i know, i know

ok. so i've been away for a bit. i know. it's not that i don't still love you all or that my interest in this website has waned. neither of those things are true. the basic answer is over the last few months i have had less time available to document my life.

the first reason for this is my children. when your kids are young life often feels like a merciless beat-down that takes all of your time and energy. and this is true in many regards. you are often told that when your children are older you get your life back. this is also true in many regards. the problem no one mentions is when your children are older they like doing cool things, cool things that you want to do with them. fact is they sorta start looking like grown, real people. and not just people but people you like, i guess maybe in part because you are alike in a lot of regards. but it is also true that you start getting your own life back, which is great. problem is you don't have the bounty of free time you had when you were 25 so now you're trying to shoe-horn your own interest inbetween moments of hanging out with these, in my case, three new adults you like spending time with.

all this equates to more living of life and less writing about life.

and as if this didn't throw enought sand in the gears of time, i have a new child of sorts--my company ofCourse Scheduling. it obviously has placed certain demands on my time that aren't the sorts of things that can be back-burnered. while there is usually a natural divide between my new company and my old life, there are occasional overlaps. one collision recently happended when two months ago i decided i should start a newsletter about my industry. in doing this planning one of the things i realized was i needed a body of seed content to start the newsletter off. so i have been writing, fervently, for the last two months, only i've been writing about something other than myself, my wife and my children. while most civilians aren't probably into course scheduling for universities the evidence of my labors can be seen here: The ofCourse newsletter.

but, now that that boulder is safely perched atop its hill, i'm eager to turn my writing cycles back to the crazed lot i live with. i thought a sensible starting point might be to share a recent moment from each of the cast. so this week we will have five updates to the family scrapbook, one day for each person. obviously you can't really lead off with anyone other than the family matriarch so here i introduce the first recap: Family Scrapbook (Marty) - Your vagina is how old?.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. APRIL 2017

buck-wild!

my most pondered question in 2015 was what to do about all of this internet porn. well, not in regard to you or me but in regard to these children we are bringing up. i come from a generation where most people HAD sex before they SAW other people having sex (via video porn). that era is more wrecked and faded than the playboy you dug out of the apartment dumpsters. for your average teenage boy how many examples of intercourse, both pedestrian and outlandish, do you think they might consume before they, themselves, first engage in the act? your options are (a) none, (b) a dozen, (c) 38,956. if you answered anything other than C then i suggest your pull your head out of the sand (or worse) and join the rest of us in the existence that is actually taking place.

you might say, not my problem, i don't have boys, i thankfully only have daughters. well, who exactly do you think your daughter is going to marry einstein?

and even if you do have daughters, i, like possibly you, thought they are immune and above such hi-jinks. i have siince learned you may not be as safe as you thought.

the pre-youPorn generation likes to joke how a few "instructional" vids may have helped their game and social stock when they were figuring it all out but that joke is funny for about seven seconds which pretty much leaves the rest of your and your children's adult life to figure out how to fold their online porn conditioning into their own real-world relationship(s).

i mean consuming porn for adults who are already formed and broken and kinked in our own way is one thing but what in the world does a bottomless firehose of un-policed and un-curated and un-censored pornography do to a developing mind. fortunately for you, i know the answer: we have no idea. none. not even a start, an inkling. a fragment of a lead. all we know is it might be a good idea to nudge your children towards a career in counseling because next to tattoo removal, that is likely to be one of the most booming industries in the decades ahead.

i've got about seven months worth of things to say on this topic. i won't be starting seriously today but am giving you fair warning that this is a place we will be soon traveling so charge your phone and learn how to clear your browser history as we are going to visit in some dark, cringe-inducing and keep-you-up-at-night topics.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. OCTOBER 2015

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. SEPTEMBER 2015

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. AUGUST 2015

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. JULY 2015

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. JUNE 2015

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. MAY 2015

not always on time, but always there, for 15 years at least

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. APRIL 2015

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. MARCH 2015

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. FEBRUARY 2015

now why'd you have to go and do that?

the other day bella and i were driving and discussing a recent event. after rehashing things, she said it was ok if i posted that story on my website. how telling is it that i find posting things with the subject's permission less satisfying than when they have no idea it's coming.

absence

apologies for my recent disappearance. for the past several months i have been putting the finishing touches on my latest work project. it is the most ambitious and functionally coolest thing i've ever made. thankfully, the work has been delightful and invigorating (which equates to many hours of getting lost in the riddles at hand where what seemed like a seven minute span actually turned out to be, per the clock, a four-hour stint). over the last last three months i have worked every weekend, oftentimes both days. even over the christmas break i worked two to four hours every morning (excepting christmas of course).

while this interesting professional avalanche proved a welcome challenge, the life balance i passionately covet and proactivley protect took quite the point-blank hit. the primary victim during these episodes is my body which doesn't get the exercise or sleep it thrives on. the second casualty affects my relationships with my wife, my children and my friends which too require ongoing nurturing and care for a healthful and happy state. and lastly, my daily and weekly rituals that allow me to do things like read, and write (here) and to give back to my home and community become a collection of warm, blurred memories. thus, while it's good (and necessary in my opinion) to experience such professional sprints every now and again, it is also, by my accounting, an unsustainable lifestyle if one wishes to be healthy, married, loved and most-notably content with the full spectrum of their life.

your seeing me now is a sign that i have crested this particular hill (or jagged Himalayan-like peak rather) and am settling back into my less exotic but more steady, sustainable, and balanced (Hooah!) clip. i thank you for your patience and look forward to again visiting with you in these pages on a routine and respectful schedule.

as a curious aside, in the past fifteen years each and every one of my prior projects of similar scale took place during the arrival of one of our three children, dumb luck that, making this the first time we experienced this sort of professional onslaught while marty was of sound mind and body. this convenience helped not just a little, although i did sense her tank, like mine, was running on scant more than fumes in the last few weeks of the endeavor. thanks marta for the support and understanding, both of which share a sizable ingredient in my proudest and greatest successes in life. you rawk!

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. JANUARY 2015

that time of year again

dearmitt.com, version 2.0.

i'm a not-broke-don't-touch-it kinda guy. as such dearmitt.com has been quietly existing on the same server for the last fourteen years. in case you haven't been watching, a thing or two has changed internet-wise since 2000 so i thought it might be time for an upgrade.

in addition to running on shiny, new hardware (which if the move went well, you shouldn't notice at all) there have been two changes, both modest enough.

first, you can now travel back ten years in time using the MonoRail Archive Viewer (which lives just below the the latest posting). the archive viewer used to only offer 7 years worth of memories but can now proffer you an additional three.

the second and surely more meaty of the two features is the site now offers a proper, meaningful SEARCH function. for reasons i cannot explain, google's cataloging of my content was ridiculously terrible (they thought i mentioned circumcision twice). given their reputation and record for success i'm sure the problem resides somewhere on my end but i'm too busy talking about circumcision and hating on walgreens to figure out our marital disconnect so instead wrote my own search engine. there's a link on the right-hand side of the monorail page ( WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR > > >) that will take you there.

there is a nifty feature on the search page i think some of you might enjoy. you will find two buttons below the search box. one that says "SEARCH ALL dearmitt.com content" and the other which says "view all updates from the LAST 30 DAYS". the SEARCH ALL option will, obviously, scour all the main nooks and crannies of the site: the monorail, the main gallery, the troyscripts, the family gallery, the reading section. a few of the galleries and sub-pages are not yet part of the main search. this may get fixed down the line but there's a reasonable chance it might not get fixed down the line. it kinda depends how many circumcision debates i get into in the years ahead.

the second button, or the LAST 30 DAYS button, might be a good fit for folks who swing by every few weeks as it will nicely lay all of the content, no matter what section of the site it got posted to, before you in a clean orderly line. additionally for your convenience, you can bookmark right to that page using this link.

i hope you enjoy the new digs.

so impossible seeming

the new normal

first off, sorry for dropping out like that. i do believe it is the first time i have dissapeared for that long, sans explanation in the fourteen year existence of this site, but, well, you know, life.

the lapse began after i had one of my most tumultuous weeks i can remember. there were dramatically high highs which the universe followed up with unexpectedly low lows. by week's end i was a bit of a spent mess. everything is back to great though. it just took a minute to let my mind cut it all down into consumable, bite-sized chunks. minutes up. chunks swallowed. moving forward. trending upward.

if you're wanting examples, i won't bore you with the lows, as who wants to document or read about those, but will share a sample high. on may 25 i drove bella across town to attend a roller-skating party. whenever bella wants to get somewhere on time she taps her time-obsessed father who attempts to respect other peoples' time as much as his own. when we pulled into the lot i commented on how empty it appeared. after checking the invite in her lap bella smiled at me uncomfortably and confessed that she may have gotten the time wrong and we were an hour early. now this may seem minor to some but sixty mid-day, beautiful-weathered weekend minutes to a guy who likes distance bike riding and reading on the porch is like four hours any other time of the week. no stranger to my ticks, my daughter knew this was no minor mis-read. i breathed deeply and circled us out of the barren lot at a clip a police car would have noticed. wanting to avoid the busy avenue that brought us here i turned us deeper into the neighborhoods and we unhurriedly glided our way through the tree-lined streets pointing out houses and yards we found interesting.

after passing a sprawling church complex i made a u-turn and pulled into its lot. i drove to the dead-center of the large, carless, blacktop and turned off the car.

BELLA
what are you doing?

TROY
you said you wanted to learn how to drive.

BELLA
what? like now?

TROY
yeah, why not do something worthwhile with this unexpected free-time.

BELLA
oh my god! oh my god! yes. ok.

i then taught my thirteen year old (just turned) how to drive a stick-shift ... in seven minutes. the brief experience, twenty minutes end to end, culminated with bella driving figure eights in a church parking lot. my 91 bmw softly and slowly sailing across the smooth pavement, windows down, sunroof open and the biggest smile possible stretched across my fearless daughter's sunlit face. after we traded seats and headed back to the skating rink i told her that she, at thirteen, could do what a great number of adults could not, and she should feel like a bad-ass because of it. her beaming face and quaking frame revealed that she did.

so these are the sorts of things (e.g. the highs at least) i'm experiencing and as long as i'm the one charged with both having and documenting the happenings, the math will quickly show there are just not enough hours in the day. but i don't want to become that guy who just appears every now and again, and only when it is convenient for him and never for you (e.g. like that fair-weather college pal who is only hangs out between love interests) so i've given some thought to how i can continue to nurture this website (and our relationship) and still lead my new hurly-burly life. here's what i've come up with. if you look in on monday and there is no posting, there will be no content all week. but if you look in on monday and there is a post, then there will be a post every day of the week. i think in a relationship like this there needs to be some sort of understood expectation.

of course the thought of just stopping rolls off my mind's ticker-tape machine every now again but for personal reasons i wish to continue recording my family's moments and i have learned this vehicle is an imperative part of that commitment. for those of you that enjoy reading along, you incent me to pull my act together. without you, it's a very hard affair so i appreciate your on-going participation more than you understand.

my two core objectives with this site are:
1. to continue chronicling the funny, sad, curious, and note-worthy moments that occur in my home full of children.
2. to see that what i document is thoughtful, edited, and not being done for the wrong reasons (which has surely happened from time to time in the past).

most important to me is that i don't create an expectation that forces me to produce content against a schedule i can't maintain, well at least maintain and try to keep the content on point and thoughtful. because i find when we let such standards go, pride in the product being produced is not far behind.

so far, so good

people have long chided me that my kids would one day revolt towards this website. the below exchange between bella, age 13, and i affirms my choice, thus far at least. and, yes, i'm documenting this here in case her position ever changes.

in short

in the middle of last year, i retired. not from my proper day job but from doing freelance work. in taking five minutes to do the math, i observed that the amount of enjoyment (e.g. cash money) traded for the amount of effort (e.g. my saturday nights) were disproportionate, and wildly so. so i forfeited the enjoyment by no longer buying things (things i didn't need in the first place) and instead of working through the night each and every weekend, would read books, and watch movies with my daughter, and go on dates with my wife, and work obsessively on my cross stitch skills.

and equally important, instead of making things i was essentially paid to care about, i now make things i personally care about. some would call these pet projects and is, i'd guess, what many old men of this generation do instead of diddling with electronics on their basement workbenches. while many of my projects are for private use, today i'm sharing the first public project to come from my reclaimed saturday nights, In Short Books.


click to jump

that good life

stepping away again. be back on tuesday, march 25th.

salvaged

mr jason kottke, my digital-hero, recently wrote an article about the death of the blog. the subject obviously caught my eye and i quickly clicked through. as i read i felt more old and more out of touch until i came to the line that read: and i instantly went from feeling totally disconnected to being exactly right where i'm supposed to be. and i can for sure count on one hand the number of times that has happened in my life.

with benefits akin to compound interest

i'm sure by now you've all seen this video, but still...



this strikes me beyond the well done sentimentality as it points to a gaping hole in my screen policing philosophy, a hole my children are just beginning to discern. the loophole is this: i will allow my children immense access to technology in the name of active creation. and i will restrict, with equal vigor, the time they use technology for numb consumption. as for my criteria of what is creation, they are broad. i'm indifferent if you're plotting out a website, writing a short story, shooting a video or even trying to make a wonky maze in minecraft—if that's the plan, plug in and hack away. conversely, if the agenda is to troll other people's websites, read the stories they crafted, watch their video-making achievements, or play a wonky maze someone else made, time is up, log off, go outside and get dirty.

bella is the first to begin to glean this paradox in her father because even while on restriction from screens, she's noticed any kid with a plan in hand gets greenlit to the machine of their choosing. before you start picking at my methonds, please know one needs more than a fanciful vision to get past the logon screen. outlines, sketches, mockups are the sorts of keys that can make the doors swing wide. lacking that level of planning, a child will be sent off to better collect their thoughts. if they can't get the plan on paper they either weren't serious or they weren't ready.

and if you gave me ten years, i don't think i could have transformed this belief with anywhere near the payload this apple ad achieves in a mere ninety seconds. fully ridiculous. holy smokes are their people good (ahem, creators).

as for me i think i've done about all the creating i've got in me for 2013 so i'll be stepping away to relax by the fire, smile at the dinner table, and tell animated stories with friends and family while lazing on comfy furniture next to lit trees. may your next weeks be rich with laughter, contentment and liesure while we all get a societal kitchen pass to spend time with our friends and families.

see you on january 6th.

p.s. speaking of creating, after entering this post into the database, i noticed that it is the 2,001st entry in the monorail blog. things, good and bad, do have a reliable way of accumalating on us. it's the quiet beauty of the slow drip.

our last homage to photography, for now at least

it's a wrap

in the third year of the everyman, to thank my judges, i decided to host a dinner for them. early on i only had five judges and could fit my entire judging panel (and their spouses) around my dinner table. so marty and i (mostly marty for sure) prepared a scrumptious home style dinner and we had a dinner party.

now, the thing i hadn't considered in all this (as there always has to be that one pesky unseen) was something about how i chose my judges. early on i didn't want any overlap in the interest or approach of my judging panel. thus, i carefully hand-picked people who were distinct from my other judges, the only commonality between them being a genuine love for photography. it wasn't until they all stood in the same room looking at one another that the flaw in my dinner-party math came to light. aside from this joint interest in photography, these people did not share a single interest in common.

i had a school teacher, an accountant, a graphic designer, an IT manager, and a guy who sold 50's toys on ebay for a living. these people sat in the living room where the long silences were broken only by short one-word answers to desperate attempts at conversation. when dinner was served the awkward stillness persisted but just played out in the dining room. when we all sat and dishes were politely passed i frantically—in my mind at least—tried to get something started but as i scanned the room any question asked of one was not of interest to their neighbor. someone actually commented about the weather. this is the point i physically felt the desperation of the moment. i couldn't believe a dinner party hosted by marty and i resorted, minutes into the meal, to a mention of weather. fingers slipping from the last handhold, i flailed for something.

TROY
so, what did folks think about the photo that won landscape?

JUDGE A
oh, i thought it was lovely. such a unique take on an often-shot subject.

JUDGE B
lovely? unique? it was trash. i can't believe it placed let alone won.

JUDGE C
i wouldn't call it trash but i thought it maybe shouldn't have placed as high as it did. the clear winner of the event for me was macro/abstract.

JUDGE B
for me it was black and white.

JUDGE D
finally. something i can agree with.

and here or shortly after here the table broke out into the most vigorous discussion our dining room has ever seen. the din from multiple heated and excited conversations that involved various combinations of people moved about energetically and held through the rest of the evening. i was astonished both at how powerful this one shared experience between these greatly varied people could be and how sad it was i didn't anticipate the potential sooner. i'm a dolt.

since that initial dinner, the everyman 'wrap' party has taken place every year, save one given a puke-illness my kids brought home from school. i've had judges skype from italy and i've had judges drive in from tennessee (where i paid for their lodging at a fancy nearby hotel, thus making them feel like a for-real celebrity). the annual wrap parties stand as one of our yearly highlights and one of my more favorite parts of the everyman.

pre-everyman

another semi-related story to the everyman deals in the buildup to the contest. in discussing the early motivation to get art, i mentioned going to an art fair and buying some photos for my newly purchased (and bare) home. during the transaction i struck up a conversation with the photog's wife who also served as his manager. she mentioned the newly forming web and their need to get her husband's work online but confessed they were having problems with it. having recently gotten into the game i gave her my sympathy admitting there was a lot of mystery to in using this new medium well, especially in the arts. but i waved my arm towards their wall of photography and said their task was simpler than most as the biggest thing they had to do was stay out of the way of her husband's amazing photography and let the art wash over the user. she conceded to the sense of the approach but gave the oft-used 'easier said than done' in reply. looking over the man's stunning work hanging on the temporary panels of his booth, various treatments for porting the images to the web came to mind. i asked her if she would be interested in an exchange—a web design for some prints (the prints were quite pricey for a fellow who just bought his first home). i added if they didn't like my suggestions they wouldn't owe anything in return. if they did, i would let them determine the quantity and size of prints they felt fair in exchange. she smilingly agreed.

as is the way with true inspiration in a matter of days i had produced a site design i thought would suit them well. i packaged up several screen shots and emailed them to the woman. as is the case whenever you share your artistic creations i sat back and awaited their reaction. none came. not after a day. not after three days. not after two weeks. i obviously took the silence as a solid rejection of my work and will say it injured my confidence in the craft and vigor for the trade more than i'd like to admit. i tried to push the failure out of my mind but the taunting notion routinely skipped through the forefront of my awareness like a teasing classmate.

then on a bored weekend night months later—i said it maimed me to embarrassing degrees—i pulled up the photog's site to try to see what they could like in their present design that my work did not improve upon. after the page loaded i stared at not the faltering design i had looked to replace, but the design i had sent them, albeit a clumsy implementation of it. i stared at the page using my design for several minutes trying to make sense of what i was seeing. i scrolled to the footer and about pages looking for a mention of credit. i found none.

Anger took the Rejection that had been moping around my brain by the collar and threw her out the front door with a flailing kick in the ass. the few times Recognition's bright face dared to knock on the door to celebrate the acceptance of our design Anger turned her away with a rough push in the shoulder.

i talked to marty about what happened. she told me to call them and say that its a sad world when one creative steals the work of another creative and especially after one supported the other by buying their work. i silently listened to marty's prudent advice but instead said things like, "nah, it doesn't really matter" or "if you have to say those words to an adult they won't matter". so i did nothing. well, that's not entirely true. every month or two i'd pull the website up and look at my design and feel the anxiety of emotions that sputtered and flared.

then the email campaign began. every few months i'd receive an email from this photographer announcing his latest prints and inviting me to see them on his newly designed website. to add to it, they even modeled the email campaign using my design. after the third email, i sent a polite request to be removed from their list and the following email exchanges took place. the two things i learned from this ordeal are:

1. every time i get myself worked up over something, it is almost always for naught in the end.
2. when marty is kind enough to offer advice, i should be sensible enough to use it because it is, also, almost always spot-on counsel.

a few historical exhibits

in honor of the everyman release, i'm devoting the week to everyman related matters (that add to details missed in the everyman story told a few months back). today i'm sharing two of the most noteworthy bits of history:

1. the original photograph
i can put hands on every single image ever entered into the photo contest, but miserably, i have lost the image that began it all—the image from chris mcgrath's coffee table taken of his brother in law taking a giant bite from a plum. the only remnant i have from what i sometimes call "the original entry" that sparked it all is from the 1st everyman where i used the image in the masthead.



2. the kottke explosion
then there was the post heard around the web. every time i the tell the story i obviously mention how simple and unadorned the mention that brought the everyman to the world was. jason kottke's wonderful brevity allows me to repeat it, verbatim, in each re-telling. what that pithy three-word link did for the everyman speaks to the power and potential of the world wide web which can still surprise when we see it flex its muscles in ways we weren't expecting.

the wait is over.

geriatric

i somehow forgot to mention one of my favorite everyman moments. in 2011 i was contacted by a company looking to obtain rights for one of the from the attic entries. i sent the inquiry on to the original entrant and a few months later saw the image used in a chevy add during the 2011 world series. it's the image at the 40 second mark and was the 2008's 3rd place from the attic winner. never before was the mission of the everyman, to get images out there that otherwise weren't out there, ever more succintcly realized. pretty dang neat.



further, i've since found out it caused a bit of a stir as the commercial's creators were accused of lifting the concept from a website. Did Chevy Steal This Commercial Idea From a Popular Blog?. noting they used the everyman image in demostration.

the everyman story - part 4. the future

part three is over here

my dining room is collaged with photography from around the world. occasionally a visitor to our home will stroll through this room and exit asking wondrously if the same person took all of those photos. laughingly, we explain the source. i will then add that if a single eye captured that wildly diverse collection of imagery they would be one of the best regarded photographers of our time. sometimes at dinner we play a game where someone will say something like, "how many frogs?" or "how many airplanes" and without looking at the walls everyone at the table has to guess how many pictures containing the noted item are on display. after everyone guesses, a eye-scanning inventory is made. also, a for sure favorite for my kids is to point out all the naked people pictures to visiting kids.

truth is i now have enough photography i could cover virtually every bare space of my home. i've been trying to convince marty to let me do themes throughout the house, like, i'm dying to decopauge the bathroom with photos of bathrooms from around the world, wallpapering every inch of plastered space, including the ceiling with images of toilets and people using toilets (yep, i got 'em). she's held consistently resistant to this design direction over the years. i've promised her that were she to green light collaging the full home, we could be on our city's house tour and be known as 'that picture house'. this surprisingly holds zero appeal for her (i think she imagines the expense of replacing all the broken frames from the kids knocking them off their nails in their rough and tumble way of life). so instead of consuming the entire house, i continue to tweak the display in the dining room, the one room marty has given me full control over, adding more photos each year as well as rotating what is displayed from year to year, pulling new photos from boxes that hold the overflow.

given the laughable overstock of great imagery, around 30,000 images at this time, it has become a near annual tradition to contemplate winding the operation down. i mean is there really going to be a twentieth annual everyman? a thirtieth? each time i walk down this path i of course pull up the site and spin through its pages. this activity sucks me in like it has done to many a web tourist before. i marvel at the range and creativity and vividness of the images. the activity inevitably makes me remember the numerous random compliments i've received in my inbox many of which express their adoration of the everyman and how it is their favorite contest. my all-time favorite email came from a former student who was studying abroad. she said she was sitting in a cabin (somewhere in europe, i can't recall where) talking with other students from around the world. one of them told the group of this great photo contest they loved called the everyman. my student was giddy to share that she not only knew the creator but had seen 'the dining room' that showcased the imagery. and every now and again i recall what was probably the most significant email to ever appear in the everyman inbox. it came from a woman who described an office ritual where she and a group of co-workers gathered around a desk at lunchtime and looked through the entries. she explained that the next image in the gallery would be pulled up and the group would take it in and then make their comments about it, discussing the merits or weaknesses of the image and/or title. she said they protected the pace in which they moved only doing so many each day as to not run out of images for the next day, week, month. this email curiously arrived when i was closer than ever to ending the contest. i was dreading the amount of work and effort i was about to undertake in announcing another year. that one crazily-timed note saved the everyman that year (and thus every subsequent year). speaking of timing, i just received an email yesterday day while crafting this post asking if i ran any more photo contests because they liked this contest better than the others for amatuers they were finding and hoped that i ran or knew of others like it. so between the love of the imagery and the supportive audience, this annual ritual of contemplating ending the everyman becomes a more futile exercise with every passing year which i guess means there probably will be a twentieth and even thirtieth everyman. especially as long as i have viable candidates for the everyman spirit award.

but to be fully honest, the biggest reason to push on is the quiet faith i have that one year marty will break down and let me take over the bathroom.

the everyman story - part 3. the early years

part two is over here

every day i walked the bare, lifeless walls of my home. and every day i had more samples of curious photography i'd seen casually existing in other people's homes swimming through my brain's art gallery. unfortunately, the moment i decided to announce i was holding a photo contest is not very crisp in my mind. i just remember saying on my personal website that i was holding a photo contest. the contest parameters stated that whoever sent me the best picture, as judged by me and few friends, in the next sixty days would win a hundred dollars. and by entering, you retain ownership of your photo but allow me to hang it up in my home. those few sentences pretty well sum of the extent of the early definition.

the first year received forty-two entries. all coming from people who had eaten dinner in my home. i asked two friends if they would look at the photos and tell me their favorites. together, the three of us juried the entries and picked our favorites. i compiled the results and announced the winners. i sent the number one guy a hundred bucks and hung a dozen pictures up in my dining room.

a year later i received an email from someone asking if i would be holding the photo contest again. it hadn't even occurred to me to do it twice but in thinking on it for three minutes, thought why not and announced the 2nd annual everyman. this time i received 80 entries, almost a perfect doubling of the first year, and most excitingly, a few from folks who i didn't know, from far west as california and as far east as new york.

now this year, i did something that would forever change the everyman. i emailed a guy whose website i read. he occasionally posted photographs, some of which were quite spectacular by my eye and right in the wheelhouse of my modest affair. i didn't hear back from him but hours before the deadline, my inbox chimed with an email from him that contained two entries. i can't verbalize the quiet, fist-pumping thrill this produced in my dark, lonely office (oh internet!).

me and my two pals again evaluated the entries and i announced the results. the fella from new york, one jason kottke, took third place. later that day on his personal website he made a post that said, "Third place, woo!. the 2nd place entry is my favorite." the post included a link to my results page. before this link, my site on the day of the big reveal had 37 visitors. they next day saw more the 1,500. and the day after that more than 3,500. seven days after the link the everyman was on the front page of the usa today, named the site of the day. granted the by line with the honor said, "some crazy guy in st. louis is giving away his own money to collect art for his new home." not exactly how my mother would have written it up. the next year saw 1,200 hundred entries. and the next saw 2,000. this continued for awhile until i received an email from spain asking if they could enter. on that day the everyman went international and the entries continued to climb, peaking at 7,700 entries from 80 countries a few years later.

this volume proved too much work for me and my judges and i had to dial it back a bit. these days, the contest has a 2,000 entry cap which seems to be a happy number for all involved.

part 4. the future

the everyman story - part 2. conception

part one is over here

some months after buying my house, i stopped at a friend's place to pick him up. after being let in, he asked me to wait a few moments while he finished getting ready. we talked, loudly between the rooms we were in. during the several minutes we did this, i walked around the living room taking in the books and baubles in the space. after scanning the bookshelves and walls, a snapshot on the coffee table caught my eye. it showed a close-up shot of a guy taking a large bite out of a plum. much of what would usually be captured in such a composition was tightly cropped, removing most of the extraneous details. but the unusual photo possessed a surprising amount of mood and emotion. i envisioned it blown up, fifteen feet tall, thirty feet wide in an urban art gallery framed by a stark expanse of concrete wall, people with wine glasses milling before it, discussing the merits and gestalt of the photo.

TROY
hey. this is a great picture.

CHRIS
what? which one.

TROY
the one on the coffee table.

CHRIS
what?

TROY
the guy eating the plum.

CHRIS
oh. that's a goof. we pulled it from the set to throw it out.

TROY
what?! you're throwing this out?

CHRIS
yes. it was an accident.

TROY
but it's a great shot.

CHRIS
you think so?

TROY
yeah i do.

CHRIS
well, you can have it. like i said we are just going to throw it out.

TROY
really? i can i have it?

this marks the moment the first two neurons joined and with help from complementary neurons sitting in the wings giving it mass is when the everyman truly first came into being. after this chance moment, the act of studying photography anywhere i went, whether properly framed, magneted to the fridge or messily strewn about a desk became an official pastime of mine. in little time i came to realize that great, or interesting at least, photography quietly existed everywhere, but was being seen virtually nowhere.

part 3. the early years

the everyman story - part 1. inception

over the years i've been asked a time or two about how the everyman photo contest got started. just about every time i've recounted the tale i've told a highly abbreviated version. now, as it's more than a decade mature and the memories are in peril of being handed their walking papers, i thought i should capture the history as i recall it before my brittle synapses lose the ability to recall it. so, this week, in honor of the 13th public opening of the galleries, i will recount how my 2nd most prized digital creation came into being. the first soil got turned ...

after marty and i moved from our apartment into our house. once settled, my single largest complaint about home ownership did not deal in lawn-care, failed wiring, or leaky faucets but with empty walls. the apartment we had just left had a ridiculous number of windows with essentially three of the four walls consisting of nothing but window after window, the only plastered wall in the 1920's structure being the one running down the middle of the building separating the side by side apartments. so after years of a windowed apartment, the unexpected sprawl of bland, soulless walls made our first home not warm and inviting as i'd hoped for but sad and bleak. when i asked marty about it, she gazed about as if seeing it for the first time and confessed she hadn't noticed, not one bit. at the time, i still possessed enough youthful marital optimism that i thought by simply raising the point i planted a seed of discontent in my wife but the green stalk never broke ground. even today, marty could care less if our walls and halls were as stark as they were in our first twenty four hours of possession. i reckon this adds to why marriage will always hold an element of unpredictability.

as you'd expect, just as my zeal did not move her, her lack of interest did not sway me from my vision (e.g. marital deadlock) so when i saw the flyer for an art fair in a nearby huey-huey suburb, i pitched it to marty as a way to get out on a nice day. after walking the tents on blocked-off streets, i brought marty back to my favorite display and began talking up the work. with her prior zeal she said the photos were 'nice'. sensing no love-affair on the horizon i told her i thought we should get a couple images for the house. being an understanding partner, she agreed. so i procured two large images for a startling sum of five hundred dollars and left feeling like i was about to repair the struggling mood of my house forever.

moments after walking through the door i set to finding the perfect spot for my grandiose exhibit. i found it and immediately moved to the framing and hanging and when complete stood back and took it in. the wall was spectacular, alive even. but as i turned and surveyed the surrounding space, which is another way of saying 'the rest of the house', the message stood every bit as bleak as before my renovation. as i walked the rooms and hallways and contemplated how much i just spent to cover the one little nook, and did the quick math of what it would take to cover all the other little nooks, the reality of my bland and boring house set in. unhealthy as the confession sounds, i found the situation surprisingly unsettling.

part 2. conception

some people's favorite day of the year

my summer vacation

the last day of school, we hosted a group of kids for a celebration dinner and ice cream. while eating on the front porch someone observed that of all the humans gathered here, troy was the only one who had to go to work tomorrow (and the next day, and the day after that) while they were all off for a multi-month summer break. anthony, in a concerned tone, asked, "but daddy, when is your break?"

i told him that i didn't get one, one that looked like his at least, but the good news was i didn't need one and that i was lucky to enjoy virtually all of the things i'm asked to do.

but then again, a wise man once told me to never change a winning game and stepping away for a month a year has always proven a good decision and i'm not one to snub sound advice or tinker with a well-running engine or cpu.

i do have some juicy goodness planned though so we'll pick up steam right out of the gate.

i hope you're able to obtain and enjoy a break of your own. see you on august 5th.

if personality equalled stock portfolio, these two would be in the fortune 500

i have a friend (and former student) who makes iphone games. he works with his brother and they are a most colorful duo. every week they send a mailer out to their followers about what they've been up to. there's always loads of kookiness in their sendings but then again, who'd expect anything less from a group that calls themselves butterschotch shenanigans. at the base of a recent update mailer was the following.

and before you start, and if you're like me, i'll save you the trouble of looking up the fact the TL;DR stands for "too long, didn't read".
and if you're into mobile gaming, their ever-curious wares may be found at butterscotch-shenanigans.com

let the venture capitalists scrap over this one.

i have a website idea for someone—a site that records funny things said by adults around kids, that the kids don't get, and no other adults were around to hear.

my contribution would be when alex and i shared the following exchange.

ALEX
dad, why do you call everyone 'bud'?

TROY
because don johnson already took 'pal'.

if you don't get the reference it means you did something more interesting with your friday nights in the late eighties than watching miami vice.

a favorite day for fans of the everyman photo contest.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. OCTOBER 2012

courtesy call

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. SEPTEMBER 2012

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. AUG 2012

all part of my blissfully bored master plan

summer break is one of our sweetest, civilized rituals. and who says such an inspired creation has to be reserved just for the school-centric population? surely not me. so i'm going to share in the playful exuberance of my children by taking my annual break from my duties here.

i promise it's not you and it's fully me. well, me and the stack of magazines saved up on my desk waiting for someone to leisurely leaf through them.

in case you didn't notice, i left you with one last bit of fun before shoving off.

see you on august 6th.

GONE CREATING - BACK IN TWO WEEKS

due to a project deadline, i have need to step away for a bit.

see you 3/26.

that's a wrap!

to round out this year's content, i'll leave you with my favorite photo from our colorado trip (since i've been chatting it up all week). i still remember when bella walked back from rinsing her hands, she commented on how ice cold the water was, and this in august. i'm thankful marty and i had a year with enough health and friendship and opportunity for our children to feel the cool bite of a rocky mountain lake. it is a small mark of many other fortunes. may next year prove as fruitful. best to you all.



click to enlarge

a lovely friday diversion

may i direct your attention this way where this year's everyman winners have been named. may you enjoy the vivid distraction.

you know the drill

from the attic representin'!

back in august i was contacted by an agency who licenses photos for commercials and film projects. the woman in the email asked if i would put her in contact with a past everyman winner as they would like to use her image in a chevy commercial. as i occasionally get these sorts of emails for everyman entrants, i thanked the woman for the inquiry and passed her info on to the entrant. i never heard anything back from either party and assumed my email for the entrant was dated. then last night while watching game six of the world series (amazing!!!), i saw a chevy commercial and in it i saw the photo i was asked about. few things could have made that game more enjoyable, but that surely rates.

the original photo, a third place from the attic winner back in 08.

and the commercial it was used in (photo is at the 40 second mark).

fishing, napping, AND playing hooky

i guess it's a good sign that after more than ten years of filling the pages of this site, i'm still enjoying it enough to forget to take my usual hiatus in the month of june. when i noticed in july i thought, hey that's pretty cool, and a few minutes after that i suddenly felt fatigued and short of words. those that have biked or played tennis or land polo with me know that mental fortitude in the face of steep hills or close matches or getting by good goal play is not my strong suit. so with that in my delicate-as-a-wildflower mind, i'm going to step away for the month of august. both of us will be the better for it. as per usual, i tidied up the office before i left by filling in the monthly gallery slot and catching up the menu.

enjoy the last month of summer.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. JULY 2011

time to get your picture on.

it's one of those few times a year the everyman sees some motion. this time it's the reveal of the winners on the professional contest.

today also rings the starting bell for the 2011 amateur contest so if you've been thinking of getting in the mix, now is the time.

and i'm thrilled to announce the return of the from the attic category. it may not get the most entries, but it almost always has some of the best.

you may start the walking tour here

the results of this one should be interesting.

the happening place to be today is over the everyman way where the entrants to the 3rd annual everyman pro have been released.

this is not a year to envy being an everyman judge. that lot of folks have their work cut out for them this round.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. March 2011

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. February 2011

makes me eager for when the focus of my learning year will be drawing (hint - 2012)

any site sporting a "you're a douche" button can't be half bad

a note from bookguy earlier this week:

not to push you off to other parts of the interwebs, but he wasn't kidding about there being some good curios in their cabinet.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. January 2011

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. December 2010

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. November 2010

break

for those who keep looking in to see when i might resume my important journalistic task of recording the mundanities of my family life, i fear i'm not up to it just yet.

honestly, i can't give you any sort of real or fair estimate on when i will be ready but am going to choose now to step away for at least the rest of the year.

thanks for all the thoughts and sentiments that were sent. they were appreciated and proved helpful.

i thank you in advance for your understanding.

regards.

troy.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. October 2010

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. September 2010

and they released a collective sigh at seeing things righted again

multiple people expressed relief at thursday's post. based on what went down on monday, tuesday and wednesday, they feared i had gone mad or simple or both and that i was going to do nothing but stand and lecture and preach in judging and pedantic ways. but then i returned to poop and called it feces and bms and turds and it was big and in smears and cudgels and being yelled about.

you never have to worry about me straying too far from what you've come to expect around here. i'm boringly consistent. and genetically incapable of carrying on an adult conversation for more than seven minutes. and i'm also expert at surrounding myself with like-minded people. when i told a new friend that i've never burped the first thing she said in reply was, "so that must mean you fart a lot". i'm a magnet and insatiable for such things so you never need to question the questionable stock or caliber of what you will find amongst the stacks here.

what does troy read

the girl brave enough to tackle my hair, even sent an email requesting the honor of doing so post-larry, is thinking about starting a fashion blog. i told her that one of the very few websites i routinely look in on is, of all things, a style-based site. seeing me every few weeks and knowing how limited and shabby my style sense is, she expressed great shock and then interest in a site that could hold my interest so. here is the email i sent her.


a few of my favorite post of his:
mancaves
robert evans
dorthea lange
jayne mansfield (that first picture is one of my favorite all-time, ever photos.)

if this doesn't incent you to buy this book, i fear nothing will

peace out

it's that time of year again when i join the rest of blog-free america for a month. this year, i almost decided to not take my usual sabbatical but then a few things happened, three things to be exact. the first thing i wasn't around for personally, i just heard about it afterwards but when i heard what i missed i was beyond bummed. i thought if i had more time perhaps i could have seen it first-hand. the event in question dealt with a mother's outing (yeah, i know i'm a natural fit for that group) from the neighborhood. one of the women, who was quite drunk, turned to another one of the women, who is a hard-bodied, personal trainer, and told her that if she were a lesbian she'd be really, very attracted to her (the personal trainer lady). why can't the drunk people i'm around ever say classic, sexy stuff like that. instead, the drunk people i see say nothing but inane, bumbling, and predictable nonsense not worth remembering or repeating.

the second thing making me decide to take the month off is the last few days. usually i say i need time away because i'm getting hammered by life and am tired and burned out and spent and fed up. but this time it is the complete opposite. i'm none of those things. i'm stoked about my work, my kids, my wife, my days, my challenges. and i feel like i'm making ground and progress on all fronts and spending my days as i want to. this can very much be seen in my last four days which saw the following:

• i made big ground on a long-standing work to-do
• i received multiple, disconnected professional kudos and compliments
• my kids began their summer break
• alex and i went on a great end-of-school adventure (go-karting)
• three great-weather days (!!!) at our community pool (a pool i love to spiritual degrees) just opened up
• i made amazing progress on my mission to swim a mile (a goal currently two-years overdue but not forgotten or dashed)
• a family tennis outing
• great quality time with family
• time with friends i haven't seen much of
• time with marty (someone i also haven't seen enough of recently)

simply put, life is crazy good at the minute and i want more, more, more of it and want to live as distraction-free as possible for a bit.

and the third item is a blend of the above two and deals in time and in family. yesterday anthony was helping me do laundry and, more importantly, i had the time to let him help. he's actually a surprisingly good assistant. to begin, i deliver the laundry to the upstairs laundry chute. anthony's job is to send it all down the chute to the basement. granted you get a couple of bonus items like alex's shoes and anthony's train cars and bella's books but you also get all of the soiled clothes through his efforts. then downstairs anthony climbs into the laundry chute collector and pushes the clothes out onto the sorting table. when done there, he stands at the end of the table where i hand him the clothes an article at a time and say 'near one' (whites), 'middle one' (lights), or 'far one' (darks) and he throws them in the designated basket. the proper delivery of each article is met with great celebration and i can assure you a more exuberant laundry-man could not be found. during yesterday's laundry sorting when anthony was in the laundry chute pushing the clothes out, he paused for a moment to look up the hole as if something caught his attention. after a moment and as if he was speaking to someone he saw, he yelled, "if you're up there and can hear me, you are a pee-face."

it was at that precise moment i knew i needed to take my monthly sabbatical to BE with my family because while i'm always present i'm not always there and that is the very last thing i want to be remembered for. as always, i leave you with the monthly vomit:

what i'm eating
what i'm reading
sassafras tea
june gallery

i'll be back on tuesday, july 6th hopefully with many great stories and experiences to share and tell

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. May 2010

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. April 2010

drip-drip-drip.

it was ten years ago today that dearmitt.com posted it's first monorail entry which means i've now been chipping away at this slab of stone for a quarter of my life.

the result, thus far, is 1,450 monorail postings, 123 gallery updates, 131 troyscripts, and 93 books read.

since i began i've had three children and one wife. i've buried two hermit crabs and had a hobbled knee repaired. my tennis game has gotten worse but i've learned how to make stained glass windows. i spent many brain cells railing against television, circumcision, and walgreens. to my knowledge, all of my preachings and ravings resulted in a single benefactor and that in the form of a small boy who was the subject of an international adoption and has me to thank for still possessing the foreskin he came into this world with.

my hope in the next ten years is to sway not one but two decisions that take place on this bustling and frenetic planet of ours. i'm not picky about the nature of the influence, it's just nice to know you're not always talking to yourself.

i don't mean it in a bad way, but ...

someone recently commented to me that my blog seemed to be a lot about poop and penises and nudity.

i commented back that they must not have children.

pretty pretty.

the 2nd annual everyman pro galleries opened today.

and then this woman just walked up to me and punched me in the face.

i forgot that i had one more facebook morsel to share, which i do realize takes me further from my seven sentences goal. a friend forwarded a message they received from another facebookian they didn't know. here's a name-protected version of the message:


i fear i'm unable to share the exact wording of my friend's message to me because i don't think i'm able to sanitize it enough for this public space without it losing all meaning or coherence. the gist of his message was simply asking how one should respond to an inquiry of this nature.

as far as conversational mis-steps go i put this right up there with asking a woman who is not pregnant what trimester she's in or when the child is due. i've been lucky enough to witness one of those first hand and for however uncomfortable the next few minutes were, i gotta say i'd rather be dealt that (says the man) than asked if my child, who is not mentally disabled, is mentally disabled.

after pondering my friend's fix for a moment i suggested he say no, his child is not special needs and that after receiving her inquiry he looked at her page and wondered if she is expecting again or is merely struggling with the baby weight from her last child.

and yes, my mother did raise me better than that (she would have asked me to share this point with you).

and yes, these sage advice services are also available to you. and get this, they're completely free of charge. i know, thoroughly unbelievable.

6 friends, 15 enemies, and 23 haters.

i need to make a clarification about yesterday's post. while i did receive an email about it, the email i received was sent from facebook because grammar-dave posted the message on something called "my wall". i'm not entirely certain what my wall is. i've been told by more than one person that if i'm going to have a wall, i should at least know what it is. i told them that having or not having a wall was never a choice i was asked to make and it was only emails like this one that even made me aware of my wall-ownership.

and speaking of facebook, i bet you cash-money i can summarize my facebook thoughts and experiences in seven sentences or less:

1. in april of 2006 i created a facebook account after i was hired by a university because i was told that everyone at the university had a one and it was the proper thing to do.
2. in 2008 i used my facebook account for the first time to look up 40 students i was teaching and then told them in class there were five of them i wouldn't hire for a job based solely upon what i found on their facebook pages.
3. i've never seen more blood leave more faces more quickly, like ever.
4. i log onto face book every three to four months and accept every friend request that has been made of me whether i know the person or not.
5. when asked by someone why i friended everyone, i said because it just didn't matter enough not to.
6. a female student at my school had a job with facebook where she received the questionable material reports and had to make decisions about if the material was questionable enough to be stricken from the record.
7. it's very possible the questionable material job is the only job i might enjoy more than the job i presently have.
8. the last time i looked in on my page a woman i know asked a question about my photo contest and when i didn't answer after a few weeks, another friend, who knew me but not the woman, answered the question for me after saying he was pretty sure i never looked at the page.
9. when i saw that that exchange had occurred, i experienced my first ever warm feeling towards facebook.

ok. so i couldn't swing it in less than seven sentences. de-friend me. and if you're wondering what this might have looked like for myspace, i'm reasonably confident i could have wrapped that up in one sentence.

like shooting money in a barrel

the everyman pro deadline has been extended by two weeks. if you or anyone you know are thinking of entering, hop to it.

for what it's worth, at the time of this writing, there are currently 28 entrants who have submitted 71 photos. i've begun displaying these metrics on the everyman site. they will continue to be updated as things develop. for those that are as awesome at math as i am, this means 28 people are competing for $3,000 dollars in prize money. and there is no limit to how much one person can win. there's not many even-thinking places that are going to give you those kinds of odds. not many at all.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. March 2010

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. February 2010

seven times the troy, ten times the joy.

you'll notice a new feature here on the monorail, an archive viewer (it will always be just below the most recent post on main monorail page). this tool, which allows you to quickly peruse entries made on (or around) the same day from previous years, is the product of my readership's schizophrenia. meaning, it is not at all uncommon for me to post something and then get feedback that covers the full spectrum of possible opinion. if i post a picture one person will comment on how cute it is. the next person will call me a cop-out for posting an out-of-focus picture instead of writing something original. if i write a long post people will complain that they've got better things to do and i'm an average writer and i should stick to shorter thoughts or pictures. and others yet will say i should delete everything from the site other than the troyscripts. so, you can see why i'm feeling a little off balance. and from this need to please i present the archiver. with this, if you don't like what was most recently posted, you can pop though and pick something from the last seven years in search of something that may more closely suit your particular needs.

and as for why i stop at seven years. it is my observation i was a complete bore before i had children. this is obviously not to say i'm still not a bore, it's just to say that now that i have funny, little humans underfoot, i have more, less boorish, things to talk about.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. January 2010

like, don't ya know

in the event you don't follow such things, the everyman pro is under way and accepting submissions.

and for those who didn't keep score last year, it was anyone's game. especially the macro/abstract category.

so don't play at your own risk. but if you choose to, details may be seen here.

holiday store hours

unlike walgreens and blockbuster, i'll be closed for the holidays.

see you jan 4.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. December 2009

where do i send my resume?

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. November 2009

if you're looking for me, i'm sleeping

this is not the webpage you're looking for.

the webpage you are looking for is over here.

it's that time of year again.

what you want is not here. it is over here.

life is far simpler than we're being led to believe

before you can be good you have to stop sucking.

from merlin mann's inbox zero talk delivered to google employees

merlin is also responsible for something that stands as one of my favorite-ever internet reads titled simply Better.

i need a noun for "useless shower of ..."

it began with a video. the one below. i saw it referenced on a site i frequent and shared it with some colleagues. several weeks later, one of those colleagues directed me to an article about the viral manner in which the song, illegally used in this video, put the band on the map and caused their itunes portfolio to skyrocket. in the article, pissed-off musicians talk about their feelings regarding their record labels and how they, the record people, seem to be completely void of ideas or creative avenues to get their, the musician people, music heard. given the article is about several irate and youthful musicians, it is not for the verbally squeamish. but people who enjoy the unique combining of words, some bluer than the water in the featured video, should ought to enjoy it just fine.

and in case it needs to be said, a video such as this should be watched full screen and without interruption.

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world
song is Please don't go by Barcelona
from Jon Rawlinson

i see it NOW! no NOW! NOW!

i just found out brian regan is coming to town september 12. i became smitten with him after someone (sa) told me about this eye doctor bit which used to not be on youtube but is now.

if any local folks are going to the show, let me know so i can keep an eye out for you.

my wish list doubled in less than three minutes.

while searching for something called a bike bra which is a protective cover used to shield a roof-mounted bike from bugs on long road trips, i learned a new thing about the world we live in: amazon has porn.

click to enlarge

something about myself i'm confident has always been true is that the phrase, "Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" would have always gotten my attention. i mean that's a scintillating mouthful. even if the fabric comprising the collective ensemble is not.

say "Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" five times fast and you have a good old school tongue twister on your hands.

"Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" sounds like the title to a feature song in the music man or chitty, chitty, bang, bang, or high school musical 3. and while we're on the topic, the movie chitty, chitty, bang, bang is a title that seems to have some cross-marketing possibilities as well. and with the high school musical franchise, if it hasn't already happened, it's only a matter of time.

"Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" is going to be my new password with all merchants that make me open an account with them. as an added plus, the phrase has both a numeral and piece of punctuation for the password sticklers.

if i owned a diner and had a special sandwich, it would be called a "Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" and would contain bacon somewhere in the mix. without doubt.

in closing i'd like to say, when i was fourteen, amazon was a long blue line drawn in the over-sized atlas in the family bookshelf. today it is a bountiful treasure trove of scantily clad women. if there is a good bit of news in the fishnet covered crannies of this discovery it is that when i was fourteen, women still had nipples.

** UPDATE **
it wasn't until after i made the post that i realized the item has 30 customer reviews!

N RAMJOHN wrote:
I bought this item a few weeks ago, and boy did I have a hard time in trying to figure it out. Its very delicate material, and if you have jewellery on, it could get caught up in the meshing and also make some pulls in it. the stockings are too long, the thong is a bit small, but I dont bother to wear the thong anymore....my better half loves it though....he likes to see me in it...and has me wear it regularly! what a good buy though...of all the other lingerie sets I have purchased in the past, this is the one he likes best!â?¨

my favorite part of that comment is the line stating that the "stocking are too long and the thong is a bit small". sounds like someone should read the sizing charts with a bit more precision.

i challenge anyone to find more entertaining comment threads anywhere on the internet than in the amazon lingerie product pages. it just ain't gonna happen.

a man's gotta live

it's that time again. that time when i take a break from you and you take a break from me.

as is customary, i'm loading you up as i run out the door.
sassafras tea
what i'm reading
what i'm eating
june gallery

and, a monorail entry because how could i leave you without sharing a bella-creation. today is bella's last day of school. this year, bella's teacher was very into reading and writing so she and bella got on just famously. below is the thank you card bella made this very special teacher. and this afternoon when school is really done and this card has been delivered and school is shuttered for the summer, bella and i are off for our special end of school day where i take the kids out. alex who wrapped up a few weeks ago went go-karting. bella thinks she is going horseback riding (again) but instead we are going out for a big steak lunch followed by a day of roller coastering.

additionally, the below card is the first time bella every capitalized the A in her last name. for people without a middle cap in their name, this may seem trivial. for those that carry the burden in life, it is not.

this year it seems extra-fitting that i'm beginning my month sabbatical on the same day summer starts, for everyone in my home at least. it's got me feeling a bit childlike and giddy myself.

i'll be back with you on monday, july 6th.


click to enlarge

more family photo fun

i received several comments on the awkward family photos site i linked to a few weeks back. one person (thx dionna) even sent me a link to another, similar site.

i find the key factor to success for funny picture sites is not just the picture itself but the commentary the host attaches to a photograph. without the proper wit, the full potential is not met. here's an image/caption example from the site dionna sent my way:


It's a vagina, madam, not a clown car.

i don't know that you're going to do any better than that. if this were the olympics, that would be a solid 10.0. check out his other work.

he's not copping a feel, he's holding her pants up.

i can't believe i didn't think of this site first.

although, had i been the one to start it, i'm pretty sure i would have been sated and stopped after uncovering this morsel.


but if i bowed out early then i'd miss out on titling an image "Awklord of the Rings".

it really happened

the everyman pro galleries open today. for those who don't recall or haven't been paying attention, this is the first year of the professional version of my everyman photo contest. in the end, i was ten entrants shy of my goal but ended up with twice the images i had in the first year of the amateur version of the contest. more importantly, i'm confident that next year will show increases in interest and participation given a couple of observations i've made through the process.

enough blather, go look at a small but neat sampling of photography and see if you can pick who you think will win the $1,000 grand prize.

the problem is the house is so nice you never want to go to work.

a friend of mine is moving out of saint louis and i recently built a website for him to help sell his house. so if you're in the market for one of the three most amazing houses i've ever walked through, now's your chance.

not done yet

a new developer in my office is about to roll out his first project with our group. we delivered a preview to the core clients last week and it went very well. next his app goes into user testing and then into the wild world of production. yesterday i attempted to give him a pep talk to make sure he stays focused and diligent in these final hours of the project. this is what i said:

ok. you've passed the first test. everyone saw what you made and they were impressed. now you have to show them that it actually does what you say it's going to do. right now you're like travolta in saturday night fever. you've shown up at the club and you're leaning against the bar. you look great. you've got everyone's attention. now they're just waiting for you to get on the dance floor and see if you've got the moves to go with the look.

now for me, where i'm at, i'm more like travolta in pulp fiction. i'm sitting at a table with a beautiful girl and they just announced a dance contest. i look old and tired compared to my club days. people wonder if i still got any game in me. so i move to the floor and they see my moves are less exotic and more measured than they used to be but they see i can still move well enough to make people stop and look.

my closer friends will easily recognize the move of me starting out talking about someone else but finding a way to swing the attention back on me. i'm old and savvy enough to know this about myself and if it could work for travolta in pulp no reason it can't work for me in my small world.

now twice as good

here's a little something i slipped into internet waters last week when no one was looking.

i just love this stuff

shouldn't there be trumpets, streamers and shit?

once again it is not with a boom but with a whimper that the everyman sounds its annual roar.

more sadly yet, scillions of 1's and 0's screaming down a broadband flume doesn't even rate a whimper. how anti-climactic that.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. October 2008

i'm handsome either way

here's something to appease/entertain you while i continue to recover from my everyman binge. in explanation, this is a re-version of this all-time great video (my opinion) that changes the lyrics to match what is actually happening in the video. super-neat.

and man do i wish i could draw like that.

once again

the 2008 everyman games are underway

i'm entering my masochist period

sorry for the quiet week. it is everyman season and i've got seven more balls in the air than usual.

If you want to sell the house, you've got to mow the lawn.

there are few days that go by that i don't think about how hard life as a woman must truly be.

and we can all thank bookguy for sending this morsel my way.

this here's about to become a pay site.

back in the day of the early web, there was this girl who wired her bedroom with webcams. i can't remember her name but she went on to become quite an internet phenom. you could just tune in and see what was happening in her room at any time, day or night. for sure, much of the time she'd be away at school or work or life. most of the time she was in, she'd be reading or writing or talking on the phone. a few lucky times, frenetic, mouse-wielding fanboys were met with her and a rare date she'd brought home to mack and more. what those guys would have done to trade the flashing lights of their baud modems for a broadband connection back then i can only imagine.

i think i'm going to wire my whole house with cameras. for as pedestrian and uninteresting as my house is, we have our share of cussing, nudity and fisticuffs. and i can run with the legends because when i wake up in the morning, i might be alone or i might have up to four humans in bed with me, sometimes even on top of me. for added intrigue and entertainment, i'm going to set up an hourly poll asking viewers to guess what's happening before their video feed begins. questions could include:

• is anthony wearing pants?
• is alex wearing a dress?
• is troy wearing anything?
• is bella reading a book?
• is a tickle-fight happening?
• is someone touching marty right now?

there would have to be odds on each question because some are gimmes, such as that last one, because the likelihood of marty not having someone patting her breast, pushing on her buttocks, or nudging her on the shoulder urging her to get off the toilet so they can go is pretty slim at any given moment. and i'm not the culprit in any of those scenarios. i may have been before we had kids but i am not now because we have kids.

if you beat me, you gotta take me to lunch with your winnings.

i'm going to do something i don't think i've ever done before. plug a photo contest that isn't my own.

a new one called snapmission recently came online. it cycles monthly and works off a theme. payout is $25 and i'm thinking unless someone can best the photo i just submitted, the jack is all mine, or i guess it's marty's since she officially took the shot. but i told her to.

the juice

sunday the everyman had 324 visitors. thanks to a link from a site called stumbleupon, monday saw a slight increase in interest to over 7,000 daily visitors.

and speaking of the power of the web, check this site out which went public wednesday.

this was one of my more entertaining finds so far:


and in the event you also live in a home without cable or television and haven't yet discovered this, it's brought many laughs to my house:

some days i like computers a whole lot more than other days

historically, i've spent between 150 and 200 hours in the month of november producing my everyman photo contest. this year saw a 400% increase in submissions (to 8k) yet, through some custom-built web enhancements, i spent less than twenty hours end to end overseeing the 2007 affair. this is by no means a reflection on the mix because there is some really remarkable photos this year. although, based on the usual varied opinions of my judges, not many folks can agree on what those remarkable photos are. or, they don't often agree with me at least (proof of this can be found in the scorecards, i'm judge #1).

see who ultimately won and how they match up with your taste.

and make sure to check out this year's most discussed photo. it is noteworthy for two reasons. the first is that this is the first year (in seven) my great friend bookpimp hasn't won that acclaim. the second reason is, well, i think i'll let that part speak for itself (may not be suitable for work or those with good visual memories). and for those wondering what the title, the samsara, means, it is a buddhist term dealing with rebirth, some definitions citing it specifically as a rebirth from the earth.

hope you have fresh batteries in your wireless mouse

on mondays i usually post a picture of either anthony or alexander. on this monday i'm instead posting 8,000 pictures of people who aren't anthony or alexander so it may take you a few more minutes to go through them.

so for those who complain that i don't post enough, it's payback time. i hope you find some entertainment in the 2007 everyman.

Pachelbellarific

this guy manages to convey in four minutes what i, in a embarrassingly curcuitious manner, have been trying to say for over five years. not only do i applaud this man's effort, i would like to offer to make for him some built-in bookshelves in his music room. and that isn't a joke. if you are this guy and you live in the continental united states, contact me. i'll be over. we'll share. we'll laugh. we'll bond.


thanks to all who forwarded it to me. i love it.

and for those who may have already seen the above, here's another, older pachabel treatment that clip reminded me of.


and, for any who don't have kids or a sense of humor, here's one for you

the polls have closed and ...

this year's everyman submission deadline just hit. the current numbers stand at:

entrants: 4,174

photos: 8,122

largest category : landscape & nature (3,199)

smallest category : from the attic (599)

one might say the figures are slightly up this year. if i'm more dodgy this month than most, you'll please understand and forgive.

the little contest that could

five years ago the everyman photo contest was ranked #837 by google when searching the phrase "photo contest". today it moves between the number 1 and 2 slots. this is a totally organic ranking meaning it has been achieved with zero advertising or search engine trickery. quite a feat for a contest that offers a $50 prize.

i also believe that this ranking has helped raise the submission count from 2,100 last year to 5,500 (and counting) this year. and this with still a whole month left. and that was my subtle reminder to any of you who have notions of entering this year's mix. tick-tock, tick-tock.

UPDATE: and a mailing list nearly 2,000 names long! of the 20 entrants in the first year's contest, 17 had eaten at my dinner table. those days seem to be long gone.

so it's a few days late. you can't rush mediocrity.

in 2001 i held a photo contest. there were 40 entrants. these were all people who had at one point or another sat at my dinner table. in 2004 the website hosting this same contest crested one million request in the month the photos were made public. last month, a dormant period for the everyman, the logs show requests nearing the one million mark. given the continued growth of this hobby-site i've had to change up how i handle the affair and today marks a major milestone for me and it; online submissions. it also marks the opening of the 2007 contest. check it out.

and, don't miss the happy, time-zapping image shuffler.

there's nothing artificial about that intelligence

my work often takes me into the infinite world of stock photography. anyone who has poured through the online stacks knows how the hours drift into the air while you look for that one image which meets the need. fortunately today's search engines do much to help you find that one perfect graphic. that is they are a great help except when they aren't.

the below page was the result of a search on the term 'statue'. the main image at the top seems spot on. it's the SIMILAR IMAGES at the base of the page which raised my brow. i can't say if i find their system's intuition to be highly flawed or impressively intuitive on knowing what my mind was really looking for. although, what the hell is up with the solitary pic of glasses?

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

and this shall be deemed a day of rest

i'm more than a little bit lucky to have gotten the everyman uploaded this evening. saint louis got racked with an ice-storm and for the last five hours i've been listening to ice-heavy branches snap and crunchily fall through other ice-laden branches before painfully slamming into the ice-solid ground. after each limbs tumble through the night, i reload a web page testing my internet connection. i know there is a branch or pole somewhere in this city with my internet connection's name on it and i'm in a race with that piece of timber. at this 4am moment, it looks like i'm going to best my swaying foe, on this blustery night at least.

so if you are lucky enough to possess a healthy connection i invite you to visit my seventh love in life, the everyman photo contest, because today is a special day in the world of the everyman.

once again

and the sixth annual everyman competition is underway.

the only space in my home that i can call my own

in readying the everyman galleries, i don't think i'll be able to hang out with you all this week.

last time i checked out i shared a picture of where i'd be spending lion-share of that time so it feels kind of appropriate to again give you such a glimpse. this time though, instead of sitting in this office, i'll be up through the nights in this, my other office.

hope you all have a nice week. make sure to get a lot done so you can squander your time walking around the everyman exhibition.

dump those compact flash cards

last day, last reminder. the everyman deadline is tonight @ midnight. central standard time.

entries will be put on public display wednesday, november 1st.

winners will be announced monday, december 4th.

good luck to all who play.

honesty is a pre-requisite to knowing me

excerpt from the website of friend of mine who is, professionally, a historical archivist.

I've been pretty obsessed with taking pictures of my toy collection and posting them to Flickr. My girlfriend's nerd alarm went off yesterday, I'm suprised I haven't worn it out.

but were he not setting off such alarms, wherever would we get great photography the likes of this ...

and, before you answer, consider that without people who enjoy the above, you may never benefit from the likes of these ...
and, i super-love this sort of stuff, which he seems to have tons of ...

i hope to see chavez at the pending everyman. which as i just consulted the website, and then my desktop calendar i see deadlines this monday. not exactly a good sign when the host gets caught by surprise. so, if you got 'em, bring 'em. time is rapidly dwindling away.



and, given the everyman's approach, our house is about to enter the time of year marty's nerd alarm gets chucked against every wall of our house, viciously.

see you june 1

it's that time of year again, that time when i step away for a month of down-time and disconnectedness. truth is it's never been more necessary than it is right now, as some of you may have noticed from the last few weeks worth of sporadic activity.

and as always, i leave you with a bevy of last moment content (eating, alex, gallery). additionally, this year i have made arrangements for you while i'm away by implementing a random post generator. you'll notice in a couple of different spots on this page the word RANDOM ([a] third item in the right hand menu [b] above this section and to the right of '2 years ago' and also [c] at the base of the page). clicking this link will present you with a random post from the past six years worth of entries. i've taken measures to see that what is presented contains less drivel than most but this is not to say that you still wont find yourself completely disappointed.

in practice this is just a little helper in the event you find yourself missing your daily ritual of laughing with/at me and being reasonably ocd myself, i respect your rituals be they driven by compassion or malice. give it a spin and let me know what you think, unless you simply think i think a bit too much of myself. no need to send feedback in that regard because i'm well aware of this, although i usually try not to so overtly advertise the point.

so for the month of may i bid you adieu. be well.

it's kinda like a secret society, only way more nerdy

i share in a small professional consortium of sorts. there's just three of us and i am for certain the pup of the litter. one of the two taught me everything i know about web design and the other everything i know about web development. we all used to work together. now we don't even live in the same state and in one case not even the same country.

several years back in a ski lodge atop the canadian rockies, the three of us made five-year projections about our professional lives. one of us nailed it, one surpassed it and one, well, one keeps meandering towards the light but hasn't yet held a straight line to its source.

chris wanted to create a jackpot product. a sophisticated and enticing utility that would allow him to support his home while investing his energy in something he believed in. four years later he is performing enterprise-level implementations of a wiki-fashioned, microsoft-centric, intranet manager he calls thoughtFarmer.

bookguy privately covets the notion of hopping industries. i won't get into the specifics of his aspiration but the venture would offer him new sorts of mental exercises using his very impressive technology chops as well as his gift for oration and unavoidably, leadership. he is unconsciously adrift towards such a change, he just hasn't noticed the oar in his hand yet. i predict he will soon look down and see it though and when he does decide to lower it into the water it's better than a done deal.

and i, i managed to stay diligent and patient about things until i secured a position with the one institution in my city that i hoped to secure a position with. and time has aged it well.

i'm glad to see the three of us trending in such positive directions and i wish my cohorts much success. i wish myself an ounce more, or as bella would say, a worm's bite more, than them because as the runt of the litter, i need to be that much better to hold my own on our next ski boondoggle.

i might need to get me some hbo

instead of using my scheduled writing window to write, i got caught up reading this post (excerpted below) from dooce and its accompanying comments, a portion of them at least. i'd recommend the full posting along with reader comments if you are as intrigued with the topic as i am.

taking bella off the grid

now that bella is five i've decided to close, or at least stop updating her gallery, rockefeller center, so yesterday's post will be the last made.

i've a few reasons for doing this and for once don't feel the need to iterate through my logic. i hope you've enjoyed watching our first child go from the womb to a shining and confident young girl as much as i've enjoyed capturing and sharing the images. in the name of equity, the same will happen with alex on his fifth.

the page will continue to be available and the stories of her impact, uhhm, i mean contribution, to our family will continue. it's just the consistent photographic updates that will cease.

and for those who never knew what the rockefeller or captain monikers even meant, they are what walt and i called them in utero (that's means pre-birth for my three guy friends).

i'd wallpaper my home with the image if my wife would let me

there's no way this everyman entry received enough attention the first time around (note the submitter's occupation).

how that photo did not win first in its category AND best of show confounds me to this moment.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. january 2006

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. adopt you

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. 37 years in 5 minutes

it puts me in the mood

i'm not the hugest fan of extreme home christmas displays but gotta say, if i lived near this guy, i'd camp out in front of his home every night.

dancing christmas lights
(and, there aint much point in viewing this if you computer doesn't have sound.)

and, i'd appreciate it if someone could tell me the title/artist of this music. UPDATE: trans-siberian orchestra's Wizard of Winter. me and my OCD thank dionna and kix for solving that mystery. it is appreciated.

UPDATE 2:
especially for e-love, here is another of this guy's video's.

this is really the last time i'm going to talk about it ... this year.

at the conclusion of each year's everyman photo contest, i invite the judges to my home for dinner and discussion. this year, every judge within a six-hour driving radius attended. that number gets to be so great because of one fella who trekked in from kentucky. add to that, i've never met him and he'd never met me which makes the gesture that much more noteworthy.

in addition to my kentucky boondoggler, one of my international judges, the one representing italy, called my home during the party to discuss the contest and give his feedback. it was a very neat moment for me. and this guy lives, of all places, in the region of italy i consider the most beautiful piece of the world i've ever stood upon, la spezia, which is in northwestern italy and part of the cinqua terra stretch of coastline. he was also kind enough to open his home to my family should we ever be in the region again. i hope he is serious because there is little doubt we will one day be darkening his doorway.

another contest-related thought; i've noticed since i've increased the number of judges, i no longer get hate-mail when winners are announced. i'm going to take that as a positive sign (it did occur to me that maybe no one was chatting because no one was looking, but november bested the everyman's previous traffic record, racking up 1.2 million requests.)

and, i'll leave you with the partygoer's highlight of the evening. alex woke up from his nap and descended the steps wearing one of bella's black velour dresses. since it was his older sisters', it went all the way to the floor and for-sure looked like an evening gown. earlier he had been wearing a really festive pair of red overalls but insisted on the dress for his nap. i intended on changing him before his grand appearance but was tied up in the kitchen and didn't know he woke up. marty was talking with one of the judges when they saw alex round the corner:

joe : hey look at alex in his basketball jersey.
marty : that's not a basketball jersey joe, it's a dress.
joe: i know. i was just trying to help you out.

and lastly, everyone i owe work, email, money or affection to can it expect it in the near future now that my life is again my life. thanks to all who supported, tolerated and enjoyed this year's event. as always, i'm in your debt.

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. december 2005

stick a fork in me, i'm done

365 days in the making, the 2005 everyman is finally a done deal.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. finish pooping please

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. november 2005

search me

an occasionally asked for and long overdue feature of this site has just now been added. look right. sidebar. second block. searching! circumcision. hygiene. neurosis. even lyle lovett. you name it.

and it's not just the monorail section but each and every nook and cranny of the site. try it out. it's all at your fingertips thanks to the exceptionally fine folks at google.

just an update

i'm still recovering from what has been a very rollicking month. hope to be back up to par next week.

with life on the web your efforts rarely seem to generate appropriate affection. it's a one-way forum and those that play, or keep playing at least, know this. so to receive multiple rewards/kudos in a short span of time is pretty unprecedented, especially for a one-trick hack like myself. this week felt like troy-appreciation week. i don't want to get into the nature of the various puffs of wind sent up my skirt but just know puffs of air were billowing all around my catholic school girl plaid (and not the kind of puffs that make alex snap his head up and say inquisitively, 'GAS?').

one thing i will share with you though. on the day before the everyman's photos were released, the site received 7,000 requests. on the day the photos were released it satisfied, quite admirably might i add, 200,000 requests. i think the everyman should have no problem besting its 1,000,000 request month record.

going to bed now. g'night.

p.s. if walt and i have another child, a son, i'm going to fight hard to name him Marcher.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. marcher

the everyman is older than bella

the fifth annual everyman is a reality.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. warrior, part II

for those with the acumen to ask

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. october 2005

a typical work conversation

TROY
yes there was a hiccup and the archives didn't happen for about four months.

EXECUTIVE
four months! that's one hell of a hiccup.

TROY
true enough. let's call it more of a wet belch.

so i was scratching my self-esteem the other day

when i laid down in bed a few nights back marty said that while she was looking for something on my computer she saw an email message from a girl saying she saw my profile online and wondered if i wanted to chat or get together. it is one of my more prevalent pieces of spam mail that i haven't filtered for yet. i laughed it off saying that i get those all the time. after about thirty seconds marty said, 'so where do you have an online profile?'.

the better question is, where don't i have an online profile.

and speaking of spam, my most cherished piece of unsolicited correspondence of recent time follows. for the sake of this presentation i've replaced every reference to a phallus with the phrase 'self-esteem', every reference to a stimulated phallus with the word 'confidence' and every reference to the fleshy skin towards the top of the phallus with the word 'ego' (mostly b/c not all of the semantics used in this message were exactly professional and/or scientific, and no one is ever going to accuse me of not conducting myself with the utmost of decorum. i mean really, if you can't bring yourself to use the proper term for an erection, engorged manroot, then perhaps you ought not be talking about the subject.)

Finally! I have always worried about the size of my self-esteem. When I have sex, even though she says that the sex is good, I know that what she really wants is an extra inch of my self-esteem! I saw the advertising for More-Size on TV and was really impressed by the customers reports. The pills work by enhancing the hormone that instructs your body to fill your self-esteem with blood. More and more blood gets pumped into the two large chambers on top of your self-esteem, making said self-esteem harder than ever before. Your self-esteem is very very flexible, and adapts well to the increased pressure, getting longer and harder. The best thing is that once the hormones have been enhanced, they get used to it and you keep your enhanced size for many months after you stop taking the medication This is the only method that is said to work other than mechanical stretching! Pumps and creams do NOT have the same long-lasting effects. I could tell that my self-esteem was getting longer and heavier, but I thought that when I stopped taking them that my confidence would shrink back to its original size. I was really surprised! I have been 4.5" long since adolescence. Since I have been using this formula my self-esteem has been 6.5" long, and my confidence is nearly twice the size. Just be careful not to take too much to begin with as the skin needs time to adapt to your new improved self-esteem! The lengthening is permanent! I could not believe the results of this prescription. I am back to taking them again and my self-esteem is still getting larger! My girlfriend says it is the best product I've ever bought, and she ALWAYS reminds me to take them if I should forget! Take a peek... We know they work. There's a total guarantee with them, too. If you are not completely satisfied with your length gain and comfort you get your money back. Every penny. No-one sends them back! Please be aware that if your ego is already tight or if your confidence is already too hard and causes discomfort, you should consult the advice of your doctor before taking these pills, as the extra size could cause added discomfort

and lastly, one of the more genuine parts of this message is that its sender was a female.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. go hide

tic-toc, tic-toc

only one (1) week left to get your everyman entries in.

so if you want to dance, get off your duff.

p.s. the from the attic category seems to again be woefully under-represented.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. be a warrior

a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today. september 2005

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. you rang

from the editor

this item has been removed
at the request of one of the participants/subjects.

a surprising first for this site.
and, not surprising that it occurred,
but surprising that it took this long to occur.

a binary ziggurat

there's a lot of words floating around this here internet. of the loads added daily, the ones this guy is stringing together make me smile more often than most.

and i quote, haphazardly ...

somewhere outside of hillsborough, i realized that i was in a really good mood. it was that same kind of clarity, that surprised self-awareness, that babies and hippies get when they discover their hands. the last few frames of FISH! flickered across the screen and the consultant, hired for the day to talk to us about how we could incorporate fun into the workplace, felt his way across the back wall in the darkness, his meaty paw pat-patting for a light switch. i met a boy named fate yesterday. as so often happens when i think of something to write about in the middle of a workday, i scribble the idea down on a slip of paper and stuff it into my pocket. for the rest of the day, i thought about how interesting it would be, if i were in a car accident or run over while crossing the street, for the medics to arrive and, while searching my pockets for identification, they would find a single piece of paper that just had the word FATE written on it in block letters.

and i know this guy.

i've sat on his bed.

i've used his bathroom.

i've made sweet music with the dude.

he once even said nice things about me

hell, my daughter's even broken bread with him ...

as my old friend big dog would say, i thank you for the humor buddy james.

and now that i think about it, the girl did have a prominent adam's apple

a detail i forgot to include in this month's gallery essay is that the day after getting the software, marty mocked me because i had stayed up all night working on my computer and was exhausted the next day. i told her to be nice to me and my new software because Apple's Tiger saved her marriage. she, like the gas-station clerk, indifferently shrugged her shoulders before turning away.

perhaps it's just that everyone but me knows that my seductress was really a prostitute trying to salvage a slow night.

your cyber-docent

what you are looking for is over here.

it beats squat-dopey-guy-designs

it's quite remarkable what a fella can achieve when he's not trying to entertain a bunch of folks he doesn't even know.

while i'm away talk to my people

bella has put me on a 30 day time-out

it's that time of year again, that time when your host checks out for a month. actually i'm a month early but this is one of the beautiful things about being your own boss.

i'll be back monday, may 2nd.

meanwhile enjoy this and this and this and this.

and this.

UPDATE : check back on monday. i may have something to keep you entertained throughout the month. well, occupied for 3 minutes a day at least.

---

AND ... lucky for you, michaelcosm is stepping up and coming out of hibernation for a month to regale us with five new michaelpellas.



tune in every friday.

we all know the boy does not dissapoint.

p.s. michael ... i love your rap month logo! too awesome!

---

tee-hee-hee

if you've walked by me in the last 36 hours and heard me tittering privately, it just means i'm looking at this picture again.

i'm not sure if marty finds it endearing or embarrassing that i laugh uncontrollably at things like this.

and let us not forget these other great moments in sports.
every expression in this picture is priceless
and will we ever forget this poor, poor girl

it's about time

my goal was to read four books on my two week holiday break in december. on the down-side, i only got through two and half books. on the up-side, the exercise woke up my hibernating literary sex-drive. so much so that this is the first time i've updated the reading section in several months or six books, however you prefer to look at it.

get on board

what i meant to say was that ...

a guy i know listed me as a reference for a job he is applying for. when talking with his potential employer on the phone yesterday, this memory kept creeping into the room making me neurotic about all of my word selections.

web guide 101

to any current or prospective website owners. hits don't equal money, the effective delivery of your message does.

i remember when i was this honest

i believe to get a representative feel for what life is like somewhere you have to capture the unceremonious words and images around you. the following snippet i overheard between marty and bella offers some insight into life in our home.

BELLA
can santa say words like dammit and stupid?

MARTY
i imagine he can but i bet he chooses different words.

BELLA
i bet he doesn't choose different words and does say dammit and stupid. a lot.

and, in the event you're still a little fuzzy on the scene, this conversation might sharpen the picture a touch more.

the dutch has always had a way with words

dutch engelbrecht

(what with my brain's workers still on a full work-stoppage given their mistreatment over the last few months, i thought i'd share the words of someone whose cerebral employees have not left him in a lurch.)

show your love, keep your hate

i have several web sites. each one requires different levels of maintenance. this site, my personal site, definitely gets the most love, receiving between 100 and 200 updates a year.

one of my sites gets updated twice a year. this is the same site that has gotten a million hits in a 30-day period, twice.

today is one of the two days of the year that site has been updated. so enjoy it while it's fresh.

do not disturb

busy, busy, busy with mr everyman.

block a little time for it tomorrow.

breaking the silence

special note to peggy walter: click on these words

for when you have a spare 30 hours

the 2004 everyman photos have been released.

purposefully narcoleptic

to say i have a few things on my plate this month would be like saying my high school chum big dog was just kinda mean to people he dealt with at drive-through windows.

if you don't know big dog you'll just have to take my word for it when i tell you he has, without question, consumed more human dna through fast food products than any other person ever has or ever will. while the thought of this may horrify you, it should not. what should wake you in the night though is the comfort-level he had in knowing he was consuming just about anything the 16 year-old working that night could eject, pull or scrape from his body and then conceal within big dog's order. forever stamped in my brain is a vision of big dog in the driver's seat of a car working on a too-large bite of burger while shrugging his shoulders at me.

but, back to me. in october, i'm trying to build two complete web sites AS WELL AS preparing for the everyman unveiling. now this is not to say i won't post, it's just to say what i do post my be less coherent than usual. and for the dozen or so people who don't think my writing is understandable to begin with, sadly, you're just extra-screwed this month.

but before giving up on me completely, let me share an odd detail about myself. did you ever see the episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where dr fever and venus had to drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol for a state trooper? the police official was attempting to demonstrate the ill effects liquor had on the human mind and more importantly, human response time. in the show, the more johnny fever drank, the quicker he'd become, leaving the trooper quite dour. this is how i am with sleep. the less i get the better i perform which leaves my wife quite dour because she is very much not like this. although i guess my deal is the opposite of the johnny fever example because the more he had the better he got so it's kind of backwards because for me it's the less i get the better i become, but you get the meaning.

ok. i just reread this post and i may be wrong about this whole improving while fatigued thing.

but, as i always tell my children, lucidity is overrated.

chuck, i'm all over door number three

One day in the future, George Bush has a heart attack and dies. He immediately goes to hell, where the devil is waiting for him.

"I don't know what to do," says the devil. "You are on my list, but I have no room for you. You definitely have to stay here, so I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I've got some folks here who weren't quite as bad as you. I'll let one of them go, but you have to take their place.

I'll even let YOU decide who leaves." Bush thought that sounded pretty good, so the devil opened the first room.

In it was Ronald Reagan and a large pool of water. He kept diving in and surfacing empty handed. Over and over and over. Such was his fate in hell. "No, George said. "I don't think so. I'm not a good swimmer and I don't think I could do that all day long."

The devil led him to the next room. In it was Richard Nixon with a sledge hammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing that hammer, time after time after time. "No, I've got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day," commented George.

The devil opened a third door. In it, Bush saw Bill Clinton, lying on the floor with his arms staked over his head, and his legs staked in a spread eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best. Bush took this in disbelief and finally said, "Yea, I can handle this." The devil smiled and said "OK, Monica, you're free to go."

from the desk of big ed

it's time ...

       

only one more week to get your entries into the everyman.

see you on the couch

regarding the new troyscript, SMELL MY FINGER, here are few more details about marty's finger sucking ritual:

she sucked on her ring finger, just up to the first knuckle. she did this so much she thought that finger was flatter than the rest.

she only sucked on this finger when upset. the story goes that after a bad day, she'd come home, curl up on the couch, suck on her left ring finger while woobying with her right hand (woobying deserves a week of explanation on its own and will NOT be tackled in the near future).

her three older brothers mocked her, quite mercilessly. the more i hear about childhood in a large family the more it sounds like being at school all the time. and on a semi-related side-note, it recently came to light that marty's second oldest brother once held her out of a second story window ... by the foot. marty does not remember this event.

marty sucked on this poor-ass finger till she was somewhere between eight and ten. when i tell people this story in person i usually add that she really didn't stop until her third year of college.

marty would prefer i didn't share this story on the site. i guess we'll get to see if she really kicked her ring-finger habit for good or not.

securing your windows machine is as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... 37, 38

i read the following over on kottke. i wanted to share it with people at work but given our company's policy against allowing us to access any sites of interest, kottke's a no-go. and since my site has surprisingly eluded their 'things people might like to read' index, i thought i'd share it up on my own unnoticed web site.

for those of us relegated to use the wonderfully porous windoze environment, what follows is a list of steps to help protect you from them.

8 steps to better windows security

1. Run Windows Update regularly.

2. Install ZoneAlarm (Firewall)

3. Buy and install NOD32 (Anti-Virus)

4. Install WinPatrol (Anti-Hijack)

5. Buy and install AdMuncher (Ad and Popup Blocker)

6. Install and run AdAware (Anti-Spyware)

7. Replace Internet Explorer and Outlook Express with Firefox & Thunderbird

8. Disable Autorun.

i haven't tried this yet, but am planning to in the very near future. and i also thank the guy who took the time to put this invaluable list together. anyone who makes me work less is top notch in my world.

boy do i have an offer for you

when i email people for the first time, i sometimes worry about the subject line i choose and if it will be thought of as spam and consequently discarded. emails i've sent that fostered this sentiment:

i wanted to introduce myself
have you seen my latest photos
you're not going to believe this
i think i know you

and lastly ...

do you wish you had a larger penis

don't ask me to expound on that last one ... bookguy asked me not to.

this is the 600th monorail post. no lie.

a guy at work showed me the above ad which he found in a 1978 issue of national lampoon. if you own one of these shirts, bumper stickers or bags, you should email me right now because i'm paying a grotesque amount of money for one i can call my own. note: low-rent substitutions will not suffice.

spinning through this rag it's bizarre to see many domain-less advertisements. i can't help but wonder what i would be doing for a living if i was 35 in 1978 instead of 2004. the other noteworthy aspect of leafing through this is the commercial space is way funnier than the humor magazine's actual crafted content, by today's standards at least. allow me to expound:

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[click to enlarge]

is that jeff goldblum?
it seems an unfortunate side effect of this in dash sparkomatic is that it causes your head to begin morphing into that of a common housefly. that and dressing like an aspiring adult film star. on studying this scene i'm thinking mr. reams here may want to shag his ass out of dodge in that mag-heavy firebird because i don't see the natives being too warm and fuzzy to a guy with huge, white, compound eyes, especially one wearing that bombardier jacket.

---

[click to enlarge]

i'd like to join your hell's angel club ... please
i can't tell you how much i'd like one of these. but i also couldn't tell you about the black and blue beating i'd get if i showed up to work riding it. no worries though given my super-secret and uber-effective self-defense. although that might not save me from dodging the nickname CHAPPY.

---

[click to enlarge]

i kind of miss the big silver dials
so we all know i have one of these. and i recently added one of these. just last night i was trying to explain the ipod/henry kloss setup to my father and he just kind of stood there blinking, wanting to understand, trying to comprehend but because he came from such a different school we weren't really firing on all cylinders. but, you'll never find me to be too scathing on this front because as e-love points out i'm closer to 70 year's old than i am to my birth which means i'm just a few birthdays from the doddering phase of my own life.

---

[click to enlarge]

they got everyone but gopher
now i bet you never knew that tom sellek, dana plato and jacques cousteau posed for an ad together. and if you think you're spying ron howard up on the gangplank, i would say you have a keen eye (this is obviously ron in one of his earlier directorial cameos). one would think with all this star power you could leave the cool-ass diving bell back in the shop but camel has never been one to pull a punch when it came to their advertising. i mean if it weren't for the diving bell, i wouldn't have a smoke dangling from my mouth as i type these words. to recap ... no diving bell ... no sale ... diving bell ... i got an opened carton on top of the fridge. and this is 25 years after the ad initially ran. i'm going to call that a well spent advertising dollar.

---

it's an all-day laugh-riot around here

here's the short sound bite:
and, here's the longer sound bite:
troyscript : the lie

yeah, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye

alternate titles for yesterday's captain image:

boy were those some weird dreams.

yes, that would be marty who not only sat by while my children defiled and degraded my sleeping body, but she even took pictures while sitting by.

i swear my right eye was in the socket when i went to bed.

the good side of sleep deprivation.

don't leave home without it

click here

an inquiring mind that has got to know

a new question (and answer) was added to the frequently asked questions page of the everyman site. this is the sort of patronage the everyman attracts. it don't get a whole lot better than this.

note the third question.

and speaking of the everyman, this year's deadline is closer than you think. the beginning of august represents the two months left mark. so if you've been thinking about it, start thinking faster. i'm over 600 photos so far and sadly the FROM THE ATTIC category is way lighter than i thought it would have been. it's a wide open affair.

boy, that was quick ... and quiet

i'm already the number one hit on google for 'silent tampon'.

and in my defense, this is not something i search through google for on a daily basis, i saw multiple hits for that string in my logs.

although i might be good for a biannual search on silent tampons or some such derivative.

if she'd write a book, she'd be my favorite author

i can say with absolute certainty that this is my all-time favorite boycott (04.05.04 : jiffy lube) to ever come through boycott city.

i could own this company and would still join this girl's boycott.

lolly, lolly get your icons here

       

for those wondering where i was last week

click here to begin

buyer beware

a small detail i don't discuss about the things i sell on ebay

i remember a time when ...

here's another way having a three year old around differs from a two year old.

wal-mart, heavily stocked in tension

everytime i turn around this week, i'm hearing someone talking about wal-mart. not wanting to get left behind, yet again, i thought i'd throw my wal-mart experience into the ring, even though it's not exactly my experience.

me at wal-mart, pah-leeze.

1 member strong (think about it)

just as my campaign against circumcision was ebbing, i learned that i had my first admitted/documented conversion. and by this i mean when these new parents were having the discussion about to chop or to not chop my name came up, and in a positive way, a convincing way.

now some of you may be thinking that for all the raving i do, it is amazing that this is my first conversion. i know that's what i thought when my jehovah's witness friend told me that after knocking on doors every week for ten years he had yet to convert someone. i thought what conviction, what perseverance, what a lunatic. in fact, his dedication proved sturdier than mine because i was ready to give up the foreskin fight after just three years of rejection. but, the most disheartening fact about it all was not the futility but the near-believers. the people who nodded in agreement. the people who saw the logic before them. the people who could see the flaws in the process and still decided, in the end, to take the knife to their infant boys.

for those who want the converts' names, whether your intention be congratulatory or inflammatory (for rekindling my faith) forget about it. all of my client information is kept in the strictest of confidence, especially the clients i like.

tu madre esta en mi bano

so yesterday's quote was danish.

yesterday's quote is also thought to say: if you like taking pictures, in your free time, your ought to check out this american web page.

i guess i was hoping for something a little sexier than that. not sure why. it's just that a string of characters that funky look like they'd have a little bit more going on. oh well.

thanks to k jacobsen for her voluntary translation services.

bueller ... bueller ...

if anyone speaks whatever language the below snippet is, i'd love to know what it says because i'm led to believe it is about the everyman photo contest.

Hvis du sysler med foto i din fritid bør du tjekke denne amerikanske side.

thanks in advance for your linguistic skills.

i've got mail

i've yet to be disappointed in a piece of spam with a subject line: 'i've got a new roommate'.

sadly, the same cannot be said for spam titled 'have you seen my mother?'

and, then there were 15

well, go get em' already.

the everyman is for everyone

if it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, then i have no worldly idea why you'd be here instead of here.

it's almost here (display giddy excitement)

busy, busy, busy with the everyman. the 1200 plus photos will be unveiled on monday so clear a little time in your daily grind to swing by and see the humor.

and, please sleep a little for me this weekend.

tick-tock, tick-tock

this is the last week to enter the everyman. sunday is the deadline. so if you're planning on submitting a pic and haven't yet, you may want to think about getting it together.

that's all.

so this thing has been going on on the net now for some time

while my influence on things in this world may be a tad on the lean side, i like to think that where i do guide events, they are events of consequence and import. i have to feel this way because there is really only one thing i've ever helped along and by every estimation it is one of the coolest institutions in the modern and connected world.

you may have popped in, stumbled upon it by accident or heard about it in the chat rooms but if it is not part of each and every friday you exist, you're making a grave error. so since today is friday and you're here reading this, it means you're not there enjoying that, so get over to the division of michaelcosm, michaelpella and be enthralled, entranced and bettered for it is something you should not go without.

everyone gets a participation ribbon

i haven't been pestering you all on this, or much else for that matter, but so no one sleeps through it, i feel compelled to give you a heads up that the everyman photo contest deadline is zooming forth. sunday. october 19. midnight. central standard time.

and, this year is going to look a little different. in the first year, there were a total of 40 photos all entered by people who have eaten dinner at my house. last year there were 80 photos entered and the majority of them were a friend or a friend of a friend. to date, i have a few hundred people submitting many hundreds of photos from dozens of nations, and none of them have ever even heard of me. and allow me to repeat that those figures are 'to date' meaning we still got a few weeks left. and if the last few years are in any way indicative of what's to come (meaning getting a whole bunch of last minute submissions in the waning hours) i'm super-screwed and will need to cancel my subscription to the spice channel because i'm going to be entirely engaged trying to turn all of these photos around.

and, it just occurred to me that i'm only speaking of the items i've received in my email and that i've totally forgotten the stack of fifty plus envelopes sitting on top of my scanner that i've received to my PO Box and are waiting to be scanned.

major suck.

it appears i may have to also nix my charity work at the Coping with Your Circumcision Center.

a call to arms, or arm, singular, if that's all you got free

to the guy running around the internet calling himself 'onan the masterbaterian', thanks. you make me smile. laugh actually. and, this is in no way a dig. i totally in every way envy the combined lunacy and bravado in which you are leading your life. trudge forth my friend. trudge forth.

i'd buy you a trans am with the bird across the hood

awhile back i was approached by a guy who wanted to know if i was interested in doing some design work for a porn site or two. he assured me that he and people he knew had quite a need and the opportunities would be both abundant and lucrative.

the only burn i could see is that i'd be doing work i couldn't exactly put in my portfolio which is a little bit on the evil side. when i mentioned it in passing to marty she surprisingly had a few more negative items outside of the portfolio issue. "just how would you feel telling your daughter that you peddled pornographic material for a living?"

would i be sitting in my new Porsche when explaining it to her?

this would be an example of the wrong thing to say to marty when discussing such matters.

in the cogs of the great wide web

thanks to a plug from passerby lordrich and then a subsequent link of the day honor from userfriendly.org, boycott city is out of the gate and charging ahead full tilt racking up new members and content with daily routine.

i must thank bookguy for continuing to nurture this nascent site while i was out to lunch. without his diligence it would have grown stale for these first-time visitors dropping in for a looksey.

it's all about patience people. after all the slyfox wasn't built in a day.

they laughed, they cried, they screamed 'get away from her you wayward bitch!'

so i've spent the last six months building a replacement intranet for my employer. there were 40 applications. a cumulative total of more than 2,000 files. we were meticulous. we were clean. i've worked 10 weekends since alex was born. i've been in the office 25 of the last 34 hours. i would not fail. it was simply not permissable.

and then, 7 hours before my site went live, some totally unrelated systems issues took a giant wet shit on the hood of my shiny new sports car. it was the most tainted successful rollout i've ever been asked to oversee.

bitch.

strap on that there feedbag already

a surprising number of people have requested some sort of explanation about the what i'm eating section of this site. i've always personally felt that it should be, well for lack of a better reason, self-explanatory. but, that part of the site does get pounded by the masses coming from google so for those types some explanation may be in order.

but you all know the drill so if you're looking to kill a few minutes on the job, feel free to read the newly added, what i'm eating explained.

sidenote: i just went through a server upgrade and think that i missed some mail over the last few days. so if i don't respond to something, please re-gig me.

we got someone's attention

boycott city takes a step towards legitimacy. read the second entry, dated 07.22.03.

sell your stock! sell it now and sell it all!

i was in a meeting the other day and someone referred to the webmaster. everyone looked at me. why are you all looking at me, i asked the room and they said 'because you're the webmaster stupid.'

scary times. these are scary times indeed.

michael jackson, j.d. salinger and now captain

so the somewhat asked about gallery for captain is finally baked. i've not yet settled on a frequency for updating this yet. i posted to rockefeller center weekly for several months but that was primarily for my mom's benefit who was pining in distant pittsburgh, pa. now that she's here in town and gets regular smother of spoil stops she doesn't require the cyber fixes she previously thirsted for.

but, for equity sake and to not start that second-child slide so soon, i'll probably post every monday for the next few weeks as to let everyone, everyone that cares to that is, catch up on the little man since he's been living a rather reclusive life since his debut.

and as with rockefeller center, updates to this section will be noted on the front page and the photos are accessible from there or at the base of the gallery section.

he's stepped away from his desk

allow me to introduce you to some troy math:

end of may work deadline +
a side project +
another side project +
a spanking new baby =

me taking the month off

the timing seems right in that i took last may off as well. i'll see you on june 1. and, make sure to check in because i have a surprise for you.

you'll notice i got the house ready before leaving by updating the eating section, the gallery section and of course it is the first monday of the month so i couldn't deprive you of the number one visited area of this site, rockefeller center.

if you read this page, you qualify

one question. how the hell is jiffy lube about to pass the phrase 'too much information' as the number one hated item at boycott city.

ok, jiffy lube sucks, no doubt, but people come on, 'too much information'? are you kidding me here. i've let you dawdle on this long enough and it is time to step up. quite simply, i cannot have such an atrocity committed on my brain child. and, if you read this site there's no way you ever utter this phrase. it just wouldn't add up. and if it is a part of your verbal routine and i'm just not aware of it, send me an email so i can write you off properly.

and as an fyi, signing up has been significantly simplified so you definitely have no excuses to not throw your hat in the ring.

and, if you're feeling extra generous, hook me up by tossing my circumcision boycott a bone as well. you don't even want to get me raving on how gene simmons is more hated that male mutilation. that's one hellmouth you should hope to never see. i assure you.

a much needed enhancement finally gets done

permanent links to items listed in this journal are now available. what does this mean for you, a religious reader of this content? well, it used to be that if someone wanted to tell someone else about a particular entry, they'd have to do ALL the work themselves to get the intended reader to the item. like saying, go there today, but it has to be today or else it will get lost in the numerous posts troy always makes everyday or you might say, go find and read the entry made on 12.15.2002. basically, it's kind of a pain in the ass.

but no more of that slacking business. allow me to direct your attention to the smallish icon to the right of the category above this (and each) entry. in this case, the icon is just to the right of the word WEB. so now you can link and refer to items in one of two ways (there may be more, but i ain't got all day here).

1. right click on the icon and select COPY SHORTCUT or COPY LINK TO CLIPBOARD or something of the like depending on browser and platform. once done, you can paste the url into an email or chat client or anywhere else you may be inclined to paint the info. get the picture?

2. or, if you believe right clicking is evil or a little too much strain, you can just click on the icon and it will load a page where that is the only entry displayed. you can then copy the url from the address bar and paste it wherever you would like.

so essentially, i've made it much easier for you to share the ever vital information discussed in this forum. and you can pretend to not deem my content to be vital, but you know and i know, we're equally deluded into thinking it is.

now, if you're wondering why this is such a thing, it allows me and my mom and you to recall morsels from the past which you may have forgotten about but should not have. like this or this or this.

don't say anything, you'll only encourage him

for those who reached new levels of disgust by yesterday's admission of my occasional swollen-genitalia syndrome, you flatter me.

for those who requested a visual aid of my condition, you flatter me as well.

and for those who said your condition is worse than mine, you flatter yourself.

a little help

in case you missed it on the front page, this is new today.

i wonder if it will be coming out on dvd

he's at it again.

peeping into a window on the other side of the world

chris mcgrath is back to doing what he should be doing; entertaining and educating the planet en masse. several years ago when we each had bourgeoning home pages i remember saying to him, "i post every day and have nothing to say, you actually have an interesting life and never post." while he agreed, he didn't change his behavior. he said something about the fact that he had a life was why he didn't post or some such nonsense. silly logic that.

well, it may have taken two years for him to act on my suggestion but act he has. chris, who has just returned to bosnia for three months, has committed to update his web site every day during his stay. i'm absolutely giddy. i'm telling you, i can't get enough of this guy. sienfeld would term it a non-sexual crush. for those who have seen chris in a tank-top would know that it's not exactly that. but, i could say, without causing a hiccup in a lie detector that chris is one of the most vibrant and entertaining fellows on the planet and his wife one of the most charming and calming and his child, well i got my own kid and don't ask me to go against the family.

i know i'll enjoy the next few months of getting full-frontal descriptions of chris' days and insights. and while i'd love to keep him all to myself, his entries are just too entertaining. so i welcome you to swing by and catch up and then keep up at chrismcgrath.com because we're all going to be a little richer in the end. i know of what i speak.

he won't be doing that again

our mailman smokes or rather chews a cigar while walking his route. he is a very affable guy and when we moved in he made it a point to come up and introduce himself. we religiously receive a christmas card from him, chat regularly, basically we're friendly.

sometimes if we have more stuff than will fit through the door's mail slot and the door is unlocked he will come in, go to the kitchen and set our mail on the counter and then leave as discreetly as he entered. i like this. it's a little bit of mayberry right here in the big city.

the other day he was bringing one such bundle in when he caught me home from work, heating a plate of leftovers in the oven and singing michaelpella-style to the stevie nicks melody Edge of Seventeen. ok, so getting caught doing the whole singing thing, pretty bad, but it was what i was doing while singing that proved the real burn. i have this condition where hearing stevie nicks makes me want to move and groove as she did in those long 70's flowing, tasseled dresses. unfortunately, in my homage, something doesn't properly translate. perhaps it's the undersized khakis, my awkward grinding motions or even the contorted faces i make when singing. bottom-line is it may look a tad off.

steve the mailman got a little more than he bargained for on this day.

on the positive side, at least it lessens the embarrassment of all the brown wrapper magazine and vhs sized parcels he delivers to my address.

note: it didn't occur to me until writing this up that i always thought the lyrics of this song said just like a one-winged dove instead of the more accurate and flight-worthy white-winged dove.

and for my lackadaisical postings this week, i'm givin' love with the above and this and this.

television ain't what it used to be

it started with a search for this and culminated in a search to this.

i'm sure that i don't need to launch into a dissertation at the number of things wrong in the world when one of the better shows on television not only gets cancelled after a single season but can't be released to the public when the content offered on the latter link is, on dvd nonetheless.

but, as the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join em. and i'll assume that revealing my discovery of this unique video explains why i haven't been posting a whole lot as of late.

no need to get your freak on just yet

it wouldn't be accurate to say that with last year's everyman i got caught with my pants down. it was more like they were across the room and i wasn't wearing any underwear. not this year though. the 2003 everyman contest is up and baked a full 8 months before the deadline.

there have been some significant changes to many facets of the contest. whole new dedicated site, modified entry requirements and an increased stick yet again for subsequent entries.

i welcome you to swing by and see what's what at www.theEveryman.com.

and any pictures of a bottomless me dashing across the room towards my tired Levi's will not be well received.

i should have stayed in bed

friday i had a to present an intranet design to my groups' primary client. all went well but the two-hour affair left me a touch on the spent side. so i left work a little early as to get a small nap in before the girls got home, only upon arriving home i found that my dsl provider severed my internet connection a full 10 days before they were supposed to as part of an 'upgrade' they are mandating on all customers.

16 hours later i was able to raise a web page again. i then went to check my mail only to find it equally disabled. i called them next. it would seem some moron was trying to send me a 260mb email. after further investigation it was discovered that that moron was me. at the end of every month i have my monthly logfile detailing this site's web activity emailed to me. this file is usually around 15mb, but after being linked to by jason kottke, metafilter, usa today and a south dakota 10 o'clock news show, this single text file came in at 260mb, which in itself exceeds my full web space allocation. and this does not even account for the rest of my site. ultimately this single large-ass item was rendering my mail file completely impotent. after 8 calls to my host, 6 attempts to kill the individual message, and three full deletions of my mail file, i can again receive mail.

the bad news is anyone who sent me any mail between friday afternoon and sunday evening will have to resend it should they want me to see it. the worse news is because of that mail fiasco which turned my 30mb mail file into a 1.5gb frankenstein, i have 25 days to get a 1.8gb daily space average down to under 250mb or else my usual $25.00 hosting fee will more resemble a meager $1800. and, i hope it goes without saying that the everyman prizes next year may suck worse than this weekend if i don't get that squared away on the quick.

and, i have a favor to ask of someone. if i prove unable to reduce this billing amount, i need someone to tell marty for me. someone who is big and strong and can run like the wind. a lesser man may not survive the deed.

and they breathed a collective sigh of relief

this is what could have happened and this is what did happen.

it just might catch on.

this website usually gets anywhere from 40-65 hits a day. since announcing the latest winners my numbers jumped a little bit from people anxious to see the submitted photos as well as the winners. this was also aided by a couple of generous mentions from some more storied of the web gods. friday i was thinking the 1154 hits were something to coo about until i looked at yesterday's numbers which reached a staggering 2054 hits.

here's what one of the discussion boards had to say.

Channel your inner Ansel Adams.
Going off of the theory that everyone has at least one great photo in them (as opposed to professional photographers, who should have hundreds), missiouri webizen & amateur photographer Troy DeArmitt has hosted (for the past two years) an annual web based photo contest open to other amateurs only, sponsored out of his own wallet. If the results of this year's contest are any indication, he's right, there are some beautiful photos here.

this commentary was kindly posted here (expired link) by persons unknown.

and, for any people tired of hearing me blather on and on about this subject, i'm done now. i'll let you know when the next one gets fired up, but i'm baked on this one.

nailing the suggestion box to the wall

first things first. i have no worldly idea what i'm doing. some of you have thought this. others have assured me they were certain of this. i concede. i'm clueless. for those there at the inception of the everyman, you know it began as a way for me to collect art to hang in my home. it was a brilliant notion and worked swimmingly with one exception; a winner had to be named. we've now done this twice and twice there have been all sorts of unhappy people at the conclusion. while i feel for you, i have polled enough parties to know, i can't help you here. no matter what photos are picked, no matter who judges or how many judges there are, there are going to be unsatiated souls at the end of the day. i've embraced this. should you be one of these ill-contented people, you should embrace this as well. and the guy who posted the boycott on the everyman should really embrace this. and believe me when i say i know how you feel because i feel the same way every time i watch america's funniest home videos and sit dumbfounded at the clips selected to move to the next round. it's shameful.

here's the deal. if you want to see a photo contest that puts your favorite photo in the number one slot, you need to first have a contest and secondly you need to be the only judge. i know this because my number one pick from this year's contest didn't even place in the top three. so there's that. but this is not to say that we can't make things better. i've already committed to doing it again and plan on getting the details of next (this) year's contest worked out while this one is still fresh in my mind. what i'd like to do is tell you what i'm thinking and i'd very much like to get opinions and suggestions on how you think it could yet be improved.

next year, i will introduce categories. they will be:
1. black and white
2. landscape/nature
3. people/portrait
4. travel/architecture
5. macro/abstract
this was a logical next step and this year certainly had enough quality-based diversity to fuel such a paradigm. i feel pretty good about this, but am willing to massage it should someone have a viable modification.

areas where i am still uncertain include:
Prizes:
i have decided to up the total pay outs to $500. assuming this, do i give the first place winner in each category $100 and nothing to 2nd and 3rd or do i break it down $50, $30, $20 respectively?

judging:
now recall my earlier note about the selection process. with this in mind, what do you think might be the most equitable approach.
1. a panel of judges
2. let the contributing artists judge
3. or, judge it all by my lonesome
(as for the let anyone and everyone judge, i'm not up to this task. the technology behind trying to keep a handle on that requires more effort and time than i'm able to commit, so it is not an option. i don't want people screaming ballot-stuffing on me. i ain't florida.)

beyond, that i'm reasonably open and welcome your suggestions/opinions. in case it needs to be said, i'm not making any promises to do what you forward. i'm just trying to get smarter about the process and would love feedback from the people who may have experience or insights into the matter.

and by the way, congratulations to this year's winners. and thank you (again) to all who participated. regardless of any coffee room mumblings out there, it was all good.

it's a wrap

i believe this is what you're looking for.

different strokes

it's worse than i thought. i've had 6 different people, who are not judges, give me their top three picks. that would be 18 selections from the 80 photos and there was not a single duplication in the lot.

this helps explain why so many people got in my face about last year's results. people just like different stuff. and, i'd be the first to admit that i could pick 15 photos i'd be comfortable naming top dawg. unfortunately, i can't afford to give 15 people a c-note, so i guess i'll just get more practice at having semi-strangers get shrill with me until next year's contest when we can do it all again.

but, as i pour through these photos i'm convinced of one thing; it is totally worth it.

let the games begin.

the casting call is over. it's now up to the three humans asked to serve as judges to assume the unquantifiably difficult task of narrowing 80 photos down to three.

last year i held on publishing the entries until it was all decided, making everything available at once. you can thank big ed for getting an early glimpse at this year's crop before the judging is complete. this has added benefit because while perusing them, try to pick a few out that you would award the prizes and you'll get a vibe of how agonizing the judging process is. bottom line is there are a number of photos worthy of the grand prize but as it is, only one can be annointed as such. this is the major suck about the everyman. the un-suck is how amazing and diverse and talented the submissions and their artists are. i tip my hat to all those who particpated.

without further delay, i welcome you to visit the everyman index and see what you're competing against, should you be in the game.

note: the photos will not be credited with the author's name until the judging process is complete.

they're not boycotting pot

boycott city has gone international.

and how appropriate is it that our first non-citizen comes to us from amsterdam.

note: this obviously excludes the attic of our country, canada. we may not know why, but we all collectively know, they just don't count.

step up or step out.

Here's your friendly reminder that there is only one month left to submit your everyman photos.

hey santa, wake up, on your feet! this ain't no rest home!

so bookpimp was asking me if the new what i'm coveting section of the site was a one-time deal or something i looked to maintain and keep updated. after laughing hysterically i assured him that not only will it be routinely updated but it very well may receive more attention than any other part of d.com. i mean here it has only been a week and i've already added two new items to the list. i don't want to exclude any exuberant gift givers this holiday season because every recession needs a good shot in the arm to get that economy going again. and no one, and i mean no one, is going to say troy dearmitt didn't do his part to ease any consumeristic angst my fellow citizens may be experiencing.

you want a shot at the title?

a few have inquired about this. allow me to answer your question.

the highlights are:
1. submissions are due by january 10.
2. and the first place prize money has doubled.

your money's certainly good here

in anticipation of the coming holiday season, i've created a new section of dearmitt.com as to not leave too many of you scratching your heads on what to get your humble but gadget hungry host this year. so i invite you to please visit my personal life registry also know as what i'm coveting.

1 month young

boycott city celebrates one month of life today. while it has not yet been indexed in the major search engines (meaning no foreign traffic), the activity has been respectable given the word of mouth program. in it's first thirty days boycott has registered 21 users who have created 34 unique boycotts with members participating in a total of 61 boycotts. right now the leading boycott is the phrase "too much information" even though the boycott against circumcision should be miles ahead of anything else (come on people, step up).

while bookguy and i were hoping for a more frenzied launch, we averaged one new boycott and two joins a day. should that pace continue, i feel we may have a fairly voluminous collection of information before long.

so thanks for those who have already participated, and for those who haven't, what's up with that.

and for my pilot people, we have not forgotten about your rewards. you will get what was promised. i promise.

who's ready to get their eat on?

per my web logs, my site is rapidly becoming recipe central. there's a whole ton of people out there looking for new stuff to eat. i like that. and seeing this made me remember that there were a few recent finds i needed to add to the what i'm eating recipe index, which i've now done.

if you like taco salad or that 7-layer taco dip at least one person brings to every outdoor event, you'll love the mexican casserole just added. it's crazy good and because it's a casserole can be served as an entire dinner which the 7-layer dip can't, in good conscious at least.

and, i'm most excited about the twice baked spinach potatoes find because i'm quite the loaded potato aficionado but mine are drenched with butter, laden with cheese and slathered in sour cream. the noted recipe has none of that but hits the table just as tasty as it's venomous counterpart.

let me know if you like them.

A Very Grand Opening

the wait is over. the agony complete. the red carpet has been extended and the celebrities invited. today is the first official day boycott city is open to the public. so swing by, get your account and create or join a boycott on what i hope becomes a long-standing and authoritative voice in the genre of consumer satisfaction and information sharing.

and, remember, you can say you were there when it all began. and for all of those toms and mikes and marys out there, this may be your only chance to get a logon id, actually using your first name only without an 87 or 321 attached to the end.

i'm glad speech is free, otherwise i couldn't afford it

boycott city is close to being baked. the first pilot users will be introduced to it later this week. very exciting. very exciting indeed. and, it's also why i've been neglecting all that is supposedly important in my life, yes including you pouty-face.

as a legal update, in talking to my lawyer (read, friend from college) about the possible ramifications of such a site he ultimately calmed my fears by saying that should a company elect to pursue monetary litigation, our defense would go something like this:

Your honor, they (evil company) can sue for all they want. I'm not sure what resources they hope to extract out of a couple of hicks working out of their basement in backwoods Missouri though. But, by all means, sue away.

man it's finally paying off to be broke and a rube and living in the fine and open state of missoura. and, my mother said i didn't have a plan.

mikey likes it, but do you?

someone had the nerve to make this ill-considered attempt of labeling me. what they don't know is i will not, no cannot be tossed into some clicky block of drones, try as you may.

Shabby Chic Social Darwinist (read troy)
This lifestyle is lead by those (read troy) that feel the need to fill their (read troy) lives with the best (read hell yeah). But not the best of everything. They will stop at nothing to acquire a high priced electronic item (i.e. ipod, bmw, powerbook, mp3 car stereo), while wearing the same shoddy clothing (read troy owns one pair of goodwill shorts) for days on end (read 23 days on end). They enjoy conversing with strangers (i.e. you) on uncomfortable topics (i.e. circumcision, sex, basically anything having to do with the penis) and are very free with expressing their (read troy's) opinions, which they (read troy) always (read and i mean always) have. They respect strength (read old spice deoderant) and have no use for the ignorant (read bookpimp) and lazy (read bookpimp again).

it is this kind of adolescent ranting on the internet that gives us all a bad name. it would seem our buddy and pal mr bookpimp has finally, finally hung his web shingle. yeah i know, i feared this day as well. feared the time that bookpimp would learn that it wasn't only people with comp sci degrees and born in odd-dated years on even-dated months who were allowed to have websites and blog incessantly about the inanities of their life. and for the record, whoever enlightened him has some splaining to do.


i'm certain it doesn't take a web designer to assess that you can certainly expect a lot more of this kind of thoughtless prattle each and every day and therefore i suggest you visit michaelcosm frequently and routinely. i know i will to see what kind of libelous things are being said about me and mine.

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.

i love prittney's pears

in honor of today?s what do you want update, i invite you to see what people want from google. it speaks volumes about us, all of us, we know what we want but just don?t always know how to get there. this experiment shows that it pays to simply try. get it in the ball park and you just may be sated and prosper.

is he ok?

you may have noticed i haven't been around much as of late. you may have also noticed a newish project listed under my professional page, boycott city. you do the math.

BC is a vision i've had for awhile which i'm pretty stoked (nice eh) about and those i have discussed it with seem equally compelled. one such person not only offered to help but immediately returned home and developed the entire, not unsophisticated, backend to this web application (thanks bg). this token of charity obviously placed the burden on my keyboard to produce an interface to front his work. hence, i have been holed up working on this every waking moment as well as plenty of should-not-be-waking moments.

after beginning the work on this site, as always seems the case, the simple vision exploded into a comprehensive labyrinth of pages to be built and challenges to be met. fortunately, my daily life incents me to trudge forth through this quagmire of detail and lost hours. for instance, just tonight i was at my local blockbuster looking for a film and made a horrific discovery. my lovely video store does not deem the highly acclaimed films, birth of a nation or in the heat of the night worthy of their shelves. after being told this and returning to find something else i spied such classic cinematic triumphs as hot club california and the naked cage. yeah, i trust your judgment and discerning eye to mandate what i'm able to watch after you closed every other respectable and intelligent video house in a twenty mile radius. my viewing pleasure is in your capable and caring hands.

so sit tight kids. no one wants to see a tool to voice your displeasure with large corporations and sub-par standards more than myself, and fortunately, a few of my more technically gifted friends. given this BC will be built, and available, unless of course we elect to replace it with something more useful and entertaining to you like a fan site for joshua jackson or yet another unusable portal to nothing, to better convenience you, our customer, because it is ultimately your happiness we care about it and you are the reason we strive towards excellence with every transaction and decision... didn't you read our glossy pr prospectus we sent to your home telling you what a competent and knowing organization we are ... unsolicited for your ease.

it is you we care about.

get your eat on

for those on the get troy committed consortium, allow me to proffer additional evidence. for those participating in the troy is the most anal man on the planet group, allow me conclude your effort. and, for those who like to occasionally dine with walt and i, allow me to remove the mystery of what will be slopped in front of you on any particular evening.

while we each have our own reasons, a few months ago marty and i moved to a monthly menuing system. on marty's part she has been trying to keep our food budget somewhere near the allotted amount. i have been petitioning to know what we are having that night so the ingredients are ready for use (meaning not frozen) and accounted for (meaning not at the store). and, collectively we recognize that it probably isn't ideal to have our family meals at 9:30pm given the little human we are now responsible for. given these factors we now sit down at the end of the month and create a menu for the coming month. rules follow:

1. we alternate who gets to pick the meal from day to day
2. sundays are new dish night
3. mondays are staple night
4. fridays and saturdays are left open
5. tuesday through thursday rotates between rice, meat, fish, pasta and a wild card dish
6. and lastly, should you wish to dine with us, you must tell us before sunday, shopping day, so we may get extra stuff for your gullet. note: steak night works on a strict first call first come basis and if marty doesn't like you, she requires you pay for your own cut so kiss up well.

given this lengthy introduction, i now welcome you to visit the recently completed What I'm Eating section of dearmitt.com.

additional note: only the recipes we deem keepers are committed to the recipe index for your own use and edification.

your humble man-boy

welcome to the comeback tour of 80's phenom troy dearmitt. troy is rejuvenated, recalibrated and the same as before except for being a little older, wider and 60% more owned by the man. what man? that man. the man! you know the one i'm talking about. the one that owns 95% of your man.

regardless, prepare to bombarded with more unsolicited tales of self deprecation, meaningless prattle and social misfittitude, because i?ve been busy offending the masses in person and without contemplation and now i?m back to share these opinions and experiences with you, my silent but impressionable partner in these crimes.

can you say jihad groupie

for reasons big and small i will be taking a short sabbatical from my duties here at dearmitt.com and will not be updating the site for the month of may. i apologize mostly to my stalker types, all three of you, in that i know you frequent my pages with unwavering if not unnerving consistency.

i?ll be back in june. see you then.

and we all know this absence is really due to the unrelenting schedule of the octoroon jihad tour.

coming to a town near you

ever wonder what happens when bookpimp and buddy james are left alone, bored and online over the weekend? allow them to put your whirling mind to rest with their recent creation.

after reviewing our touring schedule, i?m releived i didn?t throw my terry cloth thong out after all. especially since the stain is only visible when i?m not wearing it.

363 days old

in two days we celebrate bella?s one-year birthday and in honor of this milestone, i will be reenacting the weekly rockefeller center updates for the month of march. and, in case it has been too long for any of you, that means that a new bella pic will be waiting for you each and every monday morning. i hope you enjoy them.

i'm going to let it speak for itself

   

in troy we trust

I have recently been told I have a responsibility to my readers. This disclosure closely paralleled my discovery that I had readers. All very exciting.

I was recently telling someone of a recent trip I took to north carolina to surprise my best bud Bookpimp on his 30th birthday. The person I was speaking to turned on me and in a highly exasperated manner proclaimed, "But you said (on your website) you couldn't go and that you were sending him a present, which was going to be late might I add." (12.28.01 entry)

Well yes but all that was a ploy to make pimp think I wasn't going when I really was.

And, just when in the hell were you going to tell us?

Hmm. Soon. I swear. I was just about to. The fact of the matter is on my way there in the airport I overheard this great exchange in the bathroom between a small boy and his father. At that moment I decided to make a photo essay of sorts where I would combine photos from the trip with things I overheard on the trip. My initial plan was to get 30 of each in honor of bookpimp's special day, but alas my friends aren't as stimulating as I initially thought and so we have 15 photos coupled with 15 quotes for a cumulative 30. There is no order or credits given. The order is irrelevant and the orators know who they were which should be enough so Bookpimp is 30 is just a lean collection of images and words which I hope you enjoy at some level.

And, pimp has his present now. And, he seems to like it. although instead I think for a present I could have simply told him that I wouldn't ask him if it feels different being 30, because a lot of people ask that, and there really is no answer, I guess because there really is no question but I guess it does feel different in a sense in that you get asked a lot more inane questions than when you were 29. See you at 40 to see if it's any different than 39.

some week end lucidity, chavez style

Bookguy is not Bookpimp, as Sir Chavez thought. and Buddy James is not Man Who Screams Like Woman, which no one has yet thought. but Walt is Mart and Mart is Walt and Walt and Mart, who are the same person, are both female so when i talk about Walt or Mart or even Marty i?m not referring to my gay lover Walt but instead my wonderfully striking wife, Marty and i fully understand if you need to meet Walt as Mart before taking my word on this as Bookguy did because until Bookguy met Walt, the woman, he was torn on my sexual direction, which is left. left for debate that is, given that i?m always talking about this Walt character which i reference almost as much as Bookpimp and significantly more than the misdirected Bookguy but far less than Chavez or Man Who Screams Like Woman or even Martha who is Marty who is Mart who is Walt but Walt is not Bookguy nor Bookpimp as Bookguy is not Bookpimp and vice versa.

Please blame chavez for this, not me, assuming you know who ?me? is.

and, the winner is ...

so you're ready to see the results? i know you are, so i won't bore or delay you too long but would like to say that i felt the contest was an outstanding success, as can be seen by simply perusing through the photos.

if you want to see the winners, go here.

if you want to see all of the photos, go here.

thanks to all who participated. i personally enjoyed the experience and feel as though something happened here. something good and something broad. again i thank you.

and to the winners, the checks will go out tomorrow.

and to those who were part of a tie (2nd and 3rd), you will not be splitting the award but will each receive the full bounty. we here at dearmitt.com believe strongly in not getting generic when it comes to lucre. ok, so this is the first award we've ever given so it's doubly important to not set a lame precedent so you may anticipate the full amount in your mailbox.

i'm going to bed. now. i may have more to say on this matter tomorrow, but at this moment, i'm going to bed. i'm going to bed right now. good night.

mirror, mirror on the wall

while you all have been scrambling to get your everyman photos in, i've been shooting a few of my own around. tonight i received an email from one of the recipients telling me 'Congratulations! Your photograph has been added to the mirror project.' look at me walking the walk. i guess it's about time because i think i have the talking the talk down pretty well. anyway, you can see my mirror here should you be so inclined. unfortunately, for my regulars this is recycled product. sorry. but it is currently 1:51am which is early compared to when i originally sent them my submission, so suck it up and be happy for us here.

i'm going to count to three

photos have been organized, judges have been put in the ready and prize money deposited in the bank. so, for all of you uber-procrastinators, this is truly your last chance, or rather midnight tonight is your last chance to get your everyman pictures in. i would like to thank everyone who has already contributed. thanks for taking the time. pictures will be posted and winners announced in one week (MON.12.17) so make sure to stop back by to see the fun.

in the red

in checking my finances the other day, i realized that i had depleted my private slush fund. while most wouldn?t care about such a trivial detail other than myself, money from this account was to be used to pay out the awards in the everyman contest (only 5 more days).

so i thought of what i could sell (mmmmuuuussssttttt ssssseeeelllllllllll teeeeeeveeeeeeee) and couldn?t think of even a single item i could bear to part with. so i fell back on my FREE STATE beer jar which is always chuck full with the those shiny hard things we carry around in our pockets. if you?re not hip to the budgetary tip of never paying the change on anything, therefore only receiving it, and then dumping your change everyday into a container such as a FREE STATE beer jar, i?d encourage you to start. anyway, aint nothing to roll the prize money plus forty bucks out in quarters while watching monday night football. some days i get the impression that i?m alone in my thought that there is something crazy therapeutic about the process of rolling coin. if i could roll about two hundred k in nickels, i just might be centered enough to want to do something other than roll out coin.

now once i pay this out i?m going to be scraping the bottom of the wallet again, so if anyone knows of anyone who needs a website done, send them my way. i work for food. well the money that buys the food. as long as it can also be used to acquire an ipod. you know one of the basic staples of life.

you better get off the dime, whatever that means

just one more week left in the everyman contest. so if you have aspirations of entering, i suggest you get to it, because word on the net is latecomers need not apply.

do you have any kaja-googoo

We've got film, literature and tales of self-deprecation. How's bout we add some melodic stylings to the mix. Please swing by and visit the newly added What I'm Hearing section of the dearmitt playhouse.

SCB - IPO

the secret cajun band site went public yesterday. while the site is not quite baked, i guess it's more baked than the previous site. I simply got the order to put it up so up it went. it is still missing some content (i.e. photos, tour dates, order form) but guess most people will be able to figure it out.

if you are looking to burn a couple of minutes, i'd recommend visiting the quotes page. nothing, other than their actual music, will give you a better flavor for the palatial characters that made this musical entourage up. The below picture, from the inside sleeve of the liquid monkey cd, also goes a long way in defining these fellows. The guy on the left is the trumpet player, swamp daddy, and the dancing girl is the guitar player's sister, gaya. Had this picture been entered in the everyman contest, it would have had more than a sporting chance on going home with honors.

some administratia

first, a retraction
i'm just going to come up for air long enough to tell you that i may have spoke to impetuously the other day (11.06.01). as life surely emulates, i tried to fight the good fight in reference to sticking to my tried and true mac os, but only lasted two days before leaving the reliable and steady woman (os 9.2) for that young and lithe hellion (os 10.1). she kept whispering in my ear, telling me of the exotic life we could share. shut up, i would say, audibly might i add, but in the end i found myself gazing into her eyes. her dazzling, binder-blue and feature filled eyes until i did not have the internal wherewithal to fend her advances any longer. sorry 9.2, marry another, my heart has been stilled by this young and fresh damsel i have named desiree.

second, another retraction
multiple people have requested that i raise the allowable entries in the everyman contest from one to more. i initially had it set to three but changed it right before i published because in the event only one person entered the contest, it didn't seem fair to pay them all the jack (for one entry), even though i said i would. bookguy suggested that i raise the number of entries one can make, but say that each person is only eligible to win one award. couple that with my newfound confidence that i should receive at least three separate contestants, i'm ok with raising the number of potential entries. so i'm returning it to three photos per entrant. please feel free to dig deeper and better your chances of selection.

lastly, yet another retraction
while i may not be a photoshop guru, i have used it enough to spot an obvious fabrication. such was the case with the first photo entry received in this years contest. granted a strong clue was left in that i've been in the house where this photo was taken and am pretty sure don knotts has not holiday'd there. while i do not want to stifle any creative ambitions here, blatantly doctored photos may not be the strongest of candidates ... i hope.

it could be you

many people i know are very creative. far more creative than myself. some wish they had a site. other's don't know that they wish that but they do and some are so bizarre they don't think normal thoughts like the rest of us. bottom line is though that they all have things to say and experiences to share. my everyman contest is a vehicle to allow expression for those who may not have adequate channels to vent through.

i have been thinking about doing this for awhile and figured that instead of sitting here at my desk a year from now thinking i should do the same thing, i'd just give it a tryst and see what happens. it's all about experience and thinking about it just doesn't seem to count the same as going through the gyrations, so here we are.

if you are reading this it must mean that you are one of my four visitors and given such bleak numbers, i'd appreciate it if you could direct anyone you know who may be interested in this contest my way. while i'm mentally steeled for a flop or bomb, i'd like to see it succeed, although i haven't yet determined what that means.

darkman on the six

I received the following page the other day in reference to my 09.25.2001 post:

"Bomber thought that picture of the thong and lowriders was his sister! I think he was going to pistol-whip you.  I clarified. Your safe.... darkman."

Friends don't let other friends pummel this friend.

No, I said it was mine.

I found myself in a pretty haughty bidding war the other day on ebay. Some guy named kansasclodhopper just wouldn't let my item go. But, on his behalf, he doesn't know me or my consumption neurosis. Because if he did, he would know that when I see something I need/want/desire, it must be mine, at any cost. And, while I ended up dropping twice what I should have for the product (thanks to clodhopper) the seller made a grave mistake in this auction. I e-mailed him earlier in the week asking him to name a price that he wanted for the item and I would gladly pay it that day. This speaks to another issue I sport that smells an awful lot like immediate gratification. So anyway, the seller did not respond but had he taken the time to submit a price that was even twice the double amount I'm already paying, I would have paid it, gladly and promptly, just so I could be looking at the item right now instead of writing about a victorious bidding war.

slow down there boy

Last week my mother worked in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, tomorrow she begins working in downtown St. Louis. It turns out that I am not the only one bella has wrapped snugly around a finger. Personally, I?m surprised she was able to hold out till now, this being her first grandchild and all. But, while this is great news for us, it is only mediocre news for those who frequent dearmitt.com?s franchise page, Rockefeller Center. In that the page was initially designed for my out of town mother, now that she is in town, its continued propagation does not carry the same import. And given this, updates will not happen every Monday, but instead on a monthly basis.

I?ve also set a pretty high stick for when kid number two comes around. I?ve often heard that people do not photographically deluge the second child with the same vigor as the first. I hope to not deal that card to my children so want to slow down and meter my enthusiasm because I?m certain there is something to this syndrome so many people talk about. So, perhaps it?s a smart move, perhaps it?s nothing greater than a cop out but that is the decision coming out of this camp and I hope that all who have made Rockefeller Center part of their Monday routine will continue to do so and share in the latest antics of our little one in the new monthly format.

the best smelling wound in town

I spoke to Bosnia Chris today over his web phone and had commented on the recent update where they were climbing up some mountain and one of the people took a tumble and cut his wrist impressively open [photo not for the weak of gut]. I conveyed to Chris that had this happened to me, a flight for life chopper would have had to escort me to the nearest trauma center. He simply laughed it off and said how they didn't have a first aid kit and had to improvise. Their makeshift solution began with a tampon, which was applied directly to the wound and served as the initial gauze. This was followed up with a wrap of toilet paper and then a sandwich bag to keep all the fixings in place. Once applied Chris escorted his mate down the mountain and to more traditional medical care.

I asked how he could not divulge those details when retelling the story on the web. He said that he didn't feel comfortable putting the word tampon on his site (tampon, tampon, tampon). After calling him gutless I said that I would share this juicy detail on my own in that I've already freely used the term (tampon, tampon, tampon) a number of times and it appears in my working journal an additional 24 times.

Furthermore, I'm not sure how I would have fared in this fellow's situation. You see, I have a immense phobia towards this and other like hygiene products. If you've ever meandered down the pink and blue isle at the supermarket or department store, the smell emanating from these shrink-wrapped packages is just not right. It's like in math where two negatives make a positive. The stuff is just too clean, too natural that they are actually unclean and unnatural. But, in typical fashion I believe in getting in the face of that which terrifies you/me and this is my vehicle for this aggressive posturing. Man, just imagine if I was born a non-tripod.

and to think i almost consulted a professional

I ran into a website for a clothier and their motto reads "happy clothes for happy kids". Talk about getting a jump on breaking humans into thinking that their well being and emotional fortitude is encapsulated in a shiny and crisp garment specifically from their storehouse. I'm rarely offended, and am not here, but if I were more offendable, this marketing campaign may have sent me into a raving fit.

I just sent them an email stating that I am currently constipated and wondered if they had something in a clam digger jumpsuit, taupe preferably, that could resolve my discomfiture.

i will never leave you again fat pipe

I had every intention on posting updates to my sight while away last week, but one thing stood between me and my site, all sites for that matter, the ever-advertised and always talked about JUNO. Until attempting to use their service via my parents? pc, I had never contemplated the meaning of their moniker. But after spending 20 minutes trying to get connected on three separate occasions and getting the warning from my mother that you can only connect after 11pm did I realize that juno stood for ?JUNO nothing about the internet if you use this service.? The sixty minutes I invested in trying to get connected to the net took five years off of my life, easy.

Stop trying to hit me and hit me

I spent the last several days goofing off with Mr. Bookpimp from the big NC. A good block of our time was spent investigating the latest lead on a Napster replacement, and I'm pleased to announce that we do have a winner. MusicCity's Morpheus engine is leaps and bounds above its closest rival. With incredibly fast downloads, sophisticated interface, great selection diversity and reliable receipt of files I recommend any looking to sate the void left by our late friend Napster to visit and use Morpheus.

And as an added bonus, it does music videos too.

where's the remote to the world wide web?

Someone visited my site from a web TV. I didn?t know that anyone actually had these. I thought they were a joke. I?m sorry, what I meant to say is that I know they are a joke and I didn?t realize that there were people out there who did not know they were a joke. They must have fallen victim to that strong ad campaign.

You're looking for what???

The greatest reward of taking the time to grow a website such as this can be found in the constant connectedness one can create with those close to them. An ancillary benefit of such a venture can be found in the connectedness people you do not know have to you, the creator. I have only recently begun tracking the activity to dearmitt,com (huge crime that) and have gained new and curious insights about the people who visit and frequent my humble cyber abode.

8am and 10pm are peak times for visitors.

Weekdays see more traffic than weekends.

A lot of people use the google search engine (smart move)

Linux is the least used OS coming here.

And, best of all, there are people out there who are way more freaky than I am. So daft in fact, I am dedicating a new section of dearmitt.com to what they want from me. Because a very cool part of logging is that I get to see what people want to see from me. I will update this section as long as the weblogs continue to proffer items as bizarre as "bolt thrower chick" and "copulating squirrels" and I will call this new cavity "What do you want?" Please visit it now and frequently if you ever require a sign that you are more normal than your fellow man. And, please don't ask me why some of these requests are leading to content I created because I honestly do not understand more than half of them.

body art-icle

The first rule of writing states "write what you know about." In perusing my recent entries I have been steadfastly white-knuckling that missive. Quirks of the body, things emanating from the body and obsessive observations of the body have always been a hobby of mine. But, with the interest of you, the reader, in mind I will make attempt to better diversify my content and not post another body or waste related monorail item for at least, uhhhm, four days. To promise anything greater would require me to forget the first rule of writing and while I could possibly do so, the second rule of writing also states, "write what you know about" and this backup instruction would foil my plans to spare you. I bet you never thought that the redundant listing of important philosophies would actually end up biting you in the aspiration one day (look there, it almost got me).

ahh man. late again.

I would liken the last year to one of those too awake to sleep but too tired to do anything constructive kinds of states. And, in this stupor, I completely spaced the one-year anniversary of dearmitt.com. What began as an exercise to learn something about the web and myself has culminated in a gob of words and partial core dump of my mind, the parts I don?t mind my family seeing at least.

For those who said they just didn?t get it, knowing you as I do, I say Thank God! If you did get it, I wouldn?t do it.

For those who claimed it was egocentric and self-aggrandizing, guess what? You?re right. But perhaps after reading the site for a year you might even call it narcissistic.

And for those who visit me every day, week and month I sincerely thank you for showing me that there are other people on the planet as occasionally disinterested in reality as myself.

did i say that out loud

Two days ago I linked to some guys psychiatric evaluation and was wishing I had one that I could post (the continued woes of troy dearmitt ? coming soon). Well, in that the guy has a very sexy and well done sight I was kicking around there a bit and realized that in his last few entries he admitted to experiencing a mental episode and would not be with us for awhile. Doh! Had I noticed this turn of events in this young man's life, I may not have poked at his cerebral workup. But, in the same breath, I will not feel bad because of all my immediate friends, I am the only one with the requisite amount of compassion for my fellow man to even consider sending slack to one in such a state. Sorry noah-man and stop laughing mike, steve, matt, eric, etc, etc, etc.

Please have a seat on the couch

I wish I had one of these to share with all of you.

Godspeed 2001

Tonight Marty and I will be attending the graduation ceremony at the high school she teaches at. Each year at this time we watch as a fresh crop of students jet off for the exciting and frightening unknown that is independence, responsibility and free form decisions. While I am hopeful of the experiences they will enjoy, the selfish lobe in my mind desires them to remain, For me, the therapeutic benefits of my interactions with many of them is marked.

David Lienemann possesses a quiet and refined maturity rarely seen in a person of his age. I regularly marvel at his view and interpretation of the society around us. With gifts in the form of photography, music, business, and human nature, it's more than hard to remember he cannot legally drink. One of my first conversations with him involved this website and he told me it seemed pretty good but that it needed more pictures. I asked if he was suggesting I put up more of my pictures or publish some of his. "Yes", he replied and days later supplied me with a block of photos from a recent trip he had taken. That was many months ago and I have just recently completed the feature and invite you to visit California in Reason to see the work of a future photo great.

Jessica Campbell, known by many as the gay sister in Election and/or the hermaphrodite in Freaks and Geeks, will be departing to hone her skills on the big screen. I don't really know Jessica but regularly saw her at various school functions and events. These encounters always weirded me out given how much I enjoyed and remembered election and freaks. I have spoken with Jessica a few times (Stalker! Stalker!) and she is an intelligent, lovely and spookily centered young woman who is traveling in the first class section of the success concord. She has already filmed her next picture, The Safety of Objects, starring Glenn Close, which should be coming out this summer.

The Amen boys, the departing ones at least, represent my most selfish loss. These gifted acapella entertainers have provided me with more hours of enjoyment than they can conceive. Whether tapping a toe to Elliot's remarkable rendition of the Streets of Philadelphia (philidelphia.mp3 - 4,387kb), slapping a thigh during Roundy's energetic Basketcase (basketcase.mp3 - 4,100kb) or getting dizzy watching the Pennington twins lead the always randy Instanbul (instanbul.mp3 - 3,154kb), these guys will be sorely missed and prove to me that life is in fact not fair given the unreasonable amounts of natural charisma and talent dealt out to each one of these young men.

My social microcosm will certainly feel the loss of these and other students but humans across the country will have the benefits of making their acquaintance. Treat them honestly and well because they make me smile. And for those of you who do not have access to our exceptional youth allow me to confirm that while the bad ones are getting worse (ala columbine), rest assured that the good ones are absolutely getting better.

barnes and noble, here i come

First Volvo, then Chips Ahoy and now Amazon. What is it with these successful companies that have a good thing going and then have to go and wreck it by changing some major aspect of their business? With amazon, I agreed to look the other way when they announced the revision of their privacy statement, which essentially stated they would maintain your privacy unless someone was willing to pay them to not maintain it. I will not be so forgiving on this annoying ad box that pops up every time I visit their page now. I?m glad to see one of the most popular and usable sites on the web de-evolve into a less functional utility after defining the model to so many e-business efforts. Keep up the amateur dot work amazon dot com.

Talk to you later (blech!)

One of my life mantras states that if it's memorable, it is your friend. Such was the case with an email I received last night in that it possessed one of my favorite sign-offs I've read in recent history.

Its 2:00am, so I'm going to go back to studying. Troy, as Alabama Worley once said, "I'm going to get hot and soapy and then watch x-rated movies 'till I get you back in my lovin' arms".

Jeremy

Thanks for the added thought j-man and in the immortal words of one Sailor Ripley I reply, "Ahh, hell peanut."

Hables Espanol?

Justin Yunke can?t sleep at night. People are mistaking my friend and his domain for the popular Puerto Rican rainforest, Yunke National Forest. He regularly receives inquiries about the park and pedestrian requests for information. The major problem here, a great majority of these inquiries are written in Spanish, a language he has not mastered. In defense, he tried responding to said messages in the most basic English possible, explaining that he was neither the actual park nor in any way affiliated with it. This routinely resulted in more email from the original sender, not understanding his reply. Frustrated, Justin attempted a new tactic. For every email he received in this foreign tongue he simply replied with the following: ?Yo tengo el tocadisco? which translates to ?I have the record player?. This has surprisingly cured his dilemma and saves him from fending off these redundant queries. Justin es muy intelligente!

Do you know what it's like to slip on blood or brains?

Friend and former colleague chris mcgrath recently made quite a moving addition to his website chronicling war-torn Bosnia. If you ever need an attitude adjustment, chris? site is not a bad place to start. And, it never hurts to be specifically mentioned (on page four at the bottom) to add to the story?s intrigue. I think that may be my first external link. I guess it?s only right that the guy who got me started in the biz be the one to deflower me in this manner. Thanks Christopher.

The Roger Ebert of the Web

Someone recently turned me onto this website called Web Pages that Suck. Being a student of the genre I was anxious to pay the place a visit and get new and fresh insights. What a chasm of disappointment I tumbled into. This Vincent Flanders fellow is a complete self-aggrandizing fool and guru-wannabe. Here he has dedicated an entire effort to highlighting the sub-par and uninformed work of others but overlooked one significant requirement of such a venture ? The nay-sayer should most likely demonstrate a mastery of the medium before bashing others. You're site sucks V.F. And, I'm putting it at the top of my list of crappy sites, not because it is the worst but because your scathing reviews of others jettison you to the bottom of the food chain. It's called negative style points.

Now, don't misunderstand me, many of the sites on the web could be improved. But, this guy is not the Macgyver we've been waiting for to point out what and who they are. Furthermore, it's OSHA-safe to say if this guy orchestrated all web development, it would be the fad that the 50-year old guy in my office claims it to be. But, when it comes down to it, I predominately feel sorry for aspiring developers who actually listen to this dullard. It's like Jonestown all over again.

what year wrecked me most

While still pretty lean, I've opened up the Year In Review. See what made me the man I am today by reading the highlights and travails of my life, one year at a time. I considered not doing this given the non-eventful nature of my existence but am a believer that everyone has a tale to tell. Couple that with my prowess for self-deprecation and this may actually pan out to provide some good web-fodder for you, my subscriber.

What Happened!?!

The more astute may have already noticed that the MonoRail page has a new look. In an empathetic gesture to my modem users, I have made a more user-friendly version of this page. When visiting previously, you were inundated with the entire history of my ravings. Now you will only be assaulted with the last 20, or at your request categorized views which may be loaded in the Archives section to the right.

Also in the right-hand pane you will find some new options which receive more regular updates as well as a few new additions like the Thorns and Roses section, my book reviews and much much more is coming.

Please let me know of any issues you may experience while using this newer version of the page and I hope you find it to be a kinder, gentler page. And, oh yeah, in the event you ever visited any of my links, they are now located at the bottom of the page and have a quick link to them in the left pane.

Are you reading over my shoulder

Still looking for something to read? Perhaps I can encourage or deter you from a particular book. Feel free to have a look at what I've been reading and get my two cents on the work. It aint the new york times, but neither is your subscription price.

Does this remind you of anyone you know?

my cyber-friend psychonaut is at his qwirky best again. the saga of roter hutmann is an absolute must read. while it is possibly something geared more towards computer geeks, i think that all people should be able to join hands in a peanuts like moment to enjoy its tale.

and, if you find yourself smitten with psychonaut's comic stylings, feel free to complete his application to become his girlfriend. what questions might you have asked?

please speak into the microphone

the long awaited pollyanna section has been completed, kinda. you will now find content there, just not the intially intended PollyAnna material. it has been usurped by the later and greater TroyScripts effort.

you may also have noticed that the FastTrack verbiage was swapped for MonoRail. nothing too significant here. i just liked the sound and fit better. MONO: one or me. RAIL: vent or complain.

give me some skin

tired of the aged look of your netscape or internet explorer browser? if so, give neoplanet a tryst. they offer a broswer based on the ie engine that's skinnable. i have been using it for a little while without issue, but try it at your own risk. if it goobs up your machine, i will not be making a house-call.

Now serving customer #0000001

a couple of weeks ago i ordered a necklace i found on the web. yesterday i rec'd a call at work from the proprietor of the web site telling me that i was her first customer. she was very excited and very kind. it's unfortunate more business folk do not take her approach with their customers. so all of you last minute shoppers should swing by and check out her wares at magicbeads.com. she has some nice and unique pieces. and of course, it always feels better to buy stuff from people you don't mind buying stuff from. good luck lauri.

The Gallery is now open

and, you don't even need a tux for this showing. i invite you all to visit the recently completed Gallery section of dearmitt.com. updates are scheduled to happen monthly and i will strive to have a new photo posted within the first week of every month. that is my commitment to you the viewer.

also, if you think you have a picture worthy of display, please forward it. if used, i promise to include full disclosure of its source as well as any royalties it may generate.

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