one cog in the back – a singlespeed bike. Why would one want to sacrifice the convenience of 24 or 27 speeds for the pain of one lonely gear? … Easy. Why the hell not.

And since there are fewer moving parts on your bike, there are fewer breakable parts, less maintenance, and less weight. So it works out well for the lazy and the slow (me). I stripped the geared parts off of my bike and slapped on a single cog and a single chainring crank. Simplify.

Unfortunately, I’m also a sucker for the creative and the different, so I’m joining another subculture of cyclists – the 29er world. Mountain bikes traditionally have 26” wheels. These wheels don’t work out that well for tall people; they make mountain bikes feel like glorified BMX bikes. Thus, the 29” mountain bike. Really good for tall people, maybe good for mid-height people, probably not good for people under 5’5”.

So I have a 29” mountain bike on the way. It will now come to three. Complify.

The real question is: will I take the singlespeed, the 29er, or the road bike to Dallas? Yes.

ok, everything isn't working. the rss feed and the calendar aren't working. you can be sure i'm working around the clock to to fix them.

i hope you don't actually believe that.

so - about that Frametric Subs show. It was exactly what i expected, but i don't think my two guests were properly prepared. The red light, the creepy lyrics, the creepier "vh1 storytellers" stories, the full-throttle rockabilly. The show also started later than most shows at Walter's and it was really smoky, so we checked out at 1:45 while the band was still going. The audience was also pretty thin for a Flametrick show, but i guess this isn't Austin we're talking about.

addendum: yeah, comments aren't working. i actually am working on this. thanks heather for the heads up.

guaranteed, this guy is crazier. and funny.

props to cherz.

using only stats based on the several days i've been on this new server, 54% of you use Firefox, 34% use IE, and the rest use Safari and others. good job. i applaud your strong use of Firefox. those of you still on IE need to make the switch. it's worth the 30 seconds it takes to download and install.

what's odd is that "metronome" is still the #1 search query used to find this site. i don't get it. metronome?? and now i'm only making it worse. maybe i can be the #1 metronome site on the internet.

I’ve been though three sets of law school finals so far, so you may wondering why I keep whining about this Payment Systems business.

Payment Systems is governed by this thing called the UCC. Think of the UCC like IRS Tax Code, but even more nonsensical and convoluted. The Texas UCC Code book we use was compiled and annotated by three guys: Roy Anderson, Roger Bartlett, and W. David East.

Who has been teaching me Payment Systems all semester? Professor W. David East, THE GUY THAT WROTE THE CODE. This, my friends, is why I’m nervous.

Finished my last final last night, and it took me THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES. And i wasn't even the first to finish. Then i partied. Now i have a plane to catch in two and a half hours to Midland, TX for a wedding. As far as i can tell, there's not much to do in Midland except drink and wed, so it's gonna be a party. Be good and i'll see you in three days.

Normally, I can understand Stephen Colbert’s sense of humor - drier than Jon Stewart’s and a shade away from the completely nonsensical. But did you see Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner? I don’t know why these people let Colbert speak at their event. He absolutely killed. Or totally sucked. (Depending on your political leanings, of course). It’s obvious to me that he was freaking hilarious for 90% of the time and completely inscrutable for the rest. I couldn’t get some of his jokes. They were too dry for me to process, or I’m just too dim-witted to figure them out.

He clearly and blatantly mocked W with a straight face, to his face, in front of 2,700 people, including his wife. It was a show of phenomenal gumption and insanity. Kudos to Colbert for taking the plunge.

So you haven’t seen the speech yet? You can watch it here.

the 29" bike came while i was gone. i assembled it last night. dear lord, this thing is enormous. the wheelbase is three and a half feet. overall length including tires approaches six feet. maneuvering this thing in tight trails could be a chore, but i think the benefits of the bigger wheels will outweigh the drawbacks. we'll see.

i've named it "The School Bus," naturally.

300kb

Assume you are the plaintiff’s attorney, and you have tried to settle with the Defendant several times but your offers have been rejected. You run into the Defendant himself at a party. He approaches you and asks, “Hey, why don’t we just settle this case, this thing is getting annoying.” A proper response from you would be:

1. "Sorry, I’m prohibited from talking to you according to the ABA Rules on Legal Ethics."
2. Scream, throw your drink in his face, and yell for help.
3. "Hey, do you mind? I’m trying to have a drink here."
4. "You idiot, we tried to settle. Why don’t you find yourself a real attorney who knows what he’s doing."
5. 3 and 4, but definitely not 1, and maybe 2 if you’ve had a bad day and a few too many drinks.

If you leased a patch of land hoping to strike it rich with oil, and the lease contract says that you need to read another contract external and separate to this contract that more accurately describes the land in this contract to make sure you’re contractually screwing yourself over or allowing the contracting lessor to unwittingly screw himself over, what is the legal term for this?

1. Huh?
2. Objection, leading.
3. Bullshit.
4. Black gold, Texas tea, yee haw!
5. There is no more oil here anyway so what’s the point.

I guess I should preface this by saying that I’m writing this on Monday night, the move is not yet complete, and I’m still in Austin, which was not the way things were supposed to happen. More on that later.

Crazy shit that happens to you while helping your sister and her family move from Little Rock to Austin. Let us commence:

The cabbie that takes you from the Little Rock airport to your sister’s house only has one good arm. His cell phone rings. You think, “no way he’s going to reach into his pocket and pull out that phone to answer it, his only good arm is driving the car.” The cabbie proceeds to let go of the wheel – mind you, at highway speed – fish the phone from his pocket, answer it, and hold a conversation with a prospective client. He drives a little with his elbow to humor you, then returns navigation of the cab to pure chance or Acts of God.

You get to your sister’s house which currently does not contain your sister, your niece, or your nephew. They have since left to Dallas to stay with the in-laws before driving down to Austin. That leaves you with the T, your brother in law. That also you leaves you with the moving guys, a ragtag bunch of tattooed toothless dudes. One of them likes talking to your more than moving anything. You find that odd. He later finds a patch of grass to lie on while the other moves continue to move stuff.

One of the moving guys catches wind you’re going to be a lawyer. Towards the end of the evening, he furtively calls you aside while the other guys are busy loading stuff onto the truck, and asks, “Hey man, I heard you a lawyer, I got a question. I got this felony on my record that I can’t get rid of man. How can I get it off?” A flurry of legally proper and appropriate responses come to mind, but all you can think is, “What did you do?” Thankfully, you weasel out of the question but coming up with some mumbo jumbo that you aren’t a criminal attorney. Some awkward silence follows and you say, “Yeah, um, I’m gonna go over here and help load that thing onto the truck.”

The big truck leaves and you and T are left with a smaller van containing the bare essentials. (The big truck is scheduled to arrive Tuesday).

You spend eight hours in the small van with your brother in law talking his head off about anything you can think of to keep him awake. You offer to take the wheel but he kindly refuses. You talk to him about girls, cars, jobs, your parents, your sister, his kids, Dallas (where he’s from) and whatever else comes to mind. Sometime towards the end of the ride he says, “Man, I didn’t know you could talk that much.”

The best part is that his every response to any female-related comment you make is: “You need to date around more.” This coming from a guy that married the first woman he seriously dated.

The next day you take your bike to a local Austin trial that you haven’t ridden in about three years. It’s a difficult trail, but you’ve got your new bike and you think you’ve got the cajones to make it through. After slamming your shin against a log once, crashing into the rocks twice, and getting racked by your bike seat, you slowly pedal out of the trail battered and bleeding. It was a brutal and humbling experience. When you get home, your family points at your shin as if you don’t know it has a bloody welt the size of a quarter.

Later that afternoon you visit your newlywed friends and hope to iron your dress shirt for a wedding you have that evening. You hang out, go to Target, veg out, and leave. Only when you’re five minutes from your sister’s house on the other side of town do you realize that you didn’t iron your shirt and you left it at your friends’ place. You have a wedding in an hour, a suit, and no shirt. And no wedding card. You haul ass to the nearest Target and buy a white dress shirt and an iron. You race home, iron the shirt on the kitchen countertop, change into the suit, and remember you forgot to buy a card. The wedding is now in fifteen minutes, you have a suit and a shirt, but no card and only a vague idea of where the wedding is. You race back to Target (this is now your third time in a Target in three hours), buy a card, and tear off down 620 passing four (4) sheriffs. None of them pull you over. God must have his finger on your car.

You get to the wedding in the nick of time to watch the bride give her vows. The wedding is a good time and you catch up with old friends.

The next morning, you hang out some more with your newlywed friends and then an old college friend, after which you plan to head home to Houston. But on the way back to your sister’s house something fun and exciting happens. The “D4” light on your ’95 Honda starts flashing and the speedometer goes wild. One second you’re going zero, the next you’re going 60, the next 50, and then zero again. No rhyme or reason. A few days earlier, the ABS light came on. Your car is, how shall we say it, fucked.

You get home and show your dad this new fun and exciting development. His solution: get it towed to the nearest Honda shop, wait till tomorrow for the quote, and if it’s more than the value of the car, buy a new one. Dads always have the best solutions. You figure the towing idea is probably a good first step, so you make it happen.

The tow truck shows up and loads your car. Just before he’s about to go, his engine cuts. No explanation. Just stops. He looks at the truck. “That’s not good.” You inquire if maybe he ran out of gas? No, he just filled up.

While you and the tow truck guy wait for his other tow truck buddies to give him a jump, and the irony slowly kills you, you and tow truck guy talk about the various cars that he most often is called to tow Hondas? Not so much. Toyotas? Nope. How about Saabs? Not really. Surely Jaguar. Of course. Mercedes? Not usually. BMW? Mostly the post-2003 models. And what car did your brother-in-law just leave the house to buy? A 2004 BMW 330i. Oy. At least it has a warranty.

Your parents are kind enough to help you buy a new car if it comes to that. You hope it doesn’t only because they want to get another Accord. Meanwhile, you’re still trying to avoid that “conservative suburban family man” thing because, well, you’re not. You’re young and you’re wild and you’re an animal. At least that’s the vibe you’re going for. The Mazda 3 hatchback is looking pretty sweet and you test drive one and fall in love. It has a peppy engine, sporty looks, and an auto tranny that has a manual option a-la the Porsche Tiptronic. Lots of fun in the twisties, and the car has plenty of space in the back for your music and biking gear. The only other contender is the Subaru WRX, but again, mom and pops are urging for a simple and no-personality Accord. This will only lead to argument.

(I know I know, life sucks so much to have parents want to help you buy a car, but when you’ve been driving an Accord with -40 horsepower and less personality for five years, you kind of want something more exciting to wake up to. Humor me here.)

Tomorrow, the movers show up with an 18-wheeler containing the contents of your sister’s house. You can’t wait to haul beds and dressers up the staircase and build assorted pieces of furniture. That Texas heat will be your nemesis.

Oh yeah, and you’ll be missing a day of work. For shame.

My sister and her fam are moving to Austin this weekend, and no one except for me can actually be at the house tomorrow, so I drive there tonight in time for the gas company to turn on the gas. They’re supposed to show up between 8 am and 5 pm, which probably means 5:30 pm. Someone over 18 needs to be there. That someone is me.

I then fly to Little Rock that night at 7:30 – or earlier if the gas people show up earlier – to help my brother-in-law load the moving van. Then, on Saturday, we make the 10-hour drive to Austin. Meanwhile, my sister and mom will drive down with the kids that morning and arrive before my brother-in-law and I do.

Still with me?

I help unload and unpack until Sunday at 7, when I go to my college band’s drummer’s wedding. I haven’t seen him in about two years so I’m really excited to see him and everyone else.

Then, Monday, if I’m lucky, I hope to ride my bike. I’ll have the new 29er with me and it would be nice to throw it around the Austin trails. I christened it Tuesday at – where else – Memorial Park, the first place I ever went mountain biking (sans the mountain). After a few minor tweaks here and there I think I’ve got everything dialed in just right.

Oh, and before I leave for Austin tonight, I need to drive my mom to their airport so she can get to Little Rock in time to drive down with my sister on Saturday. My ETA for Austin is 9 pm at which point I plan to eat and crash. I wanted to see my friend’s husband’s brother-in-law’s band (huh?), but alas, it will have to be another time.

You are now fully apprised of my life in all of it’s mind-numbing glory and I instruct you to proceed here (SFW). I think I have a new “thing” to say now.

The Flametrick Subs are playing with Satan’s Cheerleaders tomorrow night at Walter’s. If you’re in Houston, GO. It’s $10 and it will change your life. Where else can you experience rock n roll and hot girls in fishnet stockings and “666” on their tank tops dancing with pompoms?

I used to go see Flametrick with the Cheerleaders in Austin at the Black Cat before it burned down. RIP Black Cat Lounge.

It’s 12:06 am and I’m sitting at my desk, studying. My roommate went to sleep hours ago, right after we ate take-out fajitas.

All of a sudden, he busts out of his room, squints at the light, and stares at me.

“What are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep. Indigestion by Lupe Tortilla.”

True.

p 20:

"Appear irrational where it seems helpful. This is a successful but often dangerous tactic... Primier Nikita Kruschev significantly increased deterrent power of the relatively small Soviet nuclear force by banging his shoe on the table at the United Nations in 1960; he gave the impression of being somewhat imbalanced – a man who might unleash nuclear weapons upon even a slight provocation." Dispute Resolution: Negotiation, Mediation, and Other Processes, Goldberg, et al., 2003.

THE KRUSCHEV KONTEST