This whole ‘voluntary unemployment before law school’ thing is rocking. I spend my days reading, vegging at the pool, riding my bike, catching up on various bloggage, playing guitar, and generally loafing around the apartment. It’s fantastic. I’ve got a nice little book list off to the right that I want to work through by August 16th, my first day of law school, a day that will likely mark the end of my leisure reading habit for a good long while. And since it’s summer, well, I figured I ought to give Michael Chabon’s Summerland a shot, especially since I liked his last book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It’s definitely one of my top 10.

I’m about half-way through and I wanted to see what anyone else out there that might have read it thinks.

So, has anyone else out there in Internet-land read it?

Summerland feels quite different than Kavalier and Clay. It feels, for lack of a better term, like a children’s book. It’s kind of like The Hobbit, Harry Potter, and something else I haven’t read rolled into one. The premise [so far] finds a couple 11-year-old kids trying to save the world but, first, one of the dads, who has been taken hostage by the Bad Guy, needs to be rescued. Yes, it’s a story of Good vs. Evil set in a fairy tale land. With Kavalier and Clay in mind, I didn’t expect this kind of thing from Chabon.

What also hints towards the kids’ book theory is the size of the text and the amount of text on each page. Getting through 10 pages of Kavalier and Clay took much longer than 10 pages of Summerland. It seems well suited to pre-teens. Then again, it’s 500 pages. When I was 12, there was no way you could have gotten me to read a 500-page book.

I don’t imagine the book will change much in the remaining 180 pages, so I’ll just sum up my thoughts now and refer to them when I finish: the suspense of finding out what other kind of shenanigans the kids will have to work through to save Dad and the world is strong enough to make me want to finish it, but, the book is still pretty damn corny.

I should also mention that there is a chance some of the basic elements of the book could be allegorical or metaphorical to something very real and pressing in the world, but who knows. Right now, it’s just corny.

Second installment of the “things that happen to you while” series; alternate title: “too many p’s: p-man in p-town”; written after a five-day excursion visiting four bloggers I had never met [in person] with three friends I met at my [now previous] employer.

Note: The links don't actually send you anywhere, they just pop up witty witticisms.

- - - - - -

On the way to Portland, you sit next to a woman speaking a language strangely familiar to you. It’s Russian. You talk with her for the duration of the flight about living in Russia, traveling in Europe, how your Jewish parents are basically the same, how writing code gets old, how lucky her kids are that they get to travel the world by age 10. You exchange information. You have now made a friend in Oakland, California.

After several bumbling mishaps, your friends meet you at the airport and whisk you away to a five-day vacation. Your friends say they’re in an orange car. When you see an orange car carrying your arms-flailing-hands-waving friends, your mind flips when you realize the orange car is a bright orange Mustang convertible. Your friends have rented a speeding ticket waiting to happen.

You and your friends drive like maniacs [safe maniacs]. No tickets happen.

You proceed directly to an establishment called the Kennedy School and wonder how long it’s been since you went anywhere with a name ending in “school.” You are oddly excited because this place apparently serves beer. What a great combination. You meet your blogger friends there and you discover their blogs are accurate representations of who they really are: interesting, cool, witty, fun, and just a little bit saucy. Or is it snarky? Both.

You, a couple of the bloggers, and a roommate continue the drinking at another bar. Upstairs, Sonic Youth is making a racket – a beautiful racket you would love to hear in a venue you would love to see. One of the bloggers happens to be a well-known bartender and musician in the Portland area and gets you and your friends in for free. Sonic Youth slowly gets louder as you climb the staircase and walk into a historical gem of a music venue. It’s a ballroom complete with chandelier, frescoes on the wall, and a spring-loaded wood floor. One of your friends says “Welcome to Portland!” as Kim and Co. do their thing onstage. You wonder why the hell you aren’t already living there.

An afternoon spent wandering the many trails of Washington Park reminds you why you like being outside and how much cube life sucks. You find a bench under a redwood and sit. For a long time.

Sushi Happy hour results in many beers and several rolls of rice, seafood, and vegetables. One of your blogger friends ingests an ungodly amount of wasabi. You laugh. He cries. You laugh more.

You spend the evening at one of Portland’s many brewpubs, Bridgeport. You take pictures of your friend’s simultaneously hideous and glorious parallel parking job. Imagine: right next to the pub’s patio sits a bright orange Mustang convertible with half of its nose sticking out into the street. The patrons gawk in amazement: “who the hell are these people?” You enjoy yet more delicious new beers.

Two of your friends leave the next morning, and with them, the ‘stang. You and the remaining member of the Texan crew rent a Taurus to explore the Gorge. Within thirty minutes of leaving Portland driving on a picturesque highway [only a little more picturesque than I-10 in San Antonio] you arrive at mountains and waterfalls. You ogle the waterfalls, want them to be thirty minutes from your door, wonder if you’d ever get used to them and stop visiting them if you lived in Portland. You pinch yourself and think, “stop daydreaming, asshole. there are waterfalls here that need your attention.” Your friend’s new motto for the trip is “that doesn’t suck.” You agree.

Over the next two days, you continue to consume refreshing beers and visit places like the Pittock Mansion, The Japanese Gardens, and The Chinese Gardens. During those two days, you end up at the Kennedy School once again and wander off the beaten tourist path to a pub called Bonfire.

You spend Monday morning wandering the many stacks of Powell’s Bookstore. At 1, your friend leaves for her flight back to Crap Antonio. You hug and realize this trip basically changed your lives. Now you’re on your own with one more night and no hotel room, you wander the streets of downtown in search for lunch and a good time. You invariably end up back at the bookstore.

Your friend's husband calls you and invites you to the park to see if there is any kickball to be played. Looking down at your feet clad in sandals, you wonder if that’s such a good idea. You say, “Fuck it, worse comes to worse, I can play barefoot.” You meet a lot of cool people and head over to the Portland version of a dive bar called the Triple Nickel for beers and music geek talk.

A show at Dante’s featuring the Short Bus Dub All Stars is waiting, so you head back to the house to change and pick up your friend’s wonderful wife, the one that let you crash on their couch. While the husband plays pool, you and the wife skank to the opening ska band and wait for Short Bus to come on. While the bands are loading/unloading from the stage, a high school-esque drum line entertains the audience with cool beats and crashing cymbals. The crowd starts to pogo; you pogo; everyone is getting into it. For a split second, you wish you were in marching band in high school. Then the next second arrives and you’re glad you weren’t. Jazz band was way cooler.

You end the night at a strip club down the street from your friends’ house that oddly has one dancer that isn’t stripping. It’s late on a Monday night and she’s hanging out and talking to the few patrons left. You aren’t the biggest fan of strip clubs but you like this one. You talk with your friend, the dancer, the bartender, and the patrons till late.

The next morning, you and your friend eat cheese and crackers and watch the best cartoons since Transformers. Imagine the old Hanna Barberra cartoons on crack. And a couple 40s. After a short drive to the airport, you pull up at the departure entrance and tell your friend he and everyone else are always welcome in Texas and to drop you a line if they ever go, but as soon as you say this you realize chances are better that you will end up in Portland before he or his Portland crew will end up in Texas. Lo and behold, he says just that. You agree. You say thanks again, shake hands, and hop out of the car.

On the flight home, you sit next to an elderly nun. There is an empty seat between you and her. You spend the entire flight engrossed in one of the many books you bought at Powell’s and gaze out the window at the black sky, a little fidgety in anticipation of getting home. The nun spends the whole flight motionless – she stares at the seat in front of her blinking for the duration of the flight. Doesn’t move. No book to read, no magazine, no music, no journal to write in. Just sits. You wonder what kind of thoughts she has that keep her entertained or if she needs anything at all to be entertained, or if, more simply, she needs to feel entertained at all. She just is. You wonder why the hell you can’t do that. You look at her and notice you’re staring. She turns her head and smiles. You smile back. You look at your hands and try to think of nothing.

And then all the badass people you met and all the badass things you did in Portland flood your brain. Hey, doesn’t Portland have a law school?

In response to a short article about a website listing famous guitarists and their guitar/amp rigs, the following exchange ensued:

Person 1: Juliana Hatfield isn't listed, so the site is worthless.
Person 2: It is well known that Juliana plays Evan Dando, or at least used to.
Person 3: 1994 called. They want your lameness back. Juliana Hatfield, Person 1?

PS: I actually kinda like Juliana Hatfield, but anyway…

PPS: the post category formerly known as "contact" no longer exists. my condolences. it never did much anyway. it has been replaced with a new category, law school. since that is where i'll be in about a month's time, i figured a post category was in order. also note its strategic placement - between "beer" and "about." excellent. [actually, that's just where contact used to be.]

in honor of contact’s demise, my friend aaron donated his spiffy email form, which I have placed in the official “about” post.

Richard Posner, pinch-hitting for Lessig, says in his last post:

The uncertainty concerning the proper scope of IP rights is magnified by the onrush of technology. As I said, repeating a Lessig point, law is relative to technology; technology can disrupt a balance carefully struck by law. But if we have no clear sense of where the balance should be struck, this makes it difficult to know what stance to take with relation to encryption technologies that enable IP owners to obtain greater protection from copiers than IP law would give them.

Any volunteers?

I have officially moved back to Houston. After leaving it six years ago for college in Austin, I never thought I'd return. Funny how things work out.

But six years can make a difference. I can [legally] drink, I know where I can catch all the hip bands, and the museums rock. I know a few people here and will be meeting more in law school.

So I think I'll give Houston a clean slate. No pre-conceived notions, no expectations [aside from the heat, humidity, traffic, yadda yadda].

One thing’s for sure – I’ll stay far away from my old high school. They tore half of it down the year after I graduated for health violation issues. Seriously.

I would have liked to say “anywhere but unemployed” but i figured i ought to not embarass myself so soon in the semester. Here’s approximately what happened.

On the first day of orientation, the Dean gathered the entering class of 350 into an auditorium and gave a “congratulations on getting into law school” speech. Then, with spare mic in hand, he took to the aisles.

So imagine my surprise and slouching posture when the Dean began to discuss his desire to learn about where some of the students went to college, where they saw themselves in 10 years, and what kind of law they wanted to practice. As he spoke, he proceeded directly to ME, an aisle-seat occupant. Yes, it seemed I would be the first student to speak publicly to the entering class. I was thrilled. As he spoke some more about the various fields of law available to us, I prayed and hoped and swore to all that is holy in the world that if I was absolved of this task, I would perform an untold number of community service hours, study my balls off, stop drinking, post more to my website, so on and so forth.

The praying didn’t do shit. Never let anyone tell you praying helps. It doesn’t. He chose me.

The exchange, as best I remember it, follows.

Dean: Mr. [Particleman], tell us where you went to school and what kind of law you see yourself practicing in ten years.
Mr. Particleman: I went to UT Austin -
Audience: [cheers]
Dean: Oh, so we have some UT Grads? How about A&M?
Audience: [hands raise, more cheers]
Mr. P: [mumbles] Put your hands down, people.
UT Grads: [chuckle]
Dean: So, Mr. Particleman, now that we’ve given you some time to come up with a good answer, what do you say?
Mr. P: [internal dialogue: whatever you say will be held against you for the next three years. better make it good.] I’d like to get involved in copyright law dealing with music and the rights of musicians. [man, that was cheesy].
Dean: Ah, were you a music major?
Mr. P: Uh, no, but I play music.
Dean: Interesting... [commentary on the new wave of issues affecting copyright law resulting from the internet].
Every female in the audience: [internal dialogue: hey, he’s a musician, he’s gonna be a music lawyer, and he has cool glasses. i must flirt with him later.]

Overall, orientation so far has been very exciting. I already have plenty of reading and bar-exploring to do. I went out on Saturday night with an old friend and he introduced me to some local bars. And you know what, all that doubting I did earlier was unfounded. Houston has some cool hang-outs. I think I’ll be all right here.

Not what you'd expect.

In other news, do you remember Student Government aka SG? High school had it. College had it. Your job probably has it or an equivalent thereof. I always thought: Why spend more time than necessary on school stuff? Why spend more time than necessary at school?

I was never an SG person. The above questions were relevant to my decision, of course, but there was an underlying theory at work here: laziness. I had a bass and a guitar waiting at home. I sat in class all day anxious to get home and make some noise. School activities just weren’t part of my agenda at the time.

But law school is a new phase in my life. I’m not [quite so] lazy anymore. Law school’s version of Student Government, operating under the clandestine moniker “Student Bar Association,” is a great way to meet people all over the school. I’ve met some of these SBA people and liked them, so I’ll apply to join. From what I understand, SBA involves meeting people, notifying your class of happy hours, and getting plastered on the school’s rooftop terrace. I can do that, I think.

Jackie Mason, a somewhat famous Jewish comedian focusing, for the most part, on Jewish humor, once made a crack about how all Jewish mothers are known to say the same thing to their children: “eat eat, never stop eating.” It may be the remnants of hard times over in Europe, it may be because we might have to wander the desert for another 40 years, or it may be because they over-cook for every meal and have lots of leftovers that will spoil if not eaten.

At either rate, my mother did [does] the same thing, and now I know why. I’ve lost some weight since law school started. Eating seems to be a secondary priority lately. It’s not good. I’ve held the same weight since I was 19 and remained in decent shape over the years, fluctuating a few pounds here and there. But Sophia dropped in the other night for a visit and told me I looked skinnier. I know I’m just a scrawny white boy, but no one has ever told me I’ve lost weight since they last saw me. And it’s not just that I don’t have the time – I’m not as hungry as I used to be. I can’t eat as much as I used to. I think my lack of physical activity is the main factor, so I’m going to try to tweak my schedule to fit in some work-out time either in the morning or afternoon.

I pushed myself to go for a bike ride this morning before it got too hot and managed to cover 20 miles. I ended up in my old neighborhood. It’s always weird to go back to the place you grew up and see how some things have changed while some have not. The Schwinn shop was right were I left it. So was the Blockbuster. And the liquor store.

Oh yeah, and my tan line is back in full effect. God bless that Texas sun.

One large step for independent musicians looking for a cheap way to get their music disseminated.

Following the lead of a lower-court decision last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles said on Thursday that peer-to-peer software developers were not liable for any copyright infringement committed by people using their products, as long as they had no direct ability to stop the acts.
...

The decision marks a substantial--if not entirely unexpected--setback for the big record labels and movie studios, which have tried hard to win legal rulings that would clamp down on anarchic peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa or eDonkey.

Of course, none of this is consistent with my whole “want to be a fair and just lawyer” thing. Where do we draw the line? Is it a big deal if a moderately successful artist is hurt or only a massively successful artist? Who are we to judge how successful an artist needs to be before they fall off the “we feel bad that you’re losing out on album sales” list? Who are we to meddle in the capitalist nature of our market? How is music different from other intellectual property products, e.g., literature and software? Software is easily transferable via the internet but printed literature is not. But what about technology that could scan a document and produce an electronic version? People would trade books like they do mp3s.

My worlds are colliding. Something obviously needs to be done about the structure of our intellectual property concepts and markets.

I haven’t slept well since school started. It takes me a while to fall asleep and I tend to wake up in the middle of the night. The gears in my head are still spinning trying to process all the new information – both scholastic and otherwise – that my brain is receiving. I’ve basically been running on overdrive for a month and I can’t do it anymore. So I’m making two conscious decisions:

1. I will resume two activities important to me that I quit when school started: reading and working out. [I know I mentioned the working out thing a while ago, but I mean it this time. Really.]
2. I’m going to slow down. I always feel like I need to be rushing off to somewhere. No more. The rushing stops here and now.

The book I started isn’t actually a book; it’s a play, and a damn funny one at that. It’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee. I started reading it this morning on the light rail on the way to school and I found myself chuckling out loud. The rubbing alcohol bit had me rolling. Seriously, you need to pick this play up. It’s a riot.

There’s nothing quite like rewarding oneself with a tall glass o’ brew after hours and hours of summarizing Torts cases and figuring out how to write case citations. Fittingly, the first beer the new bottle opener opened was a Loft. Oh yeah. Memories, memories.

I feel compelled to put something new up here but strangely have nothing of substance to say (do I ever?) I spent many hours today in a coffee shop doing homework and continued to spend many hours at home. The best part is that I still didn’t get everything done that I wanted to. You should not end sentences with a preposition. Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue is playing on the stereo. I think I’ll have another beer.

addendum, five minutes later: behold the power of the male bartender.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any drinking so I went out last night and met up with a bunch of school friends. My buddy Paul drove so I started drinking rather quickly. Probably too quickly. I think I had about five pints of Harp, three of Pilsner Urquell, and two of Real Ale. Yes, I was smashed and yes, I wish I didn’t drink that much. My old glory days are obviously long gone. [Old glory days being back when I had a job two months ago and lived across the street from a pub.]

Of course I woke up this morning feeling like a train wreck. Ugh. A classmate is having a house party tonight but I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it. I need to start chugging water if I’m going to make it out of the apartment at all today.

Ugh.

Oh yeah, and Sophia also drank too much and enountered a smack-talking cat. It could happen to you.

It’s hard to study for a mid-term that doesn’t count for a grade but is only intended to give you an estimation of how little you actually know. It’s really, really hard, especially when sitting in a wifi enabled library with windows looking out to clear blue skies on a toasty September day.

addendum, post-test: the mid-term went about as planned. but here's the kicker: the prof asked us not to put our names on the test booklets. rather, we were to pick a number between 1 and 1000 and write it on the front cover. smart asses galore probably picked 007, 666, 69, 427, so on and so forth, but i chose a much cooler number: 42. who else in law school would pick a number from a geeky sci-fi-meets-philosophy book? as I turned my test in to the teacher, i noticed the test booklet on top of the stack HAD THE SAME NUMBER. i'm not not nearly as cool as i thought i was.

It’s become readily apparent law school is having several strange effects on me.

Ashley, one of the instigators who helped prod me to go on the infamous Portland trip, sent me a surprise care package last week. Its contents were: a cd of the pictures she took, a Lifescapes “Sleep” cd, Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea, a vanilla candle, and a sweet bottle opener I ogled over when drinking at her house one night. Better yet was the nifty artwork on the package and the purple and green confetti stuff on the inside.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ashley. You are awesome. Friends like you are a rarity. The care package is slowly working its magic and I am starting to get more sleep.

Whatwith all the trendy new technologies out there these days (internet, e-mail, microwaveable Ramen), one sometimes forgets about the more archaic ‘technologies’ that were once marvels of human accomplishment. Like the mail. No no, not e-mail, but plain old, stamp-and-envelope, wait-a-few-days-for-it-to-get-to-you mail.

After at least two weeks of neglecting to check my mail due to various school-related distractions, I finally took a walk to the mailboxes and found my little rectangular piece of postal space filled with coupons, ads, and dreaded bills. How crappy is that? You’d think someone would realize “Hey, this poor bastard is in law school. Let’s hold off on sending him bills.” But no. They have no shame. So what did I do? Why, I tossed them on my couch, unopened, and left them there.

Just kidding. I like having electricity and internet access. I’m not completely irresponsible; the bills did get paid. They did sit on the couch for a couple days, though. That part wasn’t made up.

On the bright side, one pleasant surprise did greet me in the mailbox: my bestest friend in California sent me an early birthday present. Every year, we send each other books for our birthdays. Last year, she sent me Liar’s Poker, which I ingested in about 15 minutes. It was awesome. This year, she got me Crossing California, and it looks equally entertaining. So thanks, my bestest friend in California, it’s looking like another great birthday present. I had better start looking for something to get you for your birthday… got an interest in law-related books?

My school is holding its 2nd annual softball tournament along with two other local law schools and several law firms tomorrow. As a member of the student government-like Student Bar Association, I was originally drafted to play on the SBA Team. But at the last minute, a prominent law firm that donated a nice chunk of cash bumped us, so we’re not playing.

Instead, we get to do something much cooler: hang out and drink beer. All day. This is all well and good for me because I haven’t swung a bat in at least 12 years. Hey, I’m an endurance athlete. I don’t adapt well to sports requiring competent levels of hand-eye coordination. And by endurance athlete, I mean that I was an athlete about 6 years ago. I don’t even think I can endure anymore.

Hence, the beer. Or is it: hence, as a result of, the beer.

Currently slogging through my paper and listening to lots and lots and lots of Fugazi.

You know that the world is right and gravity is doing its job when your dark beer is contently resting on top of your light beer, all in the same glass.

...
The keen reader will notice that my posts have been reduced to ogre-like short sentences and snippets of speech. To whence did those treatises on music and novels go? The crazy stories of jumping out of airplanes and sampling every beer brewed in Oregon?

I don't know either, but maybe the answer is in the bottom of this bag of pretzels...

Finals are over. My first semester of law school has come to a screeching halt and I’m left with piles of laundry that need to be folded/ironed, a car that is aching for a wash, and guitar strings that are on the verge of rusting. So much to do. Where to start? At the bar, of course.

After Monday’s final ended at 9:00 pm, I headed straight to a TexMex restaurant with my classmates and had fajitas and four margaritas. After that, we proceeded to a bar where I took several shots (the recount is still pending) and had a few beers. Everything was fine until I couldn’t stand up anymore, so I sat on a couch and waited for the room to stop spinning. It didn’t. Thankfully, a classmate came to the rescue and drove me home. Once home, I puked my guts out college-freshman style. It was clutch.

I woke up with a hangover from hell that is only fading now (two days later). I guess I can’t party like I used to…the years add up, don’t they? But I still went out last night with my classmates again and shook my arse as well as any skinny white boy can. Word. I did not, however, drink more than half of a beer. Self-preservation is a funny thing…

I had all kinds of great plans for my winter break. I’d catch up on some reading (see books on right), ride my bikes, hit the gym, go grocery shopping, and start applying for summer jobs. So far, I’ve only done two of those things, and they were half-assed efforts. I’ve only ridden my mountain bike once because it keeps raining and have yet to ride my road bike. I tried going to the gym last week, but ended up straining my neck and am only now starting to work out again. Overall, it’s been a rather lackadaisical winter break (I just really wanted to say lackadaisical).

On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with my sister, brother-in-law, and 18-month-old niece. Sister and her hubby took a two day vacation in Austin, leaving baby Maya with grandpa, grandma, and yours truly. The kid is absolutely terrified of me. I’m apparently a terrifying person. Everyone tells me it’s only because I’m new to her and that I’m taller than anyone else she knows. Thus, when I want to approach her, I must get down on my hands and knees and slowly crawl towards her, but not too close, else she freaks out. The idea is that maybe she’ll get used to me and let me hold her, but as of yet, no dice. She breaks out in a blood-curdling scream strong enough to make anyone feel like the most worthless human being on the face of the planet. Making a baby cry sucks. Making her laugh is the greatest thing in the world.

We almost had a breakthrough yesterday when she gave me one of her stuffed animals to hold. She likes giving people her toys, only to take them back and give them to someone else a second later. It’s an advanced barter system I have yet to decipher. When she gave me the stuffed animal, I looked at it, hugged it, smiled, and gave it back. And she smiled a beautiful smile. I almost melted.

This is just about when you, the reader, let out an exhaustive, “geez, please take me to a another website before I gag myself.”

But since you’ve gotten this far, you might as well keep reading to find out where Maya and I now stand. Whenever I’m around, she looks at me like a science project, like she’s trying to figure me out, like she doesn’t know where to classify me in her various classifications of people (mom, dad, someone I like, someone who looks funny, etc. I’d settle for ‘someone who looks funny’). But at least she doesn’t scream, so I’m happy with that. One day, her parents will tell her, “Maya, that’s your uncle. When you were a baby, you used to scream at him simply for being in the room, but now he’s the guy that’s going to babysit you while daddy and I go out to dinner for the first time in eons.”

I can live with that.

Not yet, at least. Give me a couple of weeks and I’m sure that will change. The registrar’s office is closed till the 4th, which equates to no grade postings until, like, the 15th. Chances are I’ll keep checking grades anyway cuz, you know, someone might have felt the urge to go into work and post a grade or two. Right?...right?

Based on the majority of my posts, it probably seems like I have a drinking problem. I promise I don’t. I just have a party-like-a-mofo-until-school-starts problem, and I think I’m completely entitled to it. Last night, I met up with a bunch of my law school peeps and had a great time. Once again, some strange shots made their way into the mix (how does that always happen?) We did a round of a coconut-flavored concoction and my buddy Matt was so riled by the taste he demanded an immediate refill of his beer to counteract the coconut-ness. He apparently doesn’t like coconut. Sorry man. But when the shots show up, you gotta take ‘em. Thems the rules.

Oh yeah, and this was the bar we went to, which, by the way, had COMPLETELY OVERPRICED PITCHERS of Coors Light.

Sometimes, you find yourself studying in a spacious and stale cube with whitewashed walls otherwise known as a study room. You and your buddy inadvertently end up trading mp3s via the wireless network and doing everything you can not to study. Then, you look up at the ceiling during one of your many neck-craning five-minute space-out sessions and notice one of the ceiling panels is made of perforated metal. You can see straight into the air ducts. You wonder what it would be like to jump up into the air ducts and crawl around until you ended up in another room, like they do in the movies. You could surprise some other students in the midst of their mp3 study session, have a good laugh, smile and nod, and head back to your corner of the library.

Sometimes, you could really use a margarita.

and you can download the whole thing, sample it, and do whatever else you want with the tracks. and it's totally legal. artists include beastie boys, david byrne, spoon, chuck d, and gilberto gil.

thank CC Mixter, creative commons, and wired.

[via slashdot]

One of my classmates made the wise decision of living at home and forgoing that whole “paying rent” thing. I applaud her. Personally, I couldn’t do it. I’d rather amass more debt than live at home. But anyway, I digress. Her parents went out of town for the weekend and she invited the whole class over for a house party. Granted, it wasn’t quite as rowdy as a high school keg party, but it was pretty darn close, especially considering most of us were still exhausted from the week and were dreading having to spend all day today studying.

The highlight of the night was (for me) yanking a dollar bill out of her friend’s spaghetti-strap top WITH MY TEETH, and her boyfriend was supposedly in the room.

See? High school.

www.patentlysilly.com:

Each week there are thousands of new patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Every week I sort through them and to find new ones to put on the site. The patents I pick are usually a) really weird, b) really cool, c)really scary.

In other news, I spent the weekend in Austin hanging out with various friends, drinking various beers and mixed drinks, and eating lots of Mexican food. It was like San Antonio, but cooler (sorry San Antonians – you know you love Austin). And for some reason, I always take my digital camera on these weekend excursions and leave it in my bag for the duration of the trip. I have no idea how that fits into the train of thought. All I know is that I would really, REALLY love to find a summer gig in Austin. Man, I miss that place.

Before I start ogling over Austin, however, I must face the fact that school starts tomorrow. I’ve gotten through some of my readings, but by ‘gotten through,’ I really mean that I read the words and understood a fraction of the information. It’s hard to get my brain back in gear after weeks of idle dawdling.

But I’m excited to see everyone again. I’ve gotten to hang out with a few of my classmates over the break, but for the most part, it’s been five weeks since I’ve seen any of the people I just got through spending five months with every day. And let me tell you, getting us all in a room again will make quite the family reunion.

I’ve spent the past four weeks of my winter break compensating for the previous four months’ lack of partying, reading, bike-riding, and binge-eating. It’s been great, and I have seven more days of freedom left to party, read, bike, and eat. School resumes on Tuesday the 18th, and, oddly enough, I’m looking forward to it. As much of a cluster-fuck as the previous semester turned out to be, I’m ready for more. More pressure, more reading, more ridiculous papers. I guess I’m a little masochistic in that sense, but then again, I think all law students are to some degree. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be where we are.

So, tomorrow, I plan to start my readings for next week.

But right now, I’m meeting some classmates for margaritas. C’mon, have some faith in me. If I’m going to start reading ahead for school, I’m going to need a hangover of some sort. I try to keep things as close to real-semester conditions as possible.

After some initial confusion, my new years ended up at The Continental Club, which featured a wild and crazy band and, a rarity on new years for any club, no cover. I met up with a law school friend and one of her friends. One of the highlights of the night was watching a bunch of college-aged girls shake their tuchuses on stage when the band exploded into an impassioned version of “Secret Agent Man.” What can I say, I’m easy to please. I don't think the club invested much in the champagne because I (and everyone else i saw) made the most horrible face when we drank it. Ugh. Cheap champagne is something to be avoided.

Instant Messenger conversation I had with a friend. Names have been changed and content has been edited to protect us (from ourselves). Things you should know: heb = H.E.B. = a grocery chain in Texas; he lives in Austin and I live in Houston and we have never been roommates.

Other Guy: i'm going to heb... you need anything?
ParticleMan: yeah
Other Guy: keep it under $10
ParticleMan: a bottle of 151.
Other Guy: they don't sell that there dude
Other Guy: and don't ask me for toilet paper cause i bought it last time asshole
ParticleMan: 1 5 1
Other Guy: they don't sell it there damnit
ParticleMan: PLEASE
Other Guy: will you settle for some listerine?
ParticleMan: ok.
Other Guy: that has alcohol in it
ParticleMan: ok.
Other Guy: iight
ParticleMan: cool.
Other Guy: cool mint or peppermint?
ParticleMan: the blue one.
Other Guy: cool mint
Other Guy: i like that one too
ParticleMan: sweet

Last night was pretty cool aside from one small detail to be explained in just a minute. I started drinking at five at the Front Porch and a bunch of my law school peoples came out. We haven’t had an official, pre-planned “happy hour” in a couple weeks, so the other class reps and I threw something together at the last minute, which basically means we told everyone where to go and when to get there. Some people that have never come to one of the “official” happy hours came out and I was really glad to see them. And it wasn’t only people in my class, but people from the other classes also made an appearance. I finally got to meet a bunch of people that I’ve been passing in the hallways for months.

But then, something crappy happened. My car got towed. I’ve been to this particular pub many times, but I always get there after 8:00 pm, the time after which it’s ok to park in the parking lot next door. But yesterday, I got there at 5:00, and didn’t even read the “No Parking until 8:00 pm” signs. So, having already planned to eat Greek food with some classmates, I walk out to my car with my friend and notice it’s no longer there. My car had vanished. Up and left – and without me in it. And for some reason, I didn’t get pissed. I called the number, got the information I needed to get my car back, and my friend drove us to the Greek restaurant. We ate, hung out, and had a good time. Then, after we were all ready to go, I caught a ride to the tow truck’s lot, begrudgingly paid the ridiculous sum of money to get my car back, and went home.

All told, it was a fun night, but it was also expensive, so I probably won’t be doing a whole lot in the way of going out for a while. Or at least I won’t be buying drinks or food. Which is ok, because as I learned in Garden State, you don’t need stuff or money to be happy, you just need Natalie Portman.

What? Did I just say that? Andrew, I hope that was stream of consciousness enough for you.

PS: I never mention any of my classmates’ names (Andrew) on this website out of respect for privacy (Andrew), but this time, I think it was warranted. (Andrew).

Listened to it on repeat for hours last night.

I’d write more, but I’ve got bookoo stuff to do.

The person upstairs is taking a shower and I can hear the pipes sqealing. And I think someone just turned on a freaking generator outside.

Paper, write yourself.

I talked to the old roomie yesterday. We both graduated from UT with the same degree at the same time and got hired at the same company at the same time. I left in July of last year for law school, and he stuck around to figure things out. Well, he figured things out. He’s off to L.A. to see about that screenwriting passion of his. I wish I had the balls he did. If it were me, I’d have left corporate life and toured with a band. I went to law school instead. Yeah, I’m really interesting.

Good luck, dude. You gonna start a blog or what? “Poker-Obsessed Screenwriting Philippino Ditches TX for CA.” And don’t worry, blogs are free. (Hah).

You might be wondering what the deal is with all those links at the top of the page, and specifically why there’s one called “bikes” when I never really talk about bikes. Well, it’s there for days like today, days when I actually get off my ass, tear myself away from my books (emphasis on the ‘tear’), and go for a ride. Clicking one of the links up there will sort every post I’ve ever written by that category. Neat, huh? Damn straight. And it wasn’t even my idea.

I woke up today at 9 am. I don’t know why, of course. I have no school, and yet, I’m up at 9. Whatever. I resolved to do something useful with myself that involved being outside. So I went mountain biking at Memorial Park. When I got there, the cop hanging out at the entrance told me I couldn’t park in the park because everything was closed off for an Art Festival. Art Festival? Fuck that, I wanna go mountain biking. I’m finding a way in.

So I park across the street where all the joggers and whatnot park and stealthily rode past the cop. OK, it wasn’t stealthy at all. There were other cyclists riding past too. All he said was that I couldn’t park there, not that I couldn’t ride the bike trails. This park has three or four main bike trails, so I hit my usual warm-up trail for a while and felt good, so I tried to go to the longer, more challenging trail towards the back of the park and encountered an obstacle: the Art Festival, and more cops, and buses, and lots of touristy looking people waiting in line to pay $8. Eight dollars? Fuck that, I’m not paying $8. I head across the street to ride the “secret” trail (it’s unmarked) and got lost in there for a while. After I found my way out (via a detour through the Arboretum), I decided to give the other trail another try. I tried to haggle with the guard and said that I just wanted to ride through and get to the trail in the back. He said no, but mentioned he’d seen other cyclists heading towards an entrance at the back of the park… and that’s when I remembered the entrance in the back of the park that I’ve used a million times. Wow, all that drinking is taking its toll on my number of available brain cells.

I ride the trail and, by the time I was done, had logged about two hours of riding for the day and was spent. I look at my bike and notice it’s slathered in mud. I’m satisfied and leave for home. Unfortunately, the Art Festival resulted in several road closures and detours and I get totally lost. I end up downtown somehow and get back on 288. Weird.

Below are my rear brakes.

Buried beneath all that crud is a set of these:

Lower courts have sided with the P2P companies, but there's no telling what the SC will do. Chances are (and the article says as much) that the loser will take their grievance to Congress.

ah, to be a kid again.

i wrote two pages of my paper yesterday. i think i deserve a bike ride. the 76% humidity isn't too nice, though.

This has been a crazy weekend so far and everything I wanted to get done hasn’t gotten done yet, but I still have 24 hours.

Friday was the usual happy hour at Front Porch. I managed to avoid getting towed this time, but my friend didn’t. Bummer. I feel his pain. I left around 7 to meet up with a couple other classmates to see a sweet bluegrass band, The Greencards. They consisted of a violist, mandolist, bassist, and guitarist, and they all shredded. Well, maybe except the bassist, but her vocals were excellent. If you get a chance to see them, do so. They played a great two-hour set complete with encore.

Aside from random cleaning up around the apartment, which you don’t wanna hear about anyway, I spent most of today working on/thinking about a paper and taking pictures at school. More on the pictures thing later. I don’t want to jinx myself.

I’m going to see Sophia for the first time in six (?) months tomorrow. She and her man will be in town for lunch on their way to Austin, and we’re getting together with another UT friend at La Strada. I’m psyched. I haven’t seen them in ages.

After that, I’ll try to get outside at least a little bit and enjoy the weather. But I’ll most likely end up at my desk working on that paper that’s due Tuesday, which coincidentally won’t get done Monday night because I’m going to see Steve Miller Band! Can you believe it? I never thought I’d get a chance to see SMB. My only memories of SMB revolve around high school and its various questionable activities at house parties and/or riding around in someone’s car. I don’t really listen to SMB anymore, but I know all the songs on that greatest hits album everyone has.

Law School Prom is this Saturday. Well, it’s technically called a Banquet, but it’s affectionately known as the Prom. People dress up, eat at big tables, drink mixed drinks, dance horribly to a band, and drink mixed drinks. Did I mentioned they drink?

Drink. Mixed drinks.

I’m very excited. Apparently, a good number of the teachers go and actually stay for the band (and the drinks). I’m extra-excited for that. I’d like to see my profs throw a few back.

But before I can revel in the glory that is law school prom, I must wallow in the misery that is my appellate brief. Oh yes. I’m about ready to pull out my eyelashes one by one (seems worse and more original than “poking my eyes out”).

i uploaded the image to flickr and added lots of notes. still working on the band list which is now at 84 entries. but i also have 24 pages for my paper, so i'm pretty much done. thank the lord.

i forgot my friend's birthday. i forgot my brother-in-law's birthday. i never forget birthdays. chances are, if you've ever told me when your birthday is, i still know it. if not, i can get one of the numbers right and probably the month too. so i'm not too happy that i forgot my friend's and my brother-in-law's birthdays. my only excuse, and it's a lame one, is that school is pretty much an all-consuming thing lately. i have dreams about it. how messed up is that? it's not that i'm bitter or anything, it's just that i'm sitting here in a coffee shop studying on a friday night.

ok, so i might be a little bitter, but only because i have a twenty-something page paper due monday and finals to study for.

i'll get back to my rage against the machine and torts now.

i'm making a list of every band / show i've ever seen. one hour and forty-nine minutes have been used up so far and i have 81 bands. i know there's a lot missing too since i saw a ton of shows at Emo's in Austin that i know i'm forgetting. when the list is done, i'll post the Word doc.

shawshank redemption sountrack
qotsa - songs for the deaf
ben folds five - unauthorized biography of reinhold messner
jawbreaker - dear you

It’s time for a brief hiatus. My first final is Monday and the last is next Tuesday. No posts till then. I’m much too busy studying and worrying about studying, though I’m better at the worrying part. In fact, I’ll be happy to worry for you for tests you plan on taking. Or, if you have no tests planned, I can retroactively worry for tests you’ve taken in the past but perhaps didn’t worry enough for. I prefer non-mathematical tests, but I’m flexible. Let me know in advance if calculators are allowed during the exam. I also don’t do Taylor Series. Sorry.

So with that, bye. You probably won’t hear from me till after the 17th. That is, unless you see a headline on CNN, BBC, or a similarly large news site with the headline:

DUMBASS LAW STUDENT FINISHES FIRST YEAR OF LAW SCHOOL, GOES APESHIT, EMBARRASSES SELF AND OTHERS

late-night breaking news: my site apparently got hacked. (fuckin A). nothing bad happens in Firefox, but in IE, a prompt to download software shows up. spyware attacked sam's computer and he's still dealing with it (sorry sam). the people who host my site told me delete the offending page (this one) and upload a fresh copy, and that solved the problem for me. let me know if it's still buggy for you.

drugs are bad. i saw Ray last night. great movie, great man (aside from all the cheating), scary lifestyle.

i'm going to austin this weekend with E, and after that, next week is my first week of work. that's right, i get to play lawyer for three months at a small law firm here in h-town. pretty exciting stuff. unfortunately, i don't plan to post about it at all for confidentiality reasons, and because i don't want to risk putting my foot in my mouth (please reference: my entire life).

one thing's for sure - i have some serious shopping to do. i have about four good ties, and most of my dress shirts worked well for a computer-y/IT work environment but are not of law-firm caliber. i need to look a little snazzier. so i did the smart thing and enlisted the help of someone who knows how to dress me.

my mom.

just kidding.*

E. we're gonna hit the mall in austin on sunday. hopefully it won't take too long because 1) i'm kind of impatient when shopping for clothes and 2) malls make me nauseous.

* but you would have believed it, wouldn't you have? actually, i don't blame you. my mom bought me a great shirt/tie combo a couple months ago, and i didn't even have to go with her.

just in time for my last final, i developed a stye on my left lower eyelid. it was only partially annoying as i probably wouldn't have done any better even if my eye didn't feel like a toothpick was stuck in it. at either rate, i didn't pull a repeat of last semester after the final. i'm saving that for the school-wide party tomorrow night. let's hope i make it past 11:30 this time around.

Like most people, I maintain a spreadsheet containing a list of all the movies I’ve watched over the last 4 1/2 years. This is the first in (hopefully) several mass reviews where i draw upon my recent viewings and help you make the right decision about how to spend 90 minutes or so.

Led Zeppelin pman reviewed this before. i don't think he was effusive enough in his praise. it's an amazing document of a slice of history that just does not exist anymore. they're freaking powerful, i don't just mean that they're loud, i mean they friggin pwn. in addition to their own songs, they run through some badass blues standards and robert plant's hair has a 9 minute solo.

Veronica Guerin based on the story of a murdered irish journalist, this one is relatively accessible, but still harrowing. i first heard of this story on a 60 minutes profile. The acting is great, and even features a great cameo by colin farrell. the writing is predictably didactic but not preachy. moving up in the queue is a previous re-telling, When the Sky Falls, might make for an interesting double feature.

strangely enough, the movie really makes me want to visit ireland even more than i had before. it's so green.

A Dirty Shame john waters is back, baby. interesting exploration of fetish, sexuality, gentrification (or should i say, gayification), decency and head-trauma. it's over the top and has great, fun performances by tracey ullman, johnny knoxville (yes, that johnny knoxville), chris isaak (yes, that chris isaak), and selma blair (google her yourself). if you like john waters, rent/buy this one immediately to help remember why he was so friggin revolutionary (as that goes). if you don't like john waters, rent/buy this one immediately so you can remember what pissed you off so much, you uptight sob.

Double Dare neat documentary about a couple of stuntwomen whose career peaks are separated by 25 years. the stunt double for wonderwoman is paired with the stunt double for xena:warrior princess (not to mention the bride from kill bill). really interesting subject matter but the telling is kinda superficial and rushed. it doesn't do a great job of telling us what, if anything, the two women have in common besides their industry. the stunt footage is great as is the individual stories of the two women. even without the cool stunt footage, it's worth the price of admission for the footage from the xena convention. another version of trekkies, anyone?

Da Ali G Show: Season 1: Disc 2 what can i say about ali g that hasn't been said before? all i can say is i'll rent season 2 when it's available. i just hope they give borat and bruno more exposure.

Dogtown and Z-Boys awesome awesome awesome documentary about a slice of americana that was concurrent with my adolescence. yes, in the 70s i had a skateboard that i rode everyday. ask me and i'll show the scars (seriously, i still have scars from 20 year-old skateboard injuries). my professional skateboarding career ended tragically when the mailman ran over my skateboard after i left it in the gutter in front of my mailbox. to this day i don't trust the postal service. i still haven't told my mother that she was right to tell me not to leave my skateboard in the street.

interestingly enough they just made a feature based on the same story. nice work if you can get it.

Caddyshack thanks to my bosses' regular quoting of the dalai lama speech (click that link, especially you law schoolers) i was prompted to watch this one again. i think it's aged pretty well, rodney dangerfield and ted baxter steal every scene; chevy chase still seems like a total jerkoff. bill murray has come a long way from here.

there's a new sheriff in particlemantown.

goes by the name of skorloff. i'll be posting here until p-man gets over the kissing disease, or until he just feels like taking his blog back.

except for using curse words, i’ve been given no guidelines for posting. i probably wasn’t going to cuss anyway, but now i'm extra tempted.

• law? nope.
• bikes? nope.
• stuff? what does that even mean?
• music? sure, but not what p-man usually posts about, then again, maybe a little.
• books? prolly, although i don’t read a lot of inscrutable freshman lit-type stuff. in most cases, i'll likely substitute movies for books.
• beer? almost certainly, but i may use that category to discuss other alcohol-based vices.

so there you have it, alcohol, movies, music and whatever "stuff" means.

p.s. i think it would be wise and diplomatic of me to apologize, in advance, to p-man’s immediate family, ancestors and future kin. i’m incorrigible and p-man should have known better.

-s

Just kidding. You’ll only get mono if you click the back button.

I’ve spent the past three weeks not doing a whole lot. I have been going to work, but I’m only logging five hours per day and I take naps when I get home. I’ve been drinking plenty of water and getting plenty of rest. In short, despite your wishes, you terrible person you, I have been taking care of myself.

Which brings us to now. Skorloff, for whom we are all very thankful for enlightening us with that mumbo-jumbo about wine and movies and bathrooms, mentioned that I’d be regaling you with stories of my “past present and future,” all without the commas. He’s right. I’ve been working on some stories about my past, cloaked in mystery as it is, but for right now, I’m here to tell you about my future (the present is oh so boring).

1. My last day at the firm was yesterday. I’ll be starting a clerkship with a judge that will last six weeks. The plan is that I’m to return to the firm after the clerkship, i.e., when school starts. Let’s hope everything pans out.

2. My roommate and I were hanging out at a bike shop for no reason whatsoever the other day and saw one of these:

It’s the Schwinn Sting-Ray. I decided I had to have it, but it wasn’t for sale. So, both of us resolved that we each have to buy one because they’re so freaking cool. I mean, look at that thing, it screams cool. And since I need as much help as I can get, I’m down with it. We’re scowering ebay for vintage (old) models from the late 60’s to late 70’s that are either in near-perfect shape or restorable shape. The tentative plan is to buy Sting-Rays for cheap, restore them as best we can with what limited skill we have, and sell them off. Failing that, we’ll just buy one for ourselves. If you know anyone looking to sell an old Sting-Ray (not a Sting-Ray Junior) drop me a line.

With that, I leave you to enjoy your July 4th weekend. Eat, drink, get sun, drink more, and don’t drive.

I think I’m pretty much done with the Moscow posts (now that I haven’t posted about Moscow in six days nor posted at all in four). I hope you liked the posts. Russia was in a state of flux when I was there and appears to still be experiencing growing pains.

OK, I just really wanted to say the word flux. What of it.

In other news, Karl Rove is a weasel, Dubya nominated a Supreme Court justice I know almost nothing about, and it’s been raining in Houston for like eighteen days. Comments on any of the aforementioned issues are welcome.

I’ve also managed to read two books this summer that need to be written up and I’m in a third book now. I miss reading. I had forgotten how nice it is to read text without words like “aforementioned” and “foreseeable.”

Last thing – I went to jail today. But got to leave. Lesson learned? Don’t do bad things. Jail is a scary place.

In a bid to get some exercise today, I rode my bike to the Rice University Library, which, according to Google Maps, is 1.7 miles from where I live, and that’s going the long way around the campus to the official “front.” When it’s 134 degrees outside with 99.999% humidity, and soccer moms in Ford Explosions are crowding you to the very edge of the street, that 1.something miles can get pretty long. Not that I’m complaining. It was my idea to ride the bike.

As I pull up to the library, I glance down at my rear tire and notice I’m riding on the rim. The tire is flat. That means I had to walk back home sans bike and eventually go back with a pump and pump up the tire or take a spare tube and change it there.

So basically, I rode my bike to the library, got a flat tire, and had to walk home. My life is boring and this blog is not interesting. Except maybe for the lady upstairs who scored the other night, that was funny.

For those of you too lazy to click the comments, the answer to the riddle is:

Which road would your brother say is the right one?

If you ask the liar, he will lie and tell you the opposite of what his honest brother would say, so you do the opposite of what he says. If you ask the honest brother, he would tell you what his lying brother would say, so you do the opposite. With this setup, you always do the opposite of whatever answer you get from whichever brother. You don’t need to know which brother you’re asking.

I hope you liked the riddle. It’s basically my only riddle, so now I’m out and I have nothing else to talk about.

Of course not, I can always talk. I’m in law school, gimme a break. Today was my last day at the court. It was an amazing experience and I encourage every law student out there to work for a trial court for at least half of a summer. It is an invaluable experience. You get an understanding of what goes on behind the doors of the court. You learn what the clerks do, what the court coordinator does, and how the judge thinks. You get a bird’s eye view of a smattering of lawyers from all walks of life. Some are good, some are great, and some are well, lawyers. Now that I’ve worked for a trial court, I’d like to work for an appellate court to see what happens at the next level, but I don’t know if I’ll get a chance. I’d like to work at law firms next summer, but we’ll see how things turn out.

School starts Monday. This summer has gone by way too fast. But at least I got to do a lot of cool stuff. I went to Chicago, Austin, and Little Rock (to see my sister) with E. I got to spend time with old friends. I got to work for a law firm and a judge. I got to read a few books. I got a roommate and a cool apartment. I also got mono (damnit) and therefore did not get enough beers. And by not enough, I mean like two. Yeah, two, and then my sore throat came back a couple days later. Relation? Who knows. But now I’m not drinking again until Doctor says so. But as a result of the mono, I also got a pinch-blogger. The verdict is still out on how cool that was.

In short, it’s been a pretty badass summer. I just wish I could fast forward to December, post-finals. That would be nice.

Whatever parts of the hurricane we were to see have moved on. The storm we saw was no stronger than a serious summer thunderstorm. Winds topped out at 50 mph and there was no flooding. Lots of people lost power, but we got lucky. My parents’ house a few miles away did lose power. I rode my bike around the neighborhood and the extent of the damage is limited to tree limbs lying in the street. Not too bad.

This flashlight my dad Frankensteined together was thankfully not needed. He rewired a desk lamp of some sort to a UPS battery, which is usually used a backup power source for computers. It’s nice having an electrical engineer for a dad.

We also didn’t need this trashcan full of tap water, which took a long time to fill even by the bucketful.

Eastern Texas and western Louisiana got hit pretty hard though. My thoughts go out to those who got the brunt of the storm. Even at category three, it was nasty enough to tear buildings and homes apart and blow out windows. And this is certainly the last thing the people of Louisiana needed. Flooding will soon be an issue off of the Trinity River as one of the dams is under threat.

On the bright side, I discovered that there are some really cool and dependable people on my street. They introduced me to a local pub hidden away from the crowds of Rice Village. The husband has a library so extensive it’s doing damage to the foundation. Several thousand pounds of books can be problematic for a home built in the late 1930’s. I’m sure I’ll be browsing his bookshelves quite a bit in the future. School starts Wednesday, so I’ve got a couple days to get back into the swing of things. Until then, the name of the game is cleaning up around the house and drinking beer.

Google, omniscient creator of all things cool on the internet, has embarked on a nifty new project: making snippets from books available for searching on Google. For instance, if you search for “somnambulist pineapple” on Google, not only will you get only every webpage containing that term (one), but you would also get any book ever published that mentioned that term. Cool, eh? Also debatably legal. Or illegal, depending on your point view. Google has accordingly and predictably been sued. The plaintiff is the Authors Guild.

There are several arguments here.

1. Google is doing the same thing a library does, except online. No, libraries buy their copy, and thus have a right to reproduce it along fair use guidelines.

2. This would discourage people from buying books. Do libraries discourage people from buying books? Does the radio discourage people from buying music? Does the internet? We may not have an answer of the last one, but that’s the basic idea. Also, Google only displays a small snippet – one or two sentences – around the searched term. You’d theoretically have to piece together a book snippet by snippet.

3. Google isn’t selling the books, so there’s no problem. But they’re making money on advertisements that come from the authors’ content being displayed to the user. So yeah, they are making money.

4. Google is doing the same thing it does to web sites: indexing. Sort of. Websites are always offered for free… most of them, at least. Books are not offered for free.

So what should happen? Google should pay for each of the books it indexes. It would then have a right to fair use. That Google makes money from ads is an incidental byproduct. They make money on ads for every Google product, or service, or whatever we call the things Google creates. At most, consider it as compensation for directing web-searches to books. At least at that point, the user will discover a book they might have not discovered, and never bought.

Via Lessig.

and well-earned it is. i've spent the entire weekend studying tax and i'm on the verge of vomiting IRS codes. not a pretty thought, is it? all work and no play gives particleman cabin fever. the show costs $25, which is a tad steep for a punk show, but when's the next time i'll get to see them? they're usually in jail or rehab.

Lots to say, not much time. Have to catch up on reading because spent weekend in Little Rock with new nephew he’s aweome gotta have more of him. Prepositions and articles superfluous.

Thursday afternoon invited local Civil District Judge to school to speak about recent spate of Ten Commandments cases and Establishment Clause in Constitution. Very interesting got a pretty good turnout.

Went to cool show with buddy John on Thursday night, headliner Minus The Bear. Used to have two of their cds but lost them somehow but still remembered some of the songs when they played them. Guitar player was freaking insane had some kind of pedal board that looped his guitar riffs while he played on top of them sounded like there were actually two guys playing at once though it was only one guy. Show was moved from original venue (Walter’s on Washington) to venue across the street (Fat Cat’s) because vocals at first venue were impossible to hear we were all screaming “VOCALS!!!” but sound guy couldn’t figure out problem so had mass exodus of indie kids in Converse All Stars and buddy holly glasses (hey that’s me) crossing the street like herd of trendy cattle. Sight to be seen. Opening band The Headphones were pretty weird. Can’t remember name of two other opening bands. Minus The Bear rocked though you should see them.

New nephew Max Jacob Lain is cutest little guy ever he got his bris and cried bloody murder when the moyel (Hebrew term for the doctor who does the deed) snipped his pee pee but now Max is in the Covenant after being 8 days old and to celebrate, all the adults ate. What else do Jews do, all celebrations must involve food one way or another. Interesting story the moyel told us I learned when I was a kid but forgot about: Abraham (first Jew) entered into Covenant when he was 99 years old and GAVE HIMSELF A CIRCUMCISION, as did all the males in his family. Man that must have totally sucked.

Did you see the Astros and Braves game today? Holy crap it was EIGHTEEN INNINGS broke all kinds of records I fell asleep in the 14th and woke up in the 16th and nothing had happened.

I went to a classmate’s costume party last night and had a great time. My liver, on the other hand, did not. It had a horrible time. It’s still bitching, actually, and it’s taking the rest of my major organs and bodily systems with it. They’re all on strike. Picketing. Lobbying. Staging sit-ins. Rallies. Having union meetings. The muscles (what few remain after a year of non-use) are particularly stubborn and achy. Things from the neck up are also not functioning properly. In short, drinking large quantities of cheap rum with coke will make you hurt. Ow.

On the bright side, there were some cool costumes: sumo wrestler guy, Wonder Woman, Superman, female cop with handcuffs, pirate, Strawberry Shortcake, 70s Dude, goth people, fighter pilot, box of tissues (Blow Me), angel, nun and priest, belly dancer, firewoman (with ax), and more I’m sure I’m forgetting. My friend wore a hella cute Hawaiian dress complete with lei around her neck and flower in her hair.

Me? I rolled 70s style. Blue and white pinstripe pants, shirt unbuttoned half-way down, with a bling-bling Star of David resting in the natural rug that lives on my chest. I bet you’re wishing you hadn’t read that last sentence right now.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

Thankfully the kissing disease didn’t get me this time. Neither did any other ailment. Instead, I had five law school finals to contend with, and Skorloff was brave (and kind) enough to take on the blogging responsibilities of this here vessel. For that I am very thankful. We all learned a lot from Skoroloff. For instance, I didn’t know that “no self-respecting list of post-modern soundtracks would be complete without a quentin tarantino movie.” I also didn’t know that “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.” Neither did I know that “then i got old.” I’ll be damned.

What I do know is that I’m getting the hell out of dodge. My dad and I plan to take a road trip of sorts this weekend to somewhere in central Texas. Probably a state park. Someplace where we can canoe, hike, smell clean air, look at stars, and otherwise act like the rugged guys we really aren’t. Then E comes back on Tuesday and the wait will be over.

But before that, I’ve got a list of things to do:

You mix old school jazz with modern electronic music? Cool shit. It’s called Verve Remixed. Some of my more musically up-to-date readers may chide me for once again lagging so far behind the trendy music curve, but hey, I mean well. I’m listening to Volume 3 right now and it’s rockin’. Highly recommended.

Caution: legal mumbo jumbo ahead.

What’s also interesting are the legal ramifications of this music. The Verve has a copyright on the original jazz recordings and, from what I understand, could not or would not release the rights to other musicians wanting to use the Verve’s music. DJs were of course using the tracks anyway, but probably without permission. What’s more, the question of whether sampling of this nature amounts to fair use or a derivative work is a whole nother issue. If you want to know the answer to that one, you’ll need to borrow a copy of my notes from Copyright class, or take the class yourself.

I was good last semester. On my two off-days (Tuesday and Thursday) I read and did all my homework. Sure, there were breaks, but the work got done. This semester seems to be different. I didn’t have class today. I went to a coffee shop for three hours and read for maybe two of those hours. That is all the work I have done today.

The rest of the time has been spent by:
1. riding The G Ride around the neighborhood
2. channel-flipping
3. coming up with a tracklisting for heatherfeather’s and erik’s mix cds
4. waiting for Lost to come on
5. looking for jobs
6. see #1
7. reading Jane Eyre

You see, one of my teachers goes too slowly, so I’m already where I need to be for tomorrow’s class. Another teacher assigns cases for each student, and my case isn’t for another couple weeks. Another teacher asked us to read the “introductory” chapter, and after about ten (of 25) pages of that junk, I had had enough. So I occupy myself with the above seven activities.

Oh yeah, I also did a load of laundry. And charged my cell phone.

Once upon a time, a fellow by the name Particleman lived in San Antonio. The year was 2003. His friend, Skorloff, informed him of a most interesting sale taking place at the Central Market, a purveyor of fine foods and libations. Central Market had made the business decision to rid itself of all forms of liquor with an alcohol content above a certain amount. Such a move would allow Central Market to legally serve samples of other wines to customers.

Particleman took heed of Skorloff’s words and visited a Central Market when he was in Austin for the weekend. Particleman roamed and roamed the store until he came upon the rack of liquors to be liquidated.

“Hark,” Particleman exclaimed, “I have found the booty, and it is good.”

Particleman aimed to buy the whole lot. Alas, his willpower held him in check and he resolved to choose one – just one – bottle of port wine. He browsed, he compared, he analyzed, and finally settled on one bottle.

Vowing to save the bottle for a special occasion, he returned to San Antonio and to his hum-drum existence at the massive EnormoCo at which he labored.

Months passed, and still no worthy occasion rose to motivate Particleman to open the bottle. Particleman’s sister had a daughter, and still, he was not moved to open the bottle. He was accepted to law school, but still, he left the bottle to collect dust.

The years went by, and the existence of the bottle passed into distant memory.

Then, something surprising and not at all expected happened. Just last night, Particleman was out to dinner with a friend, and he suggested he and the friend return to Particleman’s abode to relax, drink wine, and converse with the roommate. The roommate was not present upon their arrival, but presently entered grasping his own bottle of newly-purchased wine.

Soon the three were drinking from the roommate’s wine and having grand old time. It was then, at this very juncture, that Particleman sought out the long-forgotten bottle of port wine and presented it to the group. They were awed by its age and mystery.

“Open it,” they implored. Particleman obliged. They drank from the wine, and were happy.

By the end of the night, the roommate’s bottle was nearly empty, and the bottle of port – the bottle that had waited all these years – had finally tasted fresh air. It now lies in wait for the next such occasion.

idea graciously lifted from nerdygirl and hereby imposed upon heather, who must impose it upon someone else, ad infinitum.

I did it. I gave in to the iPower of Apple and bought an iPod Nano. I even sprung for the four gig model. Yeah, I’m am iLoser now like the rest of Americans between the ages of zero and 35. So it was only a few weeks ago that I was lambasting Apple for all the iThis and iThat. What can I say. I’m fickle. The nano has a lot more space than my old iRiver 256 MB mp3 player (strange, notice they also adopt the “i,” and they’re not even Apple…)

The nano also has other cool features that I’ll probably never use. But I tell you what. It’s packed full of questionably-obtained at antitrust-violating-prices memory! Four gigs is a lot for this small a device. I remember when four MBs (not GBs) of memory took up a whole room. Just kidding, I’m not that old. But some readers out there are. I am old enough, however, to remember when a 500 MB hard drive was the bomb, if that makes you age-advanced folks feel any better.

So, off I go to install iTunes and let Apple finally take hold of my life, like Google did a few years ago. They’ll just have to share.
addendum: though i may have bought the iPod, i will not be using the cheesy white earphones, which coincidentally do not satisfy my music-snob ears. i didn't completely sell out, only partially.

addendum to the addendum: damn, these earphones are actually pretty good. they sound much fuller then my old ones. freaking steve jobs with his black turtleneck and excellent R&D department.

and i'm tired of looking at that confession post. you'll occasionally find some drama here at particleman.org, but it doesn't last long.

waco was interesting. different. and a tad frightening. more details to come. for right now, i must read all about Payment Systems and Professional Responsibility. joy.

Waco, TX is essentially BFE with a Wal-Mart. And a highway. According to my tour guides, there are a couple bars. There is a university. And there is crime. Not just any crime, but really stupid crime. My friend’s girlfriend had her car stolen from her old apartment complex. The car was later recovered with various drugs and drug paraphernalia strewn about the interior. An extra special bonus party favor with the items recovered was a picture of the thieves posing with the car. The full extent of the thieves’ stupidity became apparent upon arrest. The story goes that the car was stolen and sold to a drug dealer for $20 in cocaine. TWENTY DOLLARS. IN COCAINE. A CAR. SOLD. $20.

Kee-riste.

Otherwise, the place is not all-together offensive or anything. Yeah, every other car has a Bush or “W” sticker on the bumper. But they still have NPR radio (to which my friend’s girlfriend is an avid listener). And apparently Baylor is crawling with hot Baptist blond girls with rich dads. I oughtta move to Baylor and set up a net to catch all the hotties. Hey mom and dad, look what I found in Waco! Her name is Whitney! Or Britney. I mean Tiffany. Shit.

My buddy and I made fajitas and watched the superbowl while his girlfriend went to a prep class to learn how to kick the crap out of the GRE. She came home and schooled us on fractions. Did you know that to divide fractions, you flip them and multiply? It’s the damndest thing.

I saw the Baylor law school and realized how lame my school is. Our classroom chairs are hard plastic contraptions bolted to long desks on a swiveling hinge. At Baylor, each seat has its own independent office chair. You know, like the kind you get at Office Max or something. On the other hand, Baylor makes their students stand up for recitation… for every teacher. I’ve only had three teachers do that in four semesters. I think the Baylor administration has issues.

Buddy’s girlfriend and I spent a couple hours studying in the library (which was beautiful) while buddy went to class and slept through his Business Organizations course. Yeah, I know he slept because that’s what I did in my Biz Org class last semester.

One thing I envy about my buddy and his girlfriend living in Waco is that they can see stars. The night sky is full of them. Here in Houston, our glorious pollution (chemical, light, and otherwise) drains out all starlight.

When it comes down to it though, Waco is still BFE with a Wal-Mart. And an HEB.

Thanks again to buddy and his girlfriend for hosting me. Next time I come visit, we gotta see about setting up that net.

Last night was a doozy. I drank. I laughed. I took my shirt off and wandered around Midtown at midnight.

It all started when a friend, let’s call her L, scored six free passes to the Laff Stop. We arrived at the club after a quick pre-party at her place and proceeded to laugh and drink our hearts away. I drank a couple Crowns – my liquor of choice. The headlining comic was Darren Carter (the party starter), a very confused redheaded Irishman with no accent. “I like my women like I like my socks – in pairs…??? You kinda had to be there.

Our next stop was a pub to celebrate a friend’s 30th birthday. Let’s call him M (or MostStupidHaterAlive, his sometimes online persona). Before the birthday stop we had to stop at L’s place to pick up my car so I could drive myself home at a respectable hour and get some sleep before my 8:40 class. Upon pulling out onto Montrose I spotted something rectangular and hard-looking in the middle of the road and tried to avoid it. I didn’t. It caught both of my left side wheels. It didn’t sound good.

I had a sinking feeling that I flatted both of the tires, and when we got to the pub, I confirmed that my left rear tire was indeed toast. This is when the shirt came off. If I’m gonna change a tire, I sure as hell aint gonna ruin a nice shirt (don’t freak, I was wearing an undershirt). L, the sweetheart she is, volunteered to call AAA to get them to change the tire. Alas, I was a stubborn male. I’d rather get it over with and change it myself.

But wait – why is my spare tire flat? A flat spare is no spare at all. This is not good.

L asked AAA to also bring an air pump. Problem solved.

But wait – where is my jack? I can’t get this car off the ground without a jack. Shit.

Enter another friend, B, who extricated himself from the birthday festivities to borrow the jack of another friend, S. S’s jack worked like a charm. After some more digging, B found my jack in a side-compartment of the trunk. Oh well. I am an imbecile.

We then try to borrow S’s spare tire because she also drives a Honda, albeit a Civic. The spare is too small. No dice. We return the spare to its rightful home.

The plan then hatched by myself and B was to mount the spare, slowly drive to a gas station, and fill it with air. Then get back to partying with M, the birthday boy. In the process of changing the tires we were approached by a strange guy - let’s call him Crackhead #1 – who insisted he help us even though he didn’t want any money.

After hanging around a few minutes, trying to change my tire for me, and dispensing lots of advice, Crackhead #1 asked for a dollar to buy a 40. At least he was honest.

We drive to the gas station. The spare will not take any air for some reason. Enter Crackhead #2. He removes his full-ear headphones and says he can solve our tire problem. He then reaches for his belt and starts to remove it. Before I see any more, I recoil in shock and look away, focusing on getting air into my tire. B, standing behind the crackhead, suspects we’re about to get carjacked and prepares to throw down. Crackhead #2 then asks for my belt because he says the tire isn’t seated on the rim, and if we use the two belts to squeeze the tire more tightly around the rim, it will fill with air.

I concede – almost at my wits end by this point – and hand over the belt. He ties the belts around the wheel and… nothing. My belt breaks. The tire takes no air. We leave Crackhead #2 with his headphones and his belt and slowly roll off in my semi-driveable vehicle.

Enter another friend, J, who has bailed me out in the past. J lives two blocks from the gas station in question. He also drives a Honda Accord, though newer than mine. I call J and ask if I can borrow his spare. He’s naturally confused as to why someone would want to borrow a spare, so I explain about the flat and the crackheads and the belt. He obliges. We meet in his parking garage to pick up the spare and I notice his Honda wheels are five-bolt. Mine are four-bolt. Can you say worst luck ever?

J has to reach through the rolling gates of his parking garage and wave his magnetic card in front of the card-reading doohickey to let us out. The gate begins to roll - taking Js arm with it – as it heads for a concrete pillar. J deftly removes his arm from the gates of pain just before the concrete pillar causes any damage.

By this time, B and I are fed up with the whole situation and he wisely suggests I leave the car parked on the street and return the following morning with my roommate to take care of the flat, and he points out that there is an NTB down the street. I note the NTB and agree with his idea. We head back to the pub.

After another hour or so of retelling our story to everyone I call a cab and head home. I have no cash, so I plan on telling the cabbie to stop at a nearby drive-through bank so I can pulse some cash to pay the fare. We stop at one bank. The ATM says “THANK YOU” but does absolutely nothing for me. Bastard. We go to a gas station but the guy inside won’t open the doors – it’s passed midnight. Then I ask the cabbie, “You don’t take credit cards, do you?”

“Yeah.”

Internal dialogue: “Well thanks for fucking telling me that before we drove around looking for a fucking ATM, fucker. Since when do cabbies take credit cards?”

I get home at 1:30, leave a note for my roommate telling him the story and how I need a ride at 6:30 am before he goes to work. And then I crash.

And all that on a Wednesday night.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to L, B, S, J, and roommate for everything. I owe you all a drink. Or two. Lesson learned? Make sure your spare has air. And avoid crackheads at all costs.

n.b.: turns out Crackhead #2 was right. the tire filled with air once the guy at NTB seated it properly.

I figure you may be wondering about the wave of bike posts the past few weeks. During my first year of law school, I maybe rode my bike a grand total of two times. Things got a little better the following summer. Things returned to their status quo of non-riding in my third semester. So what’s the deal with this semester? Well, first of all, I’m taking two less hours than I usually do and the classes aren’t quite as intensive. Call it a much needed “break” from law school, though I’m somehow still in school…

There is another reason, though. I was going to wait till the very last minute to spill the beans, but what the hell, I have zero willpower.

I’m going to visit my friend (posts here as ‘carrico’) and his wife in Denver in two weeks. I’ve known this joker known as Carrico since I was a college freshman. He rides mountain bikes and all sorts of other wheeled things – and he is much better at it than I am. He taught me a thing or two about how to not crash and burn on mountain bike trails.

Denver is basically located in the stratosphere compared to Houston, so there will be less air for me to breathe, and since I’ve been a slacker for almost two years, I need to get my ass into shape. Thus, the recent spate of mountain bike rides and cycling-related posts.

I’m flying up on a Friday and coming back on Tuesday. While I’m there, I’ll stop by and harass Heatherfeather. How could I come to Denver and not raise hell with Heather? Carrico, Mrs. Carrico, Heatherfeather, and the rest of Denver are totally unprepared for what is about to hit them in two weeks. The last time I visited a blogger I had never met in person it resulted in copious beer-consumption, wild music fests, late nights in strange places, barefoot kickball with punk-rock people with various piercings and colorful tattoos, sushi happy hours complete with funny hats, and an orange mustang convertible, among other things.

i'm moving to Dallas for the summer. june 5 - august 4, to be exact. i got a summer gig at a law firm that i didn't think existed in texas, but thankfully does exist and is doing just fine. they do software copyright and licensing defense work. translation: if you work for a business accused of exceeding its license quota on software installations, or of installing pirated software, or of selling software that infringes another software mfr's copyright, this law firm would defend your business against such lawsuits.

the way i see it, it's the equivalent of defending the little guy against the software industry's version of the RIAA, even if the "little guy" is a fortune 100 company.

also cool is the fact that i'll have access to a slew of new mountain bike trails.

the last time i was this excited for a job was when i was a DJ at UT. i can't wait to get done with finals and head up to Dallas. it's making it really, really hard to study... as if it weren't already hard enough.

i'm having a hard time studying this semester. motivation levels are at an all-time low. i don't think they can get any lower, but third-year students tell me, "if you think you're jaded now, you aint seen nothing yet."

case in point - i've spent more time researching 29" mountain bikes than i have researching my class notes. but only because i'm studying for professional responsibility, which isn't really a class. when i start studying for payment systems, that will be real, actual studying. and only because i'm terrified of that final.

1. It’s cool when a company like American Express sends you a check to compensate you for the money you gave them to pay a bill, until you realized it had several hundred dollars in fraudulent charges. What’s not cool is signing up for American Express Blue and dealing with the fraudulent charges.

2. I saw the Deathray Davies for the third time last night. And there were only about 50 people in the whole club. I guess that’s what happens when you play a show on the same night as Dinosaur Jr.

3. I really need to study today. A lot.

4. I really need to ride my bike today. More than a lot.

5. There’s a jewtastic happy hour tonight that I’m going to. Yee-ha.

6. There’s a law school prom tonight that I’m not going to, but I’m going to the drunken after-party. Ohhh yeah.

7. I’m volunteering for a benefit run tomorrow and I have to be there at 6:45. Ohhh crap.

8. I need to get new lenses for my glasses because the old ones are so scratched and smudged I can hardly see through them.

9. Remember how I lost my ipod a couple weeks ago? I heard that the 99 Cent Store was celebrating 999 days in Texas on March 31st, and each store would sell nine iPod Nano 2 GBs for 99 cents. They open at 8 am. I vowed to wake up at four am on Friday morning (a day I had to be at work at nine) and see if I could score an iPod. I woke up at four and arrived at the store at 4:15. There were already nine people there, some sleeping on the concrete. I guess they wanted an iPod more than I did.

10. Did anyone see the slashdot page today?

Sixth installment of the “things that happen to you while” series.

Day 1

Your trouble with the law begins before you even get on the plane. The small folding allen wrench you packed into your Camelbak that you packed into your larger bag has piqued the security peoples’ interest. Piquing their interest is not something you want to do. A security person tears apart your bag, fishes out the Camelbak, and runs it through the x-ray machine again. She then pulls out the offending allen wrench and asks the supervisor, “Is this ok?” Yes, my friendly security-obsessed airport employee, it’s a freaking allen wrench. You might want to watch out for the guy with golf clubs, though. Those look painful.

You arrive in sunny Denver and it’s a glorious 50 degrees. You couldn’t be happier. Mr. Carrico (let’s call him C) picks you up and you speed off immediately to what you’re told is an Engineer Party. You see, C is an engineer of sorts – an engineer that designs poo treatment plants. As such, it figures that these people need to party quite a bit to maintain their level of sanity (sounds like lawyers). Hence, the engineer party you’re going to in Golden, about a half-hour drive from Denver, is first on the list of attractions.

The party is held at the house of one of the engineers (let’s call him J). It turns out that no one is home when you and C get to the house. You have beer on the mind and are feeling impatient, so C does the sensible thing and calls J to see how to get into the house. And now your troubles with the law escalate to what we in law school call “breaking and entering” or “trespass.” That is, C reached his arm up through the cat flap in the back door and manages to unlock the deadbolt (he has long arms) thus gaining entry. Mission accomplished. One tort and perhaps one crime are committed on your vacation. And you’ve only been in the state forty-five minutes.

After you help ourselves to some beer (thanks, J) more of the engineer crew and their significant others show up and the party grows to nine strong. You meet Mrs. Carrico (MC) for the second time and hope you might finally get to know her. You only met her at the wedding and didn’t get much of a chance to talk.

Now would be a good time to mention the fireworks display that you’ll later get to see at the Colorado School of Mines. Yes. A bunch of miners are going to blow shit up and it’s going to be awesome.

Before the fireworks, however, there’s something you have to see. You kick off the fireworks party in the college’s ‘lab’ as it were – a place where they store all their mining devices and whatnot. J asks you, “You wanna see a big drill?” Do I? He walks you over to what looks like something out of Star Wars. Or Robocop. Or Wyle E. Cayote’s stash of tools that catch the Roadrunner. This drill is as big as a moving truck. The ‘bit’ is the size of a Honda. You stand under the drill and wonder to yourself that your old jobs playing with computers all day were really pointless.

The fireworks are held in the college’s football field. You and the engineer crew get the best seats – on top of the announcer’s box high above the field. The fireworks are phenomenally loud and close. You can smell the chemicals. The crowd of chants “BLOW THE FUCKER UP… BLOW THE FUCKER UP… BLOW THE FUCKER UP…” Your jaw drops, and you join in. For the grand finale, a man – assumedly crazy – runs out to a string a fireworks mounted across the field and attempts to ignite them by hand. It rained the night before and the fireworks are not lighting in succession as planned. He has no choice but to keep going back to light the fireworks when the fuse runs out. He appears to be wearing protective ear-coverings but you see no other signs of protection. He injures his leg the last time he goes back to light the fireworks – perhaps some shrapnel got him. Firemen and EMS show up.

You’re more than satisfied with the day’s events, but the party hasn’t even started.

The festivities end up back at J’s, the scene of the original crime. J proposes a neat trick to the group. A drunken stupid human trick, if you will. Fold a dollar so that it can stand on the floor by itself. Supporting yourself on only one foot, find a way to pick the dollar up with your mouth. Your hands cannot touch the ground. It quickly became clear that this was a great way to get people to do stupid things for a dollar – or just to do them. To up the ante, someone put a $20 bill on the floor. To up it further, you put your wallet on the floor, which was in fact not an “up the ante” because you’re broke. Though many had gotten close and you managed to fall and hurt your knee in an effort to retrieve the dollar, J was the first and last to successfully perform the trick. Bravo J.

Your hosts’ cat apparently discovered the air mattress, and well, that was that. You and C try to find the holes in the air mattress and find one. C seals it with a bicycle tube patch kit and it works like magic. For several hours. By morning, your back is on the ground and your legs are in the air. You end up on the couch cursing your long legs.

Day 2

You and C start the day at Green Mountain. Your lungs are still stuck at sea level so you have a hard time getting up the mountain, or as natives call them, foothills. Anyone from Houston calls them mountains, though. You have to walk half of the final climb and on the way got passed by a runner going up, who then passed you going down, who then passes you going up again, all before you reach the top. When you do finally reach the top, you see him again, and he turns around again. That’s called meshuggah where you come from. You hit Red Rocks after grabbing some power bars and ride another two or three hours there.

For dinner, you and your generous hosts planned on going out but somehow the party ended up at home. You head to Whole Foods, score some chicken, and start a BBQ. Others show up with more goodies to throw on the grill and Heathfeather and her friend also join the party.

It’s not long before the stupid human trick from last night emerges. Except this time, instead of setting doing the trick on a wood floor in a house, it’s on a brick patio in a back yard. Brick hurts a lot more than wood when succumbing to gravity. Needless to say, you abstain, having sufficiently embarrassed yourself the night before. Other stupid human tricks emerge as well. MC introduces the group to a trick wherein you cross your arms in front of you and twist them around so that you end up with your fingers on your nose. Note that says on your nose, not in, but that might be interesting too.

The last stupid human trick is proposed by J (the stupid human trick expert?). This trick calls for two people. One person stands, legs apart, preferably on a soft substance like grass. Person 2, preferably limber, jumps on Person 1’s back, crawls over their shoulders, down their torso, through their legs, and back up to Person 1’s back. J volunteers to be Person 2. Heatherfeather volunteers to be the standing Person 1, claiming to have served a stint in a circus. Que pasa? Circus? Then she reminds you that she knows how to ride a unicycle, but not a bicycle. Oh, right. Unicycle. You realize your hosts have like six bikes, none of which are unicycles. Too bad. Heatherfeather is unfortunately too short or not strong enough to support J. C, as it turns out, is about 6'4" and strong enough to support the weight of another grown man (man that sounds weird). J hops on C’s back, crawls over his shoulders, down his torso, through his legs, and scrambles up his back. You really had to see it. Oh wait, YOU CAN*.

You round out the night at a bar called The Funky Buddha.

Day 3

Your back is a little sore from the previous night spent on the couch. Thankfully, one of your hosts’ friends who we’ll call G graciously swung by with his full suspension mountain bike for you to borrow, so any back pain should be rendered moot once on the trail. Otherwise, this morning starts out quite the same as the previous, meaning that a bike ride is in order.

You and C hop in the car and drive to Boulder for a ride at Walker Ranch, deep in the foothills just west of the city. The trail is breathtaking and you wonder why people live anywhere else. Things like law school come to mind. Bummer. After the ride you head to a local brewpub, Southern Sun Pub & Brewery, for nourishment of the liquid and solid variety.

You take it easy for dinner and order Thai food. The free movie channel is playing Donnie Brasco and you watch Johnny Depp turn into a Wise Guy.

Before crashing you and C resolve to find the other holes in the air mattress. Or rather, MC issues a directive that it needs to be fixed. You locate two more holes and seal them. It does the trick. You sleep soundly on a bed of air.

Day 4

Your hosts go off to their respective office lives designing poop treatment plants and whatnot. With five final exams rearing their ugly heads in a matter of weeks, you set your sights on the nearest hipster café and ride a ridiculously small BMX bike to Devil’s Food Bakery. It’s closed. In fact, everything is closed. It seems Denver sleeps in on Mondays. You hang your head in shame and head to Starbucks. A city of full of nifty cafes and all you have at your disposal is a national chain... For shame.

Several hours later, Heatherfeather rescues your vacation from becoming a corporate-coffee-shop-law-school-study-fest and takes you to the Crazy Asian Café for lunch. You chat about the UN, Connie Rice, and They Might Be Giants (naturally). Agreeing you should at least make an effort at studying, you head to Stella’s, a café that is actually open. After an hour of conversation interrupted by occasional bouts of studying you face the facts and call off the charade. The Denver Folklore Center down the street sells all kinds of cool instruments and the allure is just too much.

You noodle with guitars, banjos, mandolins, mandolinas, basses, and other stringed devices. Heatherfeather gives you a sample of her sublime voice and guitar skills. You wish you could put a digital soundboard in front of her and record what you’re hearing.

Heatherfeather drops you off at your (er, C’s BMX) bike at Starbucks and you ride home. Your hosts arrive soon after and you head to Sushi Boat with C, MC, and their friend, who we’ll also call G (different than the earlier G). After stuffing your faces full of sushi, seaweed salad, and miso soup, you decide on the perfect follow-up for desert: Bonnie Brae Ice Cream. It hits the spot.

Day 5

Has it really been five days? Feels like two. Your hosts probably think it feels like 10.

Your flight is at noon. But before your hosts can unload you, you get to accompany them to a very special occasion: the inspection of their newly bought home. It was built in 1906 but is somehow in better shape than most newer homes. You follow the inspector around and carefully watch (from a distance) what he does. One day you’ll have to buy a house. Or at least you hope to buy a house, maybe in Denver.

OK I can’t write in passive present tense or whatever it’s called anymore, it kind of hurts my brain. Much, much thanks to Mr. and Mrs. C for having me, to J and G (the first one) for lending me their bikes, to Heatherfeather for wasting her afternoon with me, and to the house cat for not accosting me too much.

All of you are welcome in Houston any time. Except the cat. Sorry.

* it’s a little dark, so if anyone has video editing software and is willing to help, contact me via the link at the bottom of this page.

they should be at the top of the list, but you mighht have to sift through some others.

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.

I reckon it’s about that time. This born and bred Houstonian is off to Dallas tomorrow morning. Tall buildings and whatnot. Houston has it’s share of skyscrapers, but Dallas just has this vibe. The finance industry. The Federal Reserve. Those crazy highways. Hopefully big city life won’t corrupt me.

Who am I kidding.

Went out Tuesday night to celebrate my friend’s last week in Dallas. He’s going to another law firm for the rest of the summer back in his home town of Baird, Texas (aka BFE). His older sister came along and she basically knows everyone. We started out at a sushi restaurant and she knew the bartender. I had three (or four?) long island ice teas. I was feeling quite happy. The sushi was great as was the people-watching. After that we went to another chi-chi bar that specialized in tequila. Before I can say “in over my head” my friend’s older sister is talking to a guy in a blazer who turns out to be one of the owners. They’re friends. So I get another long island, this one on the house. Then we see Don Nelson, former Mavericks coach. He’s totally sloshed. The next hit is some bar I can’t remember by now. I tried to drink a 7 and 7 but it wasn’t happening, so water became the beverage of choice. Then we run into Tim Cowlishaw, who my friend claims is a sportswriter for the Dallas Morning News and sometimes-guest on ESPN. My friend ogles Tim. I ogle the flashy-looking girls walking around.

Went out again last night but kept things in check. Two beers, no celebrities, just a safe Jewish happy hour. I was home by 11.

The firm is throwing a happy hour tonight and ANOTHER tomorrow night. So that will make it four nights in a row of going out. After this run I may have to go on a dry spell to make sure my liver and I are still on good terms.

And now it's 8:00 am and I gotta run to work.

The floor below ours is undergoing remodeling and we think the workers flipped the wrong switch today. The lights went out in half of the office and the internet went down. So what happens then? Everyone congregates at the receptionist's desk, shrugs, and someone inevitably says, "Since we can’t work, we might as well make ourselves drinks."

Unfortunately, the lights came on a couple of minutes later and the internet followed soon thereafter. Impromptu happy hour at work averted. Damn.

It’s not just the work. Or the new city I get to explore. Or all the cool people I’m meeting. There have been many moments when I knew that I found the right bunch of people, but there is one that stands out.

The other intern and I were hanging out in our corner of the office and the main attorney we work for came over to chat. The movie Napoleon Dynamite came up in conversation and before you can say ughhhh the attorney and I are exchanging one-liners from the movie. We basically reproduced the entire script right there on the spot. I even busted out my butterfly move.

If they get me drunk enough I might even have to break dance.

Working till 6:30-ish and then going out means you get home at 11 and crash. Saw the Arctic Monkeys and We Are Scientists last night. AM were a lot better than I imagined and WAS were not as good as the last time I saw them. I think it was mainly the sound guy. All I heard was mud. No notes. AM are talented song craftsmen and the execution was tight and organized. I was very impressed considering they’re all 19 or 20 years old.

At one point, the AM singer was jabbering at us about something and I thought to myself, “I can’t understand a word this guy is saying. Those crazy Brits.” Then he says, “You know, I’m speaking very clearly for you guys.” If he was, I couldn’t tell.

Also, i bought new shaving cream.

if this post looks familiar, that's because it is. translation courtesy of gizoogle.
boilerplate disclaimer: i don't actually talk like this, i don't condone the use of some of the terms used, and no one calls me the black folks' president.

Wizzle out Tuesday night ta celebrate mah friend's last week in Dallas. He's going ta gangsta law fizzy fo` tha riznest of tha summa back in his home ghetto of Baird, Texas (izzy Bizzy n' shit). His olda pusha came along n she basically knows everyone. Snoop heffner mixed with a little bit of doggy flint. We started out at a sushi restaurant n she knew tha bartenda. I had three (or four?) long island ice teas. I was feel'n quite happy. The sushi was bootylicious as was tha people-watch'n cuz I'm fresh out the pen. Playa tizzy we wizzy ta anotha chi-chi bar that specialized in tequila. Before I can say "in over mah heezee" mah friend's killa sista is rapping ta a homey in a blaza who turns out ta be one of tha owna. They call me tha black folks president. They're friends n' shit. So I git anotha long island, this one on tha house. I'm crazy, you can't phase me. Tizzle we see Don Nelson, forma Mavericks coach. Tru niggaz do niggaz. He's totally sloshed. Wussup to all my niggaz in the house. The next hit is some bar I ciznan't rememba by now. I tried ta drizzink a 7 n 7 but it wasn't happen'n, so killa became tha beverage of choice ta help you tap dat ass. Then we run into Tim Cowlishaw, who mah nigga claims is a brotha fo` tha Dallas Steppin' News n sometimizzles on ESPN mah nizzle. My nigga ogles Tim. I ogle tha flashy-look'n bitchez walk'n around thats off tha hook yo.

Wizzle out again last night but kizzle mackin' in check spittin' that real shit. Two baller no celebrizzle jiznust a safe Jewish stoked hizzle ridin' in mah double R. I was home by 11.

The firm is throw'n a stoked hour tonight n ANOTHER tomorrow night. So thizzat will makes it four nights in a row of going out. Motherfucka this run I may have ta go on a dry spizzell ta makes sure mah killa n I is S-T-to-tha-izzill on good terms.

And now it's 8:00 am n I gots`ta run ta wizzy.

the rest of the pics are here.

ps: comments are working again. notice though that you can't preview your comments before you post them. working the bug out took me a while and fixing the preview feature will have to come later. i'm adding comments back to all the posts without them.

driving to weatherford, tx to ride in the peach pedal bike ride. it's about an hour and a half away - thus the extra-early departure time of 5:30 am. i'm going with five friends and wouldn't you know it, we made team shirts with iron-on letters. pictures to come...

We had an end-of-quarter party at work last Friday and I have to tell you about this drink one of the attorneys concocted. Since part of what this law firm does is software piracy defense, we had to make Pirate’s Punch (it’s funny, you know it). It was green. It was good. And it was spiked with a BOTTLE of Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay Rum. Hoo boy.

One of the girls at work is dating a guy who plays bass in a few bands, two of which played in a Battle of the Bands last night. I went along for the fun of it, and to feel old, and boring. Everyone at the venue had an “X” on their hand. I was also still in work clothes, which, on that day, meant dark slacks, a blue button-down, and black shoes. ‘No, I promise I’m not an accountant, though I might as well be one.’ She was also in her work clothes so I didn’t feel that bad. There we were – two shiny and clean-cut law clerks - surrounded by high-schoolers in hip-huggers and too-tight shirts and hairstyles blocking most of their vision. The best part? The guy from the record label was wearing khaki shorts, white socks, and Birks. Socks and sandals!! But he was also dancing with three girls so mad props. But dude, enough of the dancing. It’s scary.

I moved to a new apartment down the street from the old one this weekend and I’m still waiting on internet service. I get the shakes every now and then from the lack of connectivity. I’m the first person to live in this apartment and there’s no cable jack, and the cable people are not sure they can even provide cable service to the unit, so I might have to go the DSL route, which I don’t want to do because that means I have to get a phone line. So for now, I’m writing to you from my old apartment where my roommate still lives.

My reasons for moving are three-fold: 1) Crazy lady upstairs. Enough said. 2) Living directly on a busy street makes for constant traffic noise in the apartment. 3) I need to live alone if I’m going to study for and pass the Bar next year, so I had to move out now. The apartment is actually a garage apartment that was completely gutted and redone from the inside out. It’s basically a studio – just a big room. It’s cozy and simple. And it’s quiet because it’s behind a house and the driveway has a gate with a big steel covering on it to keep out even the slightest road noise from people driving down the street.

School starts Monday and I’m getting really excited.

I hope you didn’t believe that. This last year is going to be a drag. Everyone tells me, “But dude, isn’t the last year a joke?” Yes, it’s a joke if you make it a joke and take joke classes. But if you’re me, and you want to make sure you pass the Bar, you don’t take joke classes. You take Bar classes. Classes like Marital Property, Pretrial Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Secured Transactions. Some of these are this semester, some will come next semester, but they all have one thing in common: they’re going to be a pain in the ass. They might be interesting, but definitely not for four months, and definitely not during my last year.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, it really is good to be back. I’m happy to see my friends again and have many a happy hour on Friday afternoon. But there’s one thing I can’t get used to, even after 26 years. This damn Houston humidity. Can we ever get a break? It’s raining even when it’s not raining.

I still don’t have internet at my new apartment. Time Warner is being obnoxious and I’m almost at my wits end calling them every week. Whatever. I’m managing. I actually kind of like not having internet so far. I’m more productive at home and it forces me to get out of the house and find a place to chill to get wireless. It also saves money, but of course that money gets earmarked for beer, so it’s a wash.

Unfortunately, it also means I’m behind in the news and I have no idea what’s going on in the world right now. I think Israel and Hezbollah finally have a cease fire and the UN has shoehorned itself into the middle, and I think England is making progress on finding the wankers who tried to bomb all those planes, and I’m pretty sure Dubya is still president, but I can’t guarantee any of this.

Classes this semester are shaping up to as exciting as ever. I look forward to each and every day. Not so much.

I did get a part-time job working for the 1st Court of Appeals, but if you ask me about anything work-related, I’m required to artfully dodge the question and comment on the weather, or the news, or what have you. Since I don’t know squat about the news, and the weather sucks anyway, I’ll probably just give you a blank stare. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I currently own four and a half bikes (you will recall the Schwinn my old roomie and I bought last year). I think four and a half bikes is entirely too much. And I think my credit card bill from the summer in Dallas is starting to scare me. It’s time to clear some of these bikes out. If you want any of these or know anyone who might be interested, post your email address in the comments and let me know which bike you want info for. The goods are as follows:

Schwinn Sting-Ray, coppertone, 2003-ish
Bridgestone RB-2, 61 cm, blue, 1994
Gary Fisher Paragon 29er, large, yellow, 2006

I am also happy to offer for sale my legal services which come with no guarantee of quality or legality. I am good at proofreading though.

If you read my post on cherz’s blog, you would have seen that I had big plans to see the Reverend Horton Heat on Thursday night and skip class on Friday. Did I see the Reverend? No. It sold out. Did I skip class? Of course. I couldn’t possibly go to class when I had gotten it into my head to skip. Instead, I went mountain biking and the equipment gods sent their wrath upon me.

I’ve broken all kinds of bike parts on bike rides. If I haven’t broken it, I saw someone else break it. I’ve also seen people lose all kinds of parts while riding, including a crank bolt a few months go. But I could not have been prepared for what happened yesterday.

There I was, just riding along, and I notice that the drivetrain on my single-speed feels wobbly. Now this is especially odd because the whole point of a single-speed bike is that there are fewer parts to go wobbly and thus less headaches on the trail. There’s a crank, a chain, a chain tensioner, and a cog. That’s it.

So imagine my surprise when I stop and look down at my bike and see nothing wrong. What? Something was wobbling. I get off the bike and take a closer look and see that there is indeed a big problem. What’s wrong with this picture?

There should be four bolts around the perimeter of the chainring. Those bolts hold the chainring to the crankarm. One of the bolts managed to work itself loose and take a walk on the trail.

I tightened the three remaining chainring bolts, cursed, and headed back to the car. My epic three hour ride was cut short to one hour. But that’s ok because I don’t think I would have lasted for three hours.

Last year at about this time I did a bike ride called the Moonlight Ramble with my friend Kevin. We decided to make an annual event and did it again this year, though I had to forego a big law school party that all of my friends hassled me about skipping. Sorry guys, I’m a cyclist first and drunk second!

The night actually did start out with some partying. It is Halloween, of course, and there’s nothing better than riding your bike on a few beers (don’t tell the State Bar I said that). I live in a garage apartment and the people that live in the duplex in front of me threw a Halloween party. They’re a young, recently married couple and we get along well, so I was happy to represent. I got suited up in a Hebrew Hammer outfit and John went the “Jiffy Lube Mechanic” route. Somehow there are no pictures of us which is a shame. Someone thought I was Matisyahu…

Kevin showed up at 1:00 and we left for the bike ride, after which I heard John took control of the stereo at the party and rocked everyone’s world.

The bike ride was a lot more crowded than I remember. A staffer told me there were 2,000 people. That’s quite a few crazies on their bikes at two o’clock in the morning. And again, there were some people in costumes. Pirates, clowns, knights, and a husband-wife “The Incredibles” duo. The weather was perfect – 54 and clear.

I’ll be in Dallas this time next year, but I’m definitely driving down to do this ride again. Good times.

Flickr photos here.

I just realized that the contact form at the bottom of this page and on the about page doesn’t work. You can enter your name, email, and message, and press the button, but I never get your message. I tested it out twice last night and, while it’s supposed to send me an email, I didn’t get anything. No email. No message. Apologies to those of you who tried to use it in the past and never got a response from me. I promise I’m not an asshole. I didn’t ignore you. The form (along with my comments) broke when I changed servers in May. Let’s see if can’t fix it.

In other news, I took one of the Danish exchange students out to get sushi with Heather last night, and then we got beers with my old roomie. She had a great time. I’m so glad my friends came out. I think the best part was when Heather and I asked her how she and the rest of Denmark feel about W. She was a little hesitant at first but came clean when Heather and I told her she was probably with the two best people with which to discuss W’s shortcomings. Good times.

And then at the pub, former roomie and I got the true story of how one Danish motorcycle gang fired a rocket at a rival motorcycle gang. Not a pistol. Not some semi-automatic thing. Not even a grenade. (Do gangs use grenades?) And how many years did the guy who fired the rocket get? Sixteen. Sixteen years for firing a rocket at people!!!

addendum: i found a news clipping. the end of this article says:

In Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the two sides deployed rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades and AK-47 assault rifles in their battles.

I just took twenty practice questions for an ethics exam that every lawyer must pass. The test is on Saturday. Out of the twenty questions I took, I ONLY GOT ELEVEN RIGHT. Either I’m stupid or completely unethical.

I’m going to Dallas this weekend to hang out with my Dallas crew and the law firm. I was supposed to go up there in September but never found a free weekend. My school is having a softball tournament this weekend that I wanted to see, but this is probably my last chance to goof off before I have to start studying, or at least pretend like I’m studying.

But before I can split town for Dallas, I have to sit through two hours of class. Senioritis has totally kicked in.

I’m taking my road bike up there but the weather doesn’t look good for outdoor activities (and it doesn’t here either… good luck softball people). Saturday might stay dry so everyone please do a rain dance or something. Or I guess the anti-rain dance. Whatever it takes.

Context: conversation with a friend about studying habits. I intend to say that it’s hard for me to get started studying for finals, but once I get started, I’m ok.

Particleman: You see, I have a problem –
Friend: “A” problem?? “A” problem”?! Honey, if only we all had “a” problem. I have more than I can count.
P: Good point. I probably have more than one problem.

This is where I’m going after I finish taking the bar next summer, or during the week preceding the release of the scores. Or both. I forbid anyone else from going there during that time. If I find you there, I’m chasing you down with my guitar and you’re gonna have to swim to the next island.

I’m at the point where I’m chaining myself to my desk for hours at a time. The studying vibes worked. Whatever you sent my way did the trick. That, or I realized that two weeks of goofing off has really bitten me in the ass and I have a lot to learn. Four months of slacking (including seven days of skipping class) can really add up.

I did take my bass in to the guitar shop today for some routine maintenance. The humidity changes really mess with the alignment (we call that neck bow and string action in guitar-speak). I also went to a bike shop and used a coupon that was about to expire. I bought a helmet that fits a lot better than the one I bought in 2000-ish.

I clearly have nothing to say. I eat securities for breakfast. The SEC is the bane of my existence. Marital property laws are my bible. My relationship advice to everyone is never get divorced. In fact, you might as well never get married. Bad idea. I have to get back to studying now. Time to learn how to appeal a lower court’s decision on the division of your marital estate.

Hey particlefans. I’m back. Didja miss me? I hope you enjoyed the ravings of MPB. He’s quite the kidder, he is.

After partying till the wee hours of the morning last night (4 am by my recollection), I was on my bike six hours later cranking out the miles in the beautiful December air. It was a brisk 70 degrees, and windy as hell. I might as well have been riding up hill most of the time. I started getting this weird pain on either side of my lower back and I think it was my kidneys screaming at me. My liver probably put a few words in there too.

Where was I riding? No, not in Houston. I’m in Dallas. I got a phone call from my boss last Saturday and she said, "Hey, wanna come up to Dallas for three weeks?" I said Yes, of course, and relayed the news to one of my Dallas friends who I had previously told I would only be in town for a few days. He was planning on going to Europe for three weeks so he said, "Wanna house-sit?"

So here I am. Apartment-sitting in Dallas. Oh, and this friend? He has a 2000 BMW 540i with a V8. Watch out, Dallas. I like fast cars and I’m not very good at driving manual transmission.

It seems I forgot to post the requisite and obligatory well-wishes holiday post. Oops. Consider this your retroactive happy/merry whatever you feel like celebrating post. I forget what I was doing at the time I should have made these posts. I may have been finishing up finals. I may have been contending with the tantrums of a three- and one-year old. I may have been (ahem) hungover. Who knows. Either way, I hope you had a good time.

This book is rocking. Really entertaining. I haven’t gotten very far yet, but there was one passage I wanted to share.

Background: a teenage boy in India discovers Christianity, and adopts it. He then discovers Islam, and adopts it too. The imam, priest, and pandit find out about the boy’s religious whoring and confront the parents. His older brother finds out too, and says to his younger brother:

“So, Swami Jesus, will you go on the hajj this year . . . Or does Mecca beckon . . . Or will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius. Have you found time to get your pecker cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you're going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.”

I was at a bar and someone in my group said, “that tastes like fermented curry!”

In other news, my three-week stint at the firm is over and I head back to Houston on Monday, but not before causing a little more damage this weekend. I’ve also rediscovered the awesomeness of Fish and Chips. If you’re ever at a pub and feel like something other than standard tex-mex or chicken strips, try the Fish and Chips. It’s really good and will give you horrible breath. You’ll be a favorite at the table.

I’ll miss zipping around in my friend’s BMW. Yes, I have gotten better at driving manual, but I’m still no expert. I either over-rev the engine or kill it when getting into first, and shifting to second will give you whiplash. After that, I’m golden, but most driving takes place in gears one through three (though this car is a six-speed, so I spend most of my time in fourth).

The cool part is that my friend is thinking of moving to Europe for a while after he gets back from his vacation there. He’s thinking Munich. That sounds good to me, because I can continue to “watch over” his car while he’s gone. I can’t wait to call my insurance company and say, “Hi, I’d like add a monstrosity of a BMW with a V8 to my plan. And oh yeah, I’m male, single, and have no kids. How much will that run me?”

My friend gets back sometime tomorrow so I better start cleaning this place up. Ironically, it was messier before I got here; I vacuumed and cleaned the kitchen floor as soon as I arrived, which are things I don’t think he’s ever done. But in the meantime, stuff has managed to pile up everywhere. So I might spend today in cleaning mode. Cross your fingers.

Do you ever get that feeling that you’ll be out drinking for the unforeseeable future? This always happens when you’re about to move out of one place and into another, or when friends are moving out of one place and into another. For me, all of those things are happening, which means I’ll be getting ‘see you soon’ drinks, ‘welcome back’ drinks, and ‘it was fun’ drinks for someone who is leaving Houston. Not that I’m complaining. I just feel like the bartenders at some of these bars are starting to recognize me. And that is a scary thought.

Welcome to the new and improved particleman.org. Yes, it looks basically the same. Yes, all the old stuff is still here. But what you don’t see is what makes all that work worth the brief hiatus. Many thanks to John for helping me with the importation process. He found a way to import my old tables into the standard Moveable Type tables while retaining all the fields, the time stamps, the categories, and of course the comments. For those of you who don’t know what that means, just keep reading.

I’ve been busy the past few weeks. Busy doing – you guessed it – not much of anything. I did have a fun father-and-son day last Saturday. My dad managed to fix my laptop and then we went to the car show. Did I tell you about the broken laptop? Oh, it’s an awesome story.

I get home one night and turn on my laptop. Nothing happens. No false start, no blue screen, no nothing. I take out the power cord and notice it looks different. It seems part of the inside of the power jack broke off in the computer. I plug it in again and notice little sparks fly out of the jack. Interesting. I press the power button. Still nothing. I unplug the jack and plug it in again. More sparks. I call the manufacturer and they want $550 to fix it. I say Thanks But No Thanks. I take it the store where I bought it and they say the laptop is worth less than it would cost to fix it because the motherboard is toast. Turns out the power receptacle broke, and the power receptacle is attached to the motherboard, and they’re not about to go hunting around Houston for that power receptacle. I say Thanks Anyway (jackass).

I take the laptop to my dad. He decides to do exactly what the store would not do – he hunts around Houston for the power receptacle. He goes to his favorite parts outlet and, lo and behold, finds the power receptacle. For two dollars. He spends three hours carefully dismantling the laptop, soldering the new power receptacle on to the motherboard, and putting it all back together. He presses the button. It works. I love my dad. God bless dads who are engineers.

After that, we went to the car show and ogled all the cool new cars. Did you know that Hondas, some of the most efficient cars out there, produce more smog than many other cars out there? More than Volvos, which are probably less efficient on the average. Did you know BMW’s M6, a $102,000 behemoth of a coupe, has 400 horsepower V10? It looks like a rocket ship with 20” rims. Chevy has a new Camaro coming out that does what the Mustang, the Charger, and the PT Cruiser do – that is, relies on nostalgia to bring buyers back to American cars. I think it’s kind of lame.

That’s more or less what’s been happening. Oh yeah, and I completely embarrassed myself in class last week. So nothing has really changed.

It’s cool when you get called on in class and your surly answer to a question makes the teacher say, “Ah, clever evasion.”

I’ve been living life like a first-year law student lately, except for the whole reading thing. My friends have instituted a mandatory happy hour every Friday at 4, and I usually last till about 8 or 9 before giving up and going home. There’s only so much partying I can handle. My late twenties feel different than my early twenties. That difference in feeling is what you might call “hangover.”

One of my friends, a girl who has thus far managed to hide her true party-girl ways, found herself dancing on top of a pool table at one of these happy hours a couple weeks ago. I was so proud. As for me, well, I did my part. I’m not much of a tequila guy but I had my share of margaritas. I got one girl to show me her yoga skills (wow) and then a guy decided to the same (ugh). What amazes me is that this weeks’ happy hour was already planned on Tuesday. TUESDAY. We really are back in first year.

A guy who sits in front me in one of my classes has extremely short hair - almost military short - but he's far from military material (sorry man). The quality of his mettle is not at issue here, however. The issue is a rather amusing arrangement of dot-like scars on the back of his head. The scars are visible because of his short hair, so my friend and I joke with our short-haired classmate that we like playing connect the dots with the back of his head. Classmate is good-humored about our little game and in fact has been known to encourage it.

Today, Connect-The-Dots Man (I'll keep coming up with new nicknames as I see fit) was making chit-chat with me and my neighbor and, in classic Particleman fasion, I sarcastically blurted out that Baldy needed to stop talking and turn around so I could continue drawing imaginary lines on the back of his head. Scar-man was noticably flabbergasted at the comment and took offense, noting that he spent all day thinking of me in nothing but a positive light, and, yet, I mistreat him so. I could not argue. Peach Fuzz had made a point.

He then suggested I consider our humorous exchange for a blog-post. So, Scalp Man, please consider this an informal apology for my rude remarks. Also bear in mind most of what I say is in some degree a distortion of what I'm actually thinking, and that this trait is amplified on this blog.

Maybe next time I'll show up to class with a Sharpie. The non-eraseable kind.

Note: any inconsistencies or exaggerations in this story are the result of either my bad memory or great story-telling ability, or both.

I get a kick out of playing what I see as harmless pranks on people at the office. Back at my old IT job in San Antonio, I removed the mouse ball from my team-member's mouse. One morning, i got to my desk and everything except my computer was gone. All papers and office supplies were missing. I thought I had gotten fired. Turns out that same teammate hid everything in a file cabinet down the hall. Such shenanigans make office life a little more fun.

Last week, I spent spring break in Dallas working at the firm and was presented with an opportunity I could not pass up. One of the lawyers there is really attached to her stapler. It's heavy duty and works well. One of the other lawyers likes to "borrow" it and she freaks out when her stapler goes missing. She had gone on a vacation in Hawaii so the other lawyer naturally "borrowed" it while she was gone. When she got back, she went through his office looking for it while he was out to lunch and couldn't find it.

So my office-mate, the other lawyer, and I resolved to pool our creative abilities to come up with some kind of prank focusing on the stapler, and I had an idea. The firm was auctioning off basketball and hockey tickets to raise money for a charity, and they put silent auction forms on the fridge in the kitchen so we could could bid for the tickets. I suggested we put the stapler up for auction and see what happens. If the attorney really wanted her stapler back, she'd have to bid for it. If she didn't bid, she'd demand we hand it over, and we could at least have a little fun in telling her where it was hidden.

After the silent bidding ran its course, I was the highest bidder for the stapler at $40, and the firm got together for a verbal auction to finalize everything and see if anyone who did not bid silently might speak up and claim one of the items. The basketball tickets went for $220 in a lively bidding war. The hockey tickets went for $150, and the stapler went for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. And since one of the named partners offered to match the auction prices, the charity got $200. For a stapler.

Moral of the story? Pull more pranks. You might end up benefiting a charity.

You didn't think I was done, did you?

My office is on the 53rd floor of a downtown office building. We can't see out of the windows on foggy days. Airplanes appear to be heading right for us. Cars look like Hot Wheels. We can only imagine how windy it is up there. So when we see a bug (spider, fly, whatever) stuck to the outside of one of our windows, we can't help but say to the bug, "DUDE, do you know how HIGH you are?? How did you get up there?? Why aren't you getting blown away?? Go home!!"

No more after this, I promise.

The woman I shared an office with last week is a huge fan of The Police. I like The Police just as much as the next guy, maybe more. I have some LPs (you know, those black vinyl things) and a double live album on CD. But i was not prepared for her cell phone ring of "Don't Stand So Close To Me." After only a couple rings, the song got stuck in my head and I'd spontaneously start singing it at any given moment. And you can bet that I have a pretty bad singing voice. It must have not been pleasant for her, but the way I see it, it was her fault.

Strong words in the staff room
The accusations fly...

It's called the "Where Should Particleman Go After The Bar" game. I encourage your suggestion to be different and daring. Do not take cost into account, since I will most likely be borrowing (yet more!) money to pay for the trip. Do, however, take safety and digestive issues into account. With exception to Israel, I do not want to go any country I have already visited:

Canada
Costa Rica
Ecuador
England
Holland
Belgium
Germany
Austria
Italy
France
Czech Republic
Israel
Russia
Lithuania

The eighth installment of the series.

1. You are forced to steal your own car because the alarm has malfunctioned and locked the ignition
2. Your alarm goes off while driving, so you rip out the lead wire to the siren
3. Once in Dallas, the alarm drains your battery while you’re out partying at bars
4. You wake up at 6:30 on Saturday morning to attend a 5K run your law firm is sponsoring
5. It’s 35 degrees. You don’t run . Instead, you get the best 20-minute massage of your life.
6. It snows.
7. Later that day, you and your boss’ brother manage to jump your car and bypass the alarm by ripping apart the rest of the alarm assembly. Wires dangle from under your steering wheel.
8. You play your friend’s Nintendo Wii. You want a Wii too.
9. You almost bust a lung laughing at all the rabbits you’re shooting with plungers. Rabbits don’t like plungers and you have a plunger gun. Life is good.
10. You eat Mediterranean food with friends on Saturday night. One of the guests just happens to be the law student from whom you sublet an apartment last summer.
11. You can’t remember how well you cleaned the apartment when you moved out but you hope it was good enough, because she’s sitting right there.
12. Hennessey mixed with Grand Marnier becomes your new favorite drink when your friend insists you try it later that night.
13. You nickname one of your friends "Roshanda Bangkok Nigeria Horowitz."
14. You and your friends eat lunch the next morning in the part of town affectionately termed “The Gayborhood.” You might have been checked out, but you’re not sure. Your waiter is wearing bunny ears and a bunny tail (hello, it’s Easter).
15. You play more Nintendo and take the record for fastest rabbit runner, but running in Nintendo has nothing to do with feet.

Remember that ethics test I took last semester? Well, I flunked it. You need to get a "scaled" score of at least 85 (out of 150) to pass, and I only got a 75. Pretty bad, I know. I retook the test last month and my score came back today. I got a 120. I kicked the crap out of that test. I am truly an ethical person. So what am I gonna do now? Drink. There's a happy hour down the street with my name on it.

I don’t post about recent cases I find interesting because most of you probably won’t find them any more interesting than a plate of okra. But this case is interesting. I promise.

Some high school kids (the nerds) are suing a company called Turnitin that archives student papers in a database and compares them against recently submitted papers to check for plagiarism. The idea is to keep kids from cheating off of other kids’ work. While this is a worthy cause, Turnitin apparently archived some papers without the authors’ consent. Viola – copyright infringement. They are profiting off of the nerds and the nerds are suing for $150,000 per infringed paper for a total of $900,000.

It pays to be a nerd.

Story via Patry.

addendum: in response to a comment i got in the hall today, if this happens to get the nerds laid, more power to them.

Mexico won the contest. It's close, it's cheap, and I've never been. I am going to Riviera Maya with two of my Dallas friends for seven days. The itinerary will go something like this:

1. Locate beach with white sand and crystal blue water
2. Secure alcoholic beverage
3. Claim easy chair or hammock
4. Decompress

Repeat repeatedly. Other activities may include:

1. Snorkeling, sailing, etc.
2. Visiting ancient ruins
3. Hopping to nearby islands for day-trips
4. Renting a moped and riding around
5. See four items above

Thanks everyone for playing. One day, I will visit all of the other places. One day...

I am cursed to have bad laptop luck. The laptop my dad fixed a couple months ago done broke again, and this time, the breakage was permanent. Fed up with buying laptops that consistently fail right when I need them, I resolved to never again spend a lot of money on a new laptop, which is convenient because I don't really have any.

I hopped on Craigslist while I was in Dallas over Spring Break and found an IBM X30 for $450. It's a tad low on RAM (256 MB) and it doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, but it's well-built and very, very light. At least i thought it was well-built until i cracked the edge of the case. I put it in my backpack after one class, walked to my next class, and there was a crack in the case waiting for me when I pulled out the laptop.

No matter. It still works. As for the RAM, I sucked it up and bought 512 more MB. It's a little quicker now.

I had a free ticket to see Kofi Annan speak last night. I gave it up so I could see a ska show instead. I think it was the right choice.

Today was my last day of school, forever. Of course I still have finals and the bar to look forward to, so I'm no where near "done." And to make things more fun, my school decides to start the spring semester later than other Texas schools, thus making the semester end later. Pretty much everyone takes a course to prepare us for the bar. While students from other schools have a week off between graduation and the prep course which I shall not name, we get a whopping 36 hours to relax before we're plunged right back into class. A day and a half. Did we really need a five-week winter break? Four would have been plenty.

But wait - there's more!! There's a supplemental prep course that focuses on a certain area of the bar that some people - including me - opt to take. That course is one week and runs concurrently with the first week of the normal prep course. So the week after finals and graduation, I will be in class for seven hours a day.

I know you're thinking. It's one of two things:

1. Dude, that sucks.
2. Stop your bitching. You did it to yourself, remember? You're the one that went to law school.

I respond:

1. No kidding. Tell me about it.
2. Go to hell. When I'm defending your sorry ass for copyright infringement you'll change your tune.*

*note: i spent all afternoon studying for finals. i'm feeling a little punchy. i need a beer.

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately. I'm in finals mode and that means I'm cranky and I don't have much to say. I did enlist the help of two (2) pinch-bloggers, but both (both) are apparently slacking. Maybe they have less to say than I do? Not likely, knowing what I know about them.

Much has happened recently. I went to my last law school class of all time. I've taken three final exams. I went to Austin for a wedding and got very drunk and danced up a storm. I rode my bike a few times. And I have enlisted the help of another pinch-blogger. Or rather, she volunteered. Her name is Pajama Grrl and she likes pajamas.

Tonight is my very last final exam of law school, EVAR. I am very excited. I graduate on Saturday and I plan on having a drink in my hand for the entire period in between.

I rode my bike to class the other morning (in the 90 degree heat) and walked into the lecture hall to find it warmer than usual. Since my internal body temperature was already at 175 degrees due to the bike ride, I was especially disappointed to hear the administrator announce, "Sorry, some transformers blew and half of the power is out. There isn't enough power to run the A/C or the projector, so class is canceled for now. Please check the website for updates."

Screw you guys. I'm hot and sweaty. I need A/C, and I just rode here to learn about Criminal Law, or something. It was right about then when I heard some classmates chant: "RE-FUND... RE-FUND... RE-FUND...." Gotta love it when a bunch of to-be lawyers start bitching about getting ripped off.

I went to Khan's Deli, a sandwich shop in Rice Village, on Monday to give them a try, and it was not a good experience. This is what happened.

I order a turkey sandwich and move to the register to pay with a credit card, when I see a "cash or check only" sign. It would have been nice if they put the sign at the "Order" counter to put people on notice of what the payment situation is, but whatever. I ask if they take check cards (I know it was a long-shot), and the guy, who appeared to be the owner, said no, but that i could walk to the Walgreen's down the street and use the ATM. I figure that since the sandwich guy hadn't really finished the sandwich, that i'd just come back another time when i had cash. At which point the owner called out to the sandwich guy, "Hey, this kid doesn't want his sandwich, he doesn't want to walk half a block to the Walgreen's to get some cash. He's one of those yuppies."

By this point I'm already at the door when I hear him call me a yuppie. We exchange some words across the restaurant and it doesn't end well. It was not what I'd call a pleasant customer experience.

I sent this story to one of my friends who took (and passed) the bar last year, and she had this to say:

You just had what we call a "bar encounter". This is something that you would normally let slip off your back and walk away; however, since you are studying for the bar, you take offense and eventually tell the guy to f@#k off. "Bar encounters" occur frequently during bar preparation. It is recommended that any "bar studier" refrain from contact with the general public and venture out only when absolutely necessary. Contact with "other bar studiers" is permitted, but the length of such contact should be kept to a minimum.

While that may be true, the owner had no reason to get all smarmy with me. The ironic thing is that his sandwich shop is located in Rice Village, which is about as yuppie as you can get in Houston, and his entire client base could be labeled "yuppie," so if it's yuppies he doesn't want to serve, he's going to have an empty restaurant.

This is the ninth edition of the "things that happen to you while" series.

Things that happen to you while on route to, at, and on route back from a wedding in Abilene, TX:

1. You drive through a bunch of small towns inhabited by people that probably consider a "home" to consist of no less than 100 acres.

2. You decide you should give up city life and get yourself some la-yand out in the country. It really does look like a nice lifestyle. Sure beats the hell out of sitting on 59 every day.

3. You meet (or re-meet) the groom's childhood friends who were an excellent group of people who you had a great time with.

4. With the groom present, you trade stories about the groom with said group of friends about his various and sundry exploits with women over the years. The groom turns red and buries his face in his hands. Only then do the really good stories come out. Almost every story starts with, "HEY, oh yeah, remember that time he..."

5. You watch one of said friends attach a ball and chain to the groom's ankle and give the key to the bride.

6. You drink a lot of beer. A lot. A really really lot. But somehow you don't get drunk, which could be a good or bad sign depending on your point of view.

7. One of the friends bought the bride and groom a Sony Playstation with a game called Guitar Hero. You try it out, and marvel at how much more difficult it is pretending to play guitar than actually playing guitar. You also marvel at the zen-like state of concentration exhibited by two of the groom's and bride's friends who are Guitar Hero experts.

8. You run into one of the groom's friends who you met when you lived in San Antonio and worked at "that company." You discuss all the crazy and stupid things the company did, and he updates you on all the crazy and stupid things the company is still doing. You're glad there is consistency in the universe.

9. You get to see your friend who you convinced to go to law school when you lived in San Antonio get married to a girl who went to law school with him, and you wonder what would have happened if he had gone to the school you advised him to go to instead of the school he actually went to. He probably wouldn't have met that girl, and he probably wouldn't have gotten married this weekend, and he probably wouldn't have looked like he was about to pass out for the thirty-six hours before the ceremony. "Dude, you're sweatin' like a mofo. Stand under this vent and have this beer. You need it."

10. As your friend is standing at the altar saying his vows, you silently pray and hope that he and his wife enjoy a lifetime of happiness and success. L'Chaim!!

10.5. You also pray and hope that he doesn't start using the excuse, "I'm married and boring now" to get out of trips to the bar and whatnot. It's not gonna fly. Like any good relationship, ours was founded while drinking, and it's important that we adhere to that standard.

I've been studying at Rice University on and off since I started law school three years ago. But never did I know that they were hiding not one, but TWO pubs on campus. One is easy to find. It's in the basement of the student center and is intended to be the "undergrad" hangout.

The other pub, however, took more work to find. I had only heard rumors of it from a friend, who only heard rumors of it from a friend on his Ultimate Frisbee league. This other pub was named Valhalla, which brought to mind Norse mythology, Vikings, horns, swords, plunder, blond women, gigantic ships, and beer. When one of my study-mates mentioned that we should grab a beer after studying at Rice one day, I remembered that infamous "other" pub. We set out to find this mysterious Valhalla.

Guided only by instructions from a Rice student and our keen second-sense of alcohol, the three of us searched for the pub. We were told to look for a building that looks like a lecture hall (um, this is a university campus) by a bus stop with stairs leading up to the entrance. Except that we're not supposed to take the stairs. We're supposed to proceed around to the side of the building and locate a door leading down into the basement of the lecture hall. There, so said the Rice student, is where we will find Valhalla - the "grad student" pub. I liked it already. Grad students. People who were as jaded about education as were are.

We expected to need a password, maybe a special saying, like at a speak-easy, to gain admittance to the pub. You know - knock twice, scratch three times, pound with your fist. Maybe we'd have to bring booty from our last voyage.

Valhalla was exactly where it was supposed to be, and it looked exactly how I had imagined. It was kind of dark, it smelled of old building, beer, and maybe some BO. It was small, there were pictures on the wall of various Valhalla partiers and Rice events dating back to the 19-teens, including photos of JFK's famous moon speech at Rice Stadium and the G7 Summit. And there was, of course, a Viking helmet displayed in a glass case at one end of the room. The curved ceiling and old piano in the corner buried beneath various board games and knick-knacks completed the experience. We had found it - Valhalla was ours.

Not really. But it was fun. The beer selection was excellent, as were the prices. $1.25 for St. Arnold draft? Done. $2 for Blue Moon? Deal. I handed the proprietress a credit card. She looked at it, looked at me, and said, "Oh, this is Valhalla. Cash only." Of course. Let me go find some gold coins I picked up in Newfoundland.

While there, my friend struck up a conversation with an older couple sitting at the end of the bar by themselves. We got to talking, and turns out they had been Valhalla patrons for 25 years, and had owned Shakespeare's Pub in Houston for 16, having recently sold it.

Go on - check out Valhalla for yourself. If you can find it.

Hey, if you had to study a book called "The Texas Procedure/Evidence Workshop," you'd need a beer too. Especially one with an alcohol content of 7.2%, which technically makes it "Malt Liquor."

I have never felt like i knew so much about the law than i do now, and yet i have never felt so unprepared for a test. For anyone considering law school, please reconsider. I haven't slept in three? four? weeks. I don't even remember graduating. I don't know what day of the week it is when i wake up most mornings. Eating is the highlight of my day. Well, eating has always been the highlight of my day, but now it's, like, my sole purpose. I was put here to eat and study law. Or maybe it's eat law.

My classmate today really summarized it well. I said that my brain was like a shelf: for every piece of information i put on the shelf, another piece falls off. He said, "Shelf? SHELF? I only have a ledge. Screw shelf." You heard it here first. Screw shelf.

Your job between the hours of 8 and 4 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week is to pray as hard as you can to whatever deity or force that strikes your fancy that I do not f*ck up on the Bar exam. Your other job is to send any positive brain activity going on in your head to the Palmer Events Center in Austin, TX.

If you happen to be in Austin on Thursday night and you want to get a drink, find the nearest drinking establishment to Palmer and there I shall be.

Some of the dreams I've had lately, likely resulting from the stress and insanity of the Bar (more on that Bar thing later):

Dream 1

I'm in a physics class taught by none other than an aged Samuel L. Jackson. He has long gray hair and he's wearing a lab coat. We had a homework assignment. One of the problems (#30) was particularly difficult. It asked: "Is there any way to be in two places at the same time?" Dr. Jackson asked, "Did that question drive you guys crazy or WHAT! Who has an answer for me?" A tall-ish girl stood up and said, "I have an answer. You can be in more than one place at the same time as long as your presence is only known by one all-powerful being at a time." Meaning, I suppose, you can be in more than one place at a time as long as for each place that you are, only one all-powerful being (God?) knows that you are there. Maybe this is possible because you could be in separate universes, each of which has its own all-powerful being? Who knows.

Dream 2

I arrived at my apartment after being gone all week and everything is gone. The structure has been mostly dismantled. All that remains is the frame of my little garage apartment. I walk around the remnants wondering what the hell went wrong and where my stuff is. I find that most of my belongings are in a gigantic hole next to my apartment. At that moment, I find a strange middle-aged woman giving me dirty looks. I ask what happened. She looked at me incredulously as if I should know. She didn't speak English (or perhaps couldn't talk), so she directed me towards a small piece of wall that remained on my apartment where she had apparently scribbled her response to my same question asked by someone else. I guess someone else had asked where the hell my apartment had gone.

She scratched out a few things and modified the previous response (which was in English) to help answer my question, and I gathered that my landlord was no longer the landlord, that I had a new landlord, that she (this woman) was a tenant of the new landlord, and that I had not paid my rent. I argued that I had paid my rent to my old landlord and she looked surprised. She shrugged and walked off to her apartment, which appeared to be underground down a flight of dingy carpeted stairs whose white walls were covered with various markings.

Those are just two of my dreams. There have been other strange ones, but those are the only ones i can remember clearly.

As for the Bar, the new rule I'm following with myself and my friends is that I will not talk about the Bar. It was too stressful, too difficult, and too long. I'm glad it's over and I hope I never have to do it again. If you plan on taking it any time soon, let me know, and I will tell you everything you need to know.

I don't live in Houston anymore. It feels a little wierd saying that. I live in Dallas now. I still feel like I'm just visiting, or I'm only here for the summer, or that I'm just here for the week. It's odd. Dallas isn't new to me, but it isn't completely familiar either. But it's good. I needed a change. I'm excited. I don't start work till the 20th, so between now and then, I will be hanging out, getting settled, and drinking on a beach in Mexico. I really need to decompress. I also plan on making a trip down to San Antonio to see some friends, so if you're in SA, plan to see me in mid-August. Mark your calendar or PDA or whatever.

I'm at the Apple Store checking email right now. My roomie and I don't have internet yet and it feels kind of cool. I like it. For now. But I'm sure I'll start going crazy soon enough. We'll probably sign up when we get back from Mexico. I'm sure Pajama Grrl, Evil I, and I will have some good stories for you when we get back. Till then.

I'm going to Boston for work for a couple days. It's only my second time in Boston and I'm really excited. I had a great time last time I was there.

In other news, I went to an 80's party on Saturday night and I have great pictures of my outfit. Or rather, Evil I has pictures. I think. Someone took pictures of me in that sweet turquoise blazer...

I'm back from my trip. Turns out we didn't go to Boston. We went to Cambridge, which is close enough if you ask me. It was essentially a trade show combined with seminars given by experts in the field. And by trade show, I mean that I sat at a booth with a marketing person from my firm and met all kinds of intelligent and interesting people, some of whom are on the cutting edge of the industry. The industry I'm talking about is the information security and privacy industry, i.e., the protection of your personal information as it is held by financial institutions and other companies that might get access to your personal info.

I met computer security professors from George Washington University, law professors from the John Marshall School Of Law, VPs from AIG, directors from Shell, attorneys from USAA, security people from Microsoft, so on and so forth. It was incredible. I had a really good time.

Now for the weird stuff. I went to a pub with my colleague and bought us beer at the counter. I made a motion to sit at a table, and the bartender said, "You can't sit at a table if you buy beer at the counter." What? What kind of stupid-ass rule is that? Aren't I spending money regardless? I offer to buy food at the table, and the bartender acquiesces. My colleague and I pick a table which could seat four or five people. There are only two of us, however. Right after we sit down, a waitress approaches us and says, "If it's just the two of you, you can't sit there, you have to sit at a smaller table." What the &#%@!!! Can we please drink our beers in peace! Fine. We go to a smaller table for two.

After a while, I get word from my boss that she's coming by to have a drink with us. Her client meeting had ended. I drag an empty table over to ours to make room for her, at which point our new waitress says, "Why did you do that, do you have more people coming?" No, I just like having extra space for my imaginary friends. Can't you see them? YES, more people are coming. She asks how many. Ugh! "Two," I tell her. Turns out it was only one, but screw it, I don't give a damn by this point. Oh yeah, and I didn't think much of their quesadillas either, but that was to be expected. Hell, we were in Massachusetts. I will not name this particular pub to save it from any embarrassment. If you want to know, post a comment and leave your email address.

That was the not-so-great service experience. The good service experience came from a burger joint called Charlies Kitchen (no, it doesn't have an apostrophe before the 's'). Our waitress was 78 years old and had worked there for 45 years. She was a sweetheart and totally entertaining, but unfortunately their iced tea was not that sweet. In fact, it tasted a little like cough syrup. But my colleague and I bought T-shirts nonetheless. For the record, we got the signature double cheeseburger. Get it. The fries are good too.

Overall, I found the trip a success. We met some great people, possibly got some new clients, learned a lot about the industry, and gained more exposure for our firm. Mission accomplished.

To pre-empt some questions: no, I did not have any chowder. No, I did not pick up a Boston accent. Yes, I did visit Harvard but was not that impressed (sorry, the grounds were kind of lame). Yes, I did go to the Harvard Co-op, which they strangely call The Coop. Those crazy New Englanders.

I was happy to discover that my newly-adopted city has a Jersey Mike's Subs. I ate at Jersey Mike's three times per week while studying for the Bar and never got sick of it. They slice the deli meat right there in front of you! None of that sitting in a plastic tray business. I think they are the best subs I've ever had.

Oh yeah, and what also makes me happy is that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned. It pains me because he is a native Texan and the first Hispanic AG, but he was one shady mofo. I'm sure that once all the dust settles, he will have a comfortable life of giving speeches and teaching law school courses. Not bad if you ask me.

Apologies for the dearth of posts lately. I have been a busy particle. But before I write my post on the Interpol and Bad Religion shows (yes, I saw Bad Religion. I can die happy now), I need to tell you about this: Radiohead is giving away their new album. They are letting the buyer decide how much to pay. I think all you have to pay is the credit card processing fee of 90 cents.

Yes, other bands have done this kind of thing before, but never a band as popular as Radiohead. And that part is important. Their popularity means they have a lot to lose. A band that is not so popular has less to lose since the fan base is smaller and fewer people would be buying the album and the forgone revenue would not exist. For Radiohead, they stand to lose, or gain, a lot. If it works, they will have proved a point that has been a long time in the making: music does not need record labels. The record label is no longer a necessary part of the music distribution and marketing process. They weren't necessary to begin with. After all, they didn't always exist. The only purpose I see labels serving now is as more of a "music club." Bands can join together and help fans find new bands, thus helping to give smaller bands more exposure by associating with similar bands.

Bands can rent their own studio time, hire their own engineers, pay for their own mixing and disc pressing, do their own marketing via a website, and open an online shop. No need for the label. All you need is money and some organizational skills. If a band has those two things, there is no need for a record contract. The label is an unnecessary middle man.

What's also interesting about the Radiohead deal is the lack of an iTunes affiliation. None of the articles I've read mention iTunes. Did Radiohead ignore iTunes altogether? If so, it could be proof that even iTunes should examine its role in music distribution, or perhaps lower its prices.

Either way, I'm very happy Radiohead took this risk. It's one step towards taking music out of the hands of record labels and putting it back into the hands of artists. Record contracts and record company desires are not conducive to the creation of good music. Good music is what we want. Musicians who own the rights to their art is what we want. Contractual obligations and creative restrictions do not help either of those goals. The issue is that record companies, unlike bands, are not artistic endeavors. They are business enterprises. Art and business, by their nature, do not always mix well. Free one from the other and both would probably prosper more.

For reference, you can check out this guide to recording contracts. It makes me want to buy an Entertainment Law textbook and read up on music industry contract basics.

It's been a long time since I've been to San Antonio. I promised my friends there many times I would come visit, but alas, law school and work continually got in the way. Well, last weekend, I finally made good on my promise. I caught a flight down to San Antonio (aka SA aka Saytown) on Friday and hung out with all my old friends.

Friday found us at Blue Star Brewery for First Friday, which is a monthly art, music, and food extravaganza held in South Town, an area of San Antonio south of Downtown. After beer and dinner at Blue Star, we stumbled over to Beethoven's for Oktoberfest, where my friend consumed yet more beer and I got to play DD, which was fine by me because I wanted to see her have a good time (read: get drunk... friends are always funnier when drunk). Her friends also met us at Blue Star and were thoroughly entertaining. They tried to use my lawyering skills to sue each other. I got to explain the difference between assault and battery. I hope I got it right.

On Saturday, we had lunch with the infamous Skorloff and his Girl at Liberty Bar, which is really half-bar, half-restaurant. We got to learn about British toast soldiers and humpty dumpty, and Skorloff and I had Guinness for lunch. Good times. After that, we visited the Skorloff-Girl residence and I marveled at all the progress he's made on the house in the last three years. I think it mostly has to do with the addition of Girl, and the contractor Skorloff hired.

Then we went to a football party to watch the Texas Longhorns lose a great football game. Good job guys! I forgot that the object of football is turn the ball over to the other team as many times as possible. I'm glad you cleared that up for us.

After loafing around for a while, we got off our collective asses and went bowling with some other folks I hadn't seen since I left SA in 2004. They reassured me nothing had changed since I left. That was good to know. So, when are you moving???

I discovered two important and profound things while bowling that night. First: bowling with a beer in one hand will improve your performance. Second: bowling with your non-dominant hand will also improve your performance. Net result? If you're right-handed, hold a beer in your right hand and bowl with your left. I promise your score will go up.

Everyone slept in Sunday morning and we ate lunch at Twin Sister's, which is kind of like Liberty Bar, except with less alcohol and more breakfast. I caught a three o'clock flight and was sped off back to Dallas just in time to chill out at home for a little while and head to band practice at six.

It was a fun and crazy weekend and I had a great time. Thanks again to the coolest girls in San Antonio for driving me around and playing host for a weekend. You are both welcome in Dallas any time.

Thank you, Evil I. Yes, I did pass my silly lawyer test. And thank goodness. It was kind of important, and yes, I was drunk most of the weekend.

In other news, I turned 28 last week. Almost forgot to tell you. The past couple weeks have been a little nuts whatwith my birthday and the whole silly lawyer test results things.

And guess who's going to see Regina Spektor on Thursday? Me and Girl, who we will call G, because her name happens to start with G, which is convenient. I wanted to propose to Regina at the concert, but that might not be the best idea since G will be there and all. She would probably put the kaibosh* on that. Either way, I'm really excited. I'm hoping Regina plays Dusseldorf. It's become my favorite song of hers. I also managed to hook some people at work on Regina and they are going to the show as well. I think Regina should move to Dallas so we can start a band. A punk band. Can you see it? I can. I bet she'd be all about a punk band.

* More info here.

Does blogging from a blackberry on public transportation in Guanajuato make me a douche?

I played a prank on one of the women in the Accounting department last summer when I was an intern at the law firm. It was harmless and fun. I replaced her chair with an identical-looking reject I found at the office that happened to have a broken hydraulic lift resulting in the chair's sinking to the bottom of its height adjustment as soon as it was sat on. I also switched everything around on her desk so that anything that was on the right side was in its corresponding place on the left side. As a result of this move, I gained a reputation as something of a prankster in the office. This was not my intention, though I am not necessarily surprised.

For Christmas, one of the gifts my managing attorney gave me was rather peculiar. She gave me a prank kit of 12 pranks. I can't decide if she's condoning my prankish behavior or challenging me to apply it, perhaps on her. At either rate, she already blew my cover by giving me a box of pranks in front of the entire firm. Of course our firm's gift exchange was done with the entire firm present (there are only about 15 of us) so everyone knows that I am now in possession of a prank kit.

At either rate, I might use the boxed pranks as diversions for more sinister pranks. No one is safe.

Ford says it owns the copyrights to all pictures of its cars - even pictures owners take of their own cars. Link from Slashdot.

You know you’ve reached a new level in your career when you receive an invitation to a training course that exclaims: “Walk the Red Carpet with the Stars of Criminal Defense!”

The scary thing is that part of me wants to go.

I'm off to Austin this weekend to see the kiddos, aka M&M aka Max and Maya aka my niece and nephew. It will be a good trip. I need a break. Work has been rough the past couple weeks. I inherited a monstrous case and it was my turn for it to overwhelm me, and overwhelmed I was. I might take my bike to ride around the beautiful hills around my sister's house. Outside is calling me. Clarity is calling me. I need to clear my head. There's a lot of crud in there and I'm hoping a change of scenery will help. I feel kind of broken. Maybe Austin can fix me.

Oh yeah, it snowed here in Dallas yesterday. I woke up and found an inch or two of snow on my car. Fun.

Happy weekend.

I didn't get to confirm that she was really Q T. Oh well.

My parents and friends are without power. I spent most of my life in Houston and I don't remember any hurricane causing this much damage, and Ike wasn't even that severe of a hurricane. If all goes according to plan, I will be in Houston this weekend helping my parents clean up and get things back in order. Thankfully, their house wasn't damaged.

In other news, um, I have no real other news. Except for that the summer is over and it's officially been one year since I started working full-time as a lawyer. It's been a great year. Challenging, but great, and I'm looking forward to the next year. A lot of interesting stuff is happening with copyright law and music law, stuff that no one except copyright law geeks like me care about, but here's one thing that you guys might appreciate: Lars Ulrich Fine with Metallica Album Leak.

Today is the last day of the July Texas bar. Good luck to the bar takers! You're almost done. If you're anything like me, you will have made big plans to go get shit-faced right after the bar, but you'll actually go straight to bed.

It's been a long time since I read a book. According to this blog, the last time I posted about a book was January 8, 2007. This would correspond directly with my last semester of law school, which was concluded with the following chain of events that probably explain why I haven't read a book since:

1. Studying for last semester exams
2. Studying for the Bar
3. Taking the bar
4. Moving to Dallas
5. Starting my job

Plenty of people read books during the above events. I didn't. At least I don't think I did, or at least I didn't blog about it, which means I probably didn't. Though I may have started two books that I did not finish (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Guns, Germs, and Steel).

My manager lent me a book called The Book Thief, which I also started, and also did not finish. The introduction did not hold my attention and I got bored. So it sat next to my bed. For about two years. Last night, I decided to give it another try. I'm glad I did. It's really, really good. The structure was a little odd at first. I didn't know what to make of the occasional "FYI" comments from the narrator in bolded and centered text. But I pushed through the first few chapters and it all started to flow eventually. I think I'll finish this book. The first one in at least two years.

I don't know why i took such a long break between reading books recreationally. Maybe the Bar sapped away any interest I had in reading, maybe the task of transitioning from law student to lawyer took a lot out of me. Who knows. Either way, it feels good to read a story again. After reading contracts and agreements and licenses for two years, I think I'm ready for some reading that does not include the word "hereby."

The winter has forced me to take my cycling indoors. This nifty bike trainer has been providing what paltry amount of exercise I am able to wring out of myself in these lazy winter months.

Also amusing is my special concoction of bike trainer equipment. No, not the metal contraption attached to the rear wheel. I'm talking about the ancient and perfectly-sized textbook holding up the front wheel so that it is level with the raised rear wheel. That textbook is none other than my Constitutional Law textbook. I know, I know. Shame on me. It contains our Constitution. Not to mention it was one of my favorite classes in law school. But after many years of sitting unopened on a shelf in my study, it now sits unopened underneath my bicycle wheel. Is that so bad? At least it's serving a purpose now.

Apologies to my Con Law professor. And all Con Law professors out there. Maybe I should have used my Civil Procedure books. Man, that shit was boring.