is he wearing a welders helmet?

i wear glasses. my glasses cost more that every sock, pant, shirt and short that i own. some may think i'm using these overblown descriptors to simply add import thus emphasizing the point, but i'm not. if this were barker's showcase showdown my specs would be valued higher than my entire wardrobe. although, this info is for those who have never met me, because those that have, know this, tell me this and sadly shake their heads at this routinely.

let me tell you a story. my mother has one hobby: collecting pictures and then finding and placing them in frilly frames all valued under 7.99. for my wedding, she made two photo assortments of marty and i crammed with grainy shots of us growing up. at the reception while walking past some people hunched over these curiosities i overheard the following hushed conversation in reference to my seventh grade school picture:

man: why is he wearing shop glasses.
woman: those aren't shop glasses, those are his regular glasses.
man: oh, damn.

oh damn is right. and as i was saying, my current glasses cost more than all of my clothes combined. but it wasn't just this experience that moved me so. childhood trauma aside, i've simply never understood (some) people's logic in regard to their face hardware versus their wardrobe. assuming you are one who requires eye wear, you are wearing them daily. daily! as in everyday! and unless you are me, that super-rad sweater-vest you got from old navy or the gap or af or the other place where everyone seems to buy their clothes, it may get worn once, maybe twice and on a good day thrice a month and that's of course only seasonal wear. so in summary, many people, perhaps not you, will spend more money on five sweaters which they may, may collectively wear 30 times in a year than they would on something hanging off their face, something people actually look at, each and every day of the year. sometimes i just don't get folks. i love the differences in 'em, don't try corn-holing me here, i just don't get 'em.

and no, i will not be posting the picture in question anytime soon. i'm not that hard-up for readers just yet.

ellie mae better be smokin'

so did you hear there's going to be yet another reality tv show next season. this one's a real life beverly hillbillies deal. the story goes that cbs is going to take applications from 'lower middle class' families and will then let the anointed ones live in some mansion in beverly hills for one year, documenting their and others acclimation to the process. while one might think that this is bordering on pissing the cruelty to animals faction off, cbs assures subscribers that's not where they're headed with it.

"CBS vice president of alternative programming Ghen Maynard said the series will have a humorous tone, though with a respect for the family..."

oh to be sitting in the room when this one was pitched. i'm sure all the execs were thinking the same thing: six slow and simple virginia hillbillies in the most judgmental and ill-suited locale possible. this just screams exercise in respect if i've ever seen it.

you know the reality show i want to see? i want to see the show that takes cbs vice president, ghen maynard out of his corporate tower, strips him of all his assets and clout, and then kicks him out the back of a van in backwoods alabama naked and with the word 'pedophile' written on his chest with an indelible marker. cameras would stealthily follow his progress and take in all the wacky hi-jinks and madcap hilarity sure to ensue. now that would be funny. very funny, yet respectful.

x's and o's for the more voracious of the bunch

this site is know as many things to few people. my favorite moniker-maker is ?he-who is-not-afraid-to-use-naughty-words-in-his-blog-ed?. in addition to his current descriptor of ?the whole life catalog?, he previously referred to my site as ?troy has his whole dang life online?. thanks for the kind and apt descriptors f-bomb ed.

in addition i?ve recently gotten the impression, from another blogger, that i?ve been neglecting my viewing audience. to this, i agree. i have been taking you for granted and depriving you of the details you have become accustomed and addicted to. so in attempt to live up to big ed?s nomenclature and to push the plunger for buddy james? awaiting needle, allow me to share some details from my recent life to get everyone up to speed.

more recently than i?d like to admit i wore the same pair of pants 23 days in a row. and, if you?re asking the same question marty did (have you washed those this month?), the answer is a confident no.

when not wearing the 23-day pants, i wore the same pair of shorts, which i will call, for simplicity sake, the 23-day shorts. and again the answer to you and marty?s question would be a second confident no.

i kicked a bella-discarded pickle part under the stove instead of throwing it in the garbage.

crouching near the ground in my work clothes i saved 8 earthworms from a post rain sun and droves of killer ants, despite many concerned looks by passerby's.

i recently watched the complete first season of OZ in two days. that would be 13 hours worth of humor for the uninitiated.

after the neighbor?s dog licked my hand, i wiped the slobber off on the back of bella's shirt. (for those gasping at my lack of respect, allow me to report that she didn?t seem to mind).

so as you can see, all?s well and going as expected in troy-ville. thanks for your patience and continued intrigue and i promise (meaning i will try as long as it is not inconveniencing to me) to keep you better apprised of my happenings.

can someone roll down a damn window!

10 days off work
16 days away from home
2,600 miles over construction-ridden interstates
48 hours in a rented mini van
4 uproarious travel partners
10 north american states
8 sunny days on the beach
9 competitive days of tennis
1 lap around d.c.'s mall
16 iterations of mamma mia on the hi-fi
1 backyard wedding
5 tetris competitions
7 episodes of world's scariest police chases
1 great house-sitter

and after all of the above blessings it was this single item

1 open flatulence rule

that turned what should have been a frolic-filled holiday into an every man for themselves version of survivor on wheels.

and, the only reason i'm not filled with hate given this tenet of war can be gleaned in that it was i who proved the victor in this improvised test of perseverance and dedication to all that is unhealthy to eat and subsequently digest.

you can go hard or you can go easy, but know this, you will go

for those sending money and thoughts in the name of the tv-cart family (08.07.02), here's a follow-up.

bastard,

my grown, lazy and fat ass has banished the devil box to the hinterland.

for the record, i stayed up until three last night watching it and am exhausted, gained five pounds, feel like shit and i'm not going to say anything to you about changes in the quality of my marriage or sex life.

you grown and portly friend will not be watching the super bowl from his own couch.

sierra

not tell me about the particulars of his marriage? perhaps not in an email and maybe not even today but unless he intends on severing all personal ties to me and never looking me in the eye again, this is a story that will be told.

vacation? this feels just like work.

so i'm walking into the rising tide of the atlantic ocean. this is about the third, maybe fourth time i've been in such waters. the waves are getting higher, first hitting my waist, then my chest. given my imposing five foot two frame it didn't take long for the waves to dance about my face. at this point i presented my back to the white-capped waves because i'm smarter than water. as i was congratulating myself on this innovation of thought, a not-too-modest wall of water came from behind and swept my no-longer-that-imposing frame into its dominion and away we went. after being easily spun around in its wash and thinking this was kinda fun, mr water slammed me hard on my back against the sand causing the air to leave my lungs and salt-water to enter my mouth, via the nose, for my added pleasure. after being rolled and thrashed about for a moment, the current loosened and i shot up with that "yeah, I'm all right, no worries here" pose.

about 20 minutes later as we were packing up to leave, i bent over to grab something and approximately a half cup of sea water came pouring out of my nose. allow me to re-visit the highlights: nostrils, out, 1/2 cup of water.

that said, a travel mate told me that what happened there is routine and can even violate other orifices. i pondered this for a moment, just a single moment. allow me to re-visit the highlights: violate, other, orifices.

why isn't my daddy like other daddies?

i'm going to be away for a short bit. not the kind of 'away' that your uncle went on when you were eight. but not a whole lot different from that either. the brochure for the re-assignment clinic is vague about internet access so i'll have to feel the whole connected thing out, between procedures that is.

and oh yeah, i can assure you that this month's menu is a rare occurrance and we'll be back full-force come september.

i laughed, i cried, i shook my booty

the new musical Mama Mia has one very significant thing going for it; it is not Cats. and even with this on their side, they were not dissuaded from abba-lutely blowing everyone in the forum out of their chairs by night?s end. this show rawks! between the charged music, frenzied choreography and striking set this production is one of the most entertaining i?ve seen in some time. and as if the above points weren?t enough, thin when tan girl had to hold her nose to prevent her patented nasal-snorting laughter from overtaking the auditorium ... and thus creating a twenty seat chasm between us and the next closest patron.

should mama mia wend its way through your hamlet, buy! buy! buy!

our lawn mower is in the attic

we keep our microwave in the basement. have for years. and the years before that, we didn't have one. when company is over and they want to heat up their coffee or warm a plate of food, we take their morsel, disappear into the basement and return with a piping hot rendition of said item. you might think we would have to explain this a lot, but most of the people we hang out with surpass this paltry idiosyncrasy tenfold and don't think anything of it: "oh the nuke-box is in the basement, sure, where else would it be?"

allow me to proffer the following as evidence. some couple friends of ours tv lives on one of those black, wheeled audio visual carts in the garage ... a disconnected garage in at a home located in the country. as a rule they don't watch tv. as a helper to this rule, that can't keep the tube in the house, lest they may break this mandate. but when company stays with them, in comes the cart with the shiny picture box. here is where you get to envision my grown and portly friend pushing an a.v. cart across a grassy and bumpy backyard into the home so said visitors don't think them foolish or a tad on the eccentric side.

a situational side-effect of this routine comes from the effort required to return the cart to it's spiderwebby home all the way on the other side of the lawn. in getting it in, there is incentive, company and all. in getting it out all there is effort, and work and a hundred pound pain in the ass on wheels. given this, sometimes the tv cart out-endures the company. this is bad. this is very bad. because as you can imagine, there's a good reason the cart lives next to the family automobile.

i received the following email in regard to a sign left by my friend's wife, taped to the tv during its latest tour in their home:

Anne is usually an unintentionally funny person. This TV sign is her most intentionally funniest moment. She was getting tired of the TV being in the house and taped a sign over the screen after I left for work so that I would see it when I came home and went to turn it on. The sign's "caption" reads, (I'm paraphrasing.... although the sign remains taped to the side of the TV, which is 10 to 20 feet away, I'm too lazy to walk over and check) "I am the devil box, take me back to the garage". And there's a horned red Satan with dialogue balloons that say: "I will make you depressed", "I will make you fat", "I will ruin your marriage", "I will make you sleep deprived", "I will destroy your sex-life"

given my friends unwillingness to even check the actual writing on the sign for the above email, i'm thinking they will be watching the next super bowl wherever the tv now rests.

what? did he just say cat-fight?

for those who asked about girl fighting park (circa yesterday?s post). first, you should keep your freakish desires a little closer to your chest. second, i could explain, but i?m certain your depraved imagination can do better than my truth. so let those gelatinous cerebellums dance away divining whatever you wish to divine from a place known as girl fighting park.

i'll wear them, but they don't have to be clean

after getting home from our nightly trek to girl fighting park, bella and i were met at the door by a sour-faced marty. e-love can't play tennis tonight, she told me. suck. do you want to know why? damn straight i want to know why his slacking ass is dogging at the last minute on a previously scheduled tennis night because i'm getting a little fed up with it. he's at the hospital. oh.

it seems that while at an outdoor event earlier in the day e passed out in the bleachers. while his wife was tending to this he started having seizures (allow me to add that he wasn't off the hook on tennis prior to this). it would also seem that a byproduct of said seizures is he made a little wee-wee in his shorts*. later at the hospital as the doctors were in e's room discussing the issue, they repeatedly used the phrase "urinary incontinence" in discussing his condition. every time the white coats referred to this love frustratedly proclaimed from his bed, "hey guys, it's called pissing my pants, you can just say 'he pissed his pants' or if you prefer, 'the subject then pissed his pants'."

man do i adore e-love.

* now something to understand about my friend is that he rarely wears underwear. i am a great proponent of this behavior and know few sound reasons to refute the practice, until now. had e been wearing an appropriate undergarment, it would have added some bounty-like absorption power to the equation, but with this missing apparel his shorts were forced to shoulder the full aquatic burden thus making the mishap appear a little more voluminous than may have been necessary. note to self, wear thick cotton boxers when going to an outdoor dog show in st louis during the summertime.

as a side-note and to add scientific validity to this story (b/c this site is all about scientific validity), it was explained to e that the seizure occurred because after he passed out he was in a sitting position and when blood could not get to his brain, his body freaked out in attempt to get him flat. furthermore, this particular doctor said that this is also why you don't see standing, enclosed phone booths anymore. because, people would pass out in them due to heat, stuffiness, whatever and then would go into seizures because they couldn't lie flat and would oftentimes hurt themselves by hitting their heads against the glass/metal. fact, fiction or urban legend. that's for you to decide.

embarrassed by that? it?s not even in my top 10.

if you wandered into the what i'm hearing section, you may have noticed it has a new look. in spending the last few days hacking on that, i devoted many cycles on listening to music, thinking about music, organizing my music and even laying hands on some new music. in fact, this month's offering comes from bookguy. now this unemployed bloke jet sets all over the planet and the one dirge he returns with has a total of nine unique words in it, and they're not even in english. sheesh. and, of what little spanish i know, these scant words don't even seem right. i asked bookguy about this and he replied:

me gustas tu - indirect object pronouns precede the verb. in this case the literal translation is 'you are pleasing to me', idiomatically it means i like you.

what can i say, bookguy's smart. bookguy also doesn't question native speakers on matters of their own tongue. like i said, smart. once satisfied with its grammatical correctness i listened to this nine-word, four-minute song on repeat for one hour. i'm smart too.

well, anyway, back to these random thoughts on music. one thing i recalled dealt with how my mother never knocked before coming into my room. any women reading this, please just accept that you should not walk straight into teenage boys rooms without some sort of fanfare or ceremony announcing the visit. you'll will hear things going on behind the door before it opens. this is good. you want this to be happening. ultimately i'm just trying to save you the embarrassment my mother suffered when she burst into my room and found me standing in front of a full length mirror singing and dancing to the Grease soundtrack. i was all over every move from the Greased Lightning bit, using my bed as the car. regrettably, i had the music up so loud i didn't hear her enter and continued the mini-production until her laughter overwhelmed my Optimus speaker 'system'. and, yes i had the whole arm pointing and hip bucking thing all worked out too. i don't play when i'm getting my greased lightning going.

amazingly given this trauma, somehow, years later, i was able to overcome the shame of my mother's invasion enough to ask a girl to move around funny with me on the dance floor at a junior high, all-stag affair. jenna something conceded (astoundingly) and we weaved our way through the crowd to the beginnings of hipsway's honeythief. we settled on a spot and marked it as ours by stopping, facing one another and then moving about in a seizing manner. my mother wasn't around so my body was quick to do what it does. falling into the zone, i drifted somewhere else, my head rolling back looking upwards at the tile ceiling and the random streamers coming down as my body fought an invisible enemy. i was really starting to let go, opening it up some might say, but who couldn't, this is hipsway we're talking about. but again, regrettably, my introduction to dance with other humans was cut short when my thrusting hand accidentally struck my partner in the ribcage leaving her slightly bent, holding her side and breathing irregularly. as people stopped to look and a smallish circle formed i could tell that some people may have been embarrassed by this development but those people would not have spent a moment of their life standing in their underwear, soaked with sweat, a musical playing behind them and shouting at their mother to stop laughing, get out of their room and to try knocking next time.