i'm headed to portland for a little work and a whole lot of boondoggling. you can be certain that you will be hearing and seeing the humor before long. more than anything, i just wanted to forewarn you that updates will be a little spotty at best for the next several days. had i planned better i would have turned the update duties over to one of my esteemed readers. ok, so we all know that i absolutely would have turned over the reigns had i two esteemed readers to rub together. will you look at that, another potential entry is born.

and for any wondering if i've packed yet, know that i've packed my recently delivered issue of Large and in Charge and i'm quite honestly thinking anything else i may remember to bring would be gravy.

1. team sports
2. any and all bruce willis films, and yes including die hard
3. the fraternity lifestyle
4. the french fry you just ate
5. the employee handbook
6. signs that read "please leave underwear on when trying on swimwear"
7. chest hair removal systems

i'm told that when my doctor asks why i've been going to the gym more, i should not say "so i can have a stomach like brittney's."

a recent study made the following observation regarding what men like about women, physically at least: in my own unrelated study, i found that women like pale, oily guys with afros who like playing gameboy on the toilet and wear the same underwear for three days in a row. ok, so it's six days in a row and marty is the only woman i know who prefers this ... and i may be taking liberties when saying marty prefers this, 'endures this' may actually be a more concise way to express her position on the matter.

after bella was born a lot of people asked if i felt like parent. while you may think that the birthing event would slap one into the mood, it doesn't, or at least it didn't for me. the best way i can think to describe it is a sort of blissful stupor. i can be up at 3am cradling my screaming child, standing in my underwear and blinking clumsily in a dark room in attempt to stay upright and if someone asked me at that moment if i felt like a parent, i would cleanly answer No. i have caught myself wiping feces from the back of my hand onto my favorite college sweatshirt while bracing the phone in my neck as i talk to a nurse about the consistency of said brown matter and the color/hue of the phlegm that's adorning my other sleeve and if you were to ask me how parenthood was i'd suggest you locate someone who looks like they'd have experience in the subject.

recently I was brought out of a saturday slumber by a sensation i have never before encountered. upon opening my eyes and localizing the touch i found that my daughter was smashing her tiny face into my chest in attempt to breast feed off my miniscule man nipple.

i sat bolt upright holding her in my arms and looked straight ahead. at this moment, on this day if you, if anyone, asked me if i felt like a parent i would have responded "what the hell do you think, i got a little human trying to suck fluid out of my left nipple?"

and for the record, i had a little human trying to suck milk out of my left nipple on the following wednesday as well.

still mourning the whole gwen thing.

who next, penelope cruz?

gwen is getting married.

suck.

Last night Man Who Screams Like Woman (MWSLW) and myself went to our local apple users group to see what they had to offer. We were thoroughly excited and had largish expectations of what we would find. Upon arriving at the session and nabbing some seats, we quietly took in the scene with sullen faces. After several quiet minutes, MWSLW leaned over to me and whispered, "So what do you think?" I responded, "I think we somehow have landed on the set of Cocoon."

Everyone was over sixty but us and this kid in the back row whose speaking voice greatly resembled the synthesized computer guy from War Games (Do you want to play a game?). I almost asked the facilitator to just point me to the shuffleboard lanes so I could get my stick on before the rheumatism set in and I'd have to settle for pinochle on the veranda with professor plum, floyd the barber and one of the gabor girls.

But, as karma would have it, during our dejected departure from the meeting and in the middle of our mutterings, we found a gay magazine, the adult variety, in the street that seemed to have been specially crafted for that lonely trucker away from home. And, as luck would have it, that's me. I mean that's us. I mean that's the most surreal evening I've had in some time. Come to think of it, the only thing that would have made the evening more surreal is if said magazine had catered to elderly gay truckers.

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.

new year's resolution: be nicer to people i never meet, know, talk to or share time with.

i'm so all over that.

so in closing, i did not get an ipod for christmas, but i did get one of these.

all i want for christmas is a woman with a foot fetish, a fred flinstone like foot-foot fetish.

i have oftentimes claimed to be un-offendable. i must slightly modify that statement to say that humans cannot offend me, but my tivo on the other hand can. you see the tivo has this feature that bird-dogs the tv schedule and on occasion will automatically record shows it thinks you may enjoy given your regular viewing patterns. the other day i found, in this list, an episode of Change of Heart. Now, if you are not familiar with this meager late night atrocity don?t expect me to explain. and, might i suggest that if someone makes attempt to acquaint you with it, run like hell.

truth be told, i also recently spied an episode of Judge Mathis in there.

Anyone want a tivo?

i just read where it snowed 20 inches overnight and 4 feet in the last week in vail, colorado. i miss living in a place that has four seasons. hell, i miss living in a place with even three seasons. st louis has two gears, hotter than sin and colder than my dates with erica the monkey girl.

sunday morning, marty and i awoke and groggily exchanged our dreams from that night's slumber.

while doing some last-minute cramming for my class final right before the test, i looked up and realized that we all had lockers next to our seats in the room. sidetracked, i opened mine to find a disaster. i immediately set out to cleaning up a semester's worth of garbage, totally ignoring the professor's announcement that we were changing rooms to take our exam. later looking up and seeing everyone was gone, i panicked since i didn't know where they went. i raced to the department office for help only to find bookguy running things, unsurprisingly. marilyn monroe was sleeping in a chair in the corner of the office. i found this equally unsurprising. so i went over and started talking to her and five minutes later, we're making out and yes you guessed it, also not surprising. as is often the case in my dreams, i suddenly and desperately needed to go to the bathroom. so i fled marilyn and dashed to the toilet only to find it stopped up, no doubt the skilled work of one bookguy. given my urgency i was not dissuaded and began to relieve myself. as many have probably experienced this phenomenon, albeit not nearly as frequently as myself, you know the drill and how it typically pans out. fortunately for the guest bed in my mother's home i awoke in the nick of time and drowsily stumbled to the real toilet down the hall and was consequently spared an awkward lecture from my mother in front of my wife come morning.

meanwhile, on marty's pillow, she was studying for a statistics test, a class which she is not taking. someone told her she could say her baby was sick and get excused from the deadline. she did this. now that she had gobs of time, she was kicking around and passed the school gymnasium. she saw that they were holding basketball tryouts and thought she'd give it a whirl. in her initial discussions with the coach she learned that they only had varsity shorts left and those were therefore the only positions they were looking to fill. she knew her skills would only earn her a spot on the jv team and since she was a senior could not entertain such a thought knowing full-well that e-love would make fun of her in this role. so she instead opted to go out and train her pet dolphin.

i swear, marty's dreams go from being overly pedestrian to wildly fantastic in such a blip. i mean, i was at least making out with marilyn monroe before almost making wee in the bed.

The other day Marty asked me to watch Bella while she attended to some household matters. She popped in this video called Baby Mozart which she said Bella liked to watch. This tape is nothing but a bunch of close-ups of moving images, like clocks and electric trains, to Mozart music. So Bella and I sprawled out on the floor in front of the tube and started watching the colorful antics. About thirty minutes later I hear my name barked in a fairly authoritative tone and turned to see Marty standing by her desk in the next room. When I looked at her she motioned down towards her feet where I saw Bella sitting under marty's desk gnawing on one of the computer power cords which were now in a tangle about bellas legs and waist.

So what I'm saying is Baby Mozart is a pretty good view and Bella's attention span doesn't yet seem to match her father's.

I had a rare day yesterday.

I got caught and subsequently drenched in a rainstorm destroying my umbrella while walking home from the metro.

I had three flights to Cincinnati canceled due to the same storm that soaked me hours earlier.

Because of these negated flights, I had to drive 350 miles to attend a meeting, leaving St. Louis at 5pm.

I spent an hour trying to rent a car because the agency just couldn't get their arms around a one way trip.

I got pinned in a traffic jam because a semi hit an overpass and exploded (no embellishment).

And, I almost missed my morning meeting the next day because I couldn't find my car key which was later discovered to be dangling from the driver's side door lock.

So after all of this you know what I was thinking? I'm thankful that I didn't get struck by lighting. I'm thankful that airlines don't take their passengers lives lightly. I'm thankful that I live in a country where I can, at a moments notice, drive through four states without applying for permission. I'm thankful that our capitalist society allows me to temporarily rent an automobile. I'm thankful that I was not driving the truck that turned fireball. I'm thankful the wrong person didn't happen upon my car with the key hanging in the door. And I'm thankful that I can wake up in the morning even if only to experience a day as shitty as that. And, that is what I was and am thinking.

Doctor Stevie stopped in town last night on his way to San Francisco. He claims to be going to a medical conference on infectious diseases, but he looks rather suspicious about it all.

In a conversation between he, Marty and I, the term PDA came up in reference to a young couple. I admitted to not understanding the meaning of this inference. They looked at each other in that 'are you kidding me kind of way' and explained that it stood for "Public Display of Affection." Thinking they were joking I asked what it really meant and after exchanging sideways looks again, the mocking began. What do you think it means, personal digital assistant, they asked. Well yes, I replied. They then informed me that I shouldn't wear my dork badge so loudly on my sleeve. A lot they know, we carry them in our wallet.

Marty made the observation that dating is better when you don't live with the person you're going out with. When I asked why she felt this way, she responded:

"Because, I then wouldn't have to watch my date walk into the bathroom and pull the boxers he's going to wear out of the dirty clothes hamper."

I must admit I don't get her point.

Walt and I went on our first dinner and show combination since Bella arrived seven months ago. The dinner was reminiscent of an earlier time in our life. And, I learned that I'm not yet very astute in my new mission to eat healthier. We went to this sloppy burger place, Blueberry Hill, that is known for it's sloppy burgers. I ordered blackened red snapper, a new item on their menu and am confident that it will be a newly removed item before long. Marty advised me that ordering gourmet food from sloppy burger place is ill-advised. Point and indigestion taken.

For the entertainment portion of the evening we strolled down the way to the Pageant to see Margaret Cho, of All-American Girl fame. It would seem that Cho has fallen off my radar for too long, or that I was pretty thick when I first discovered her many years back. I was not aware that she is now more publicly championing the gay rights cause. This translates to Marty's observation at the concert that we may be the only straight couple in the house. I contemplated the impact this may have on her material but soon felt that she crafted the show especially for me. Her first bit dealt with colon hydra-therapy which she reports to be all the rage in california. I've always said you can't go wrong with rectum or rectum related humor given its universal applicability. She next launched into a 15 minute routine dealing with menstruation, specifically the implications that could be assumed if men experienced the monthly visitor. As I said, a show specially catered for me.

In the end, I don't know that I would send many people to this show. She definitely pulled some guffaws from Walt and I, particularly from her various personas, but there is a toll. For one, the opening act was this huge black cross-dresser who's whole bit revolved around some guy he yanked from the audience, garnished his feet with cherries, syrup and whip cream and then licked it from between the poor lads toes. Then he ... walked off the stage ... meaning, that was it. One might say he is the antithesis of carlin, miller, seinfeld and most other humans.

So Cho at your own risk but it was nice to meet my wife again.

I go to my barber every 10 to 14 days. When I ask other people how often they go, most report between four and six weeks. Learning this I asked my barber, Larry Evilsizor, if he saw anyone more than me. He claimed he had a guy that was close but thinks I squeak him out since I don't always make it a full two weeks.

Our local hipster paper, The Riverfront Times, recently named Larry as The Best Place to Get a Regular Haircut in Saint Louis. In that I've seen Larry every two weeks for nine years now, this was not news to me. But I am glad to see him finally receive the unexaggerated adulation he absolutely deserves.

In hearing this it occurred to me that if Larry is the best barber in Saint Louis and I am his best customer, should the Riverfront Times not run an article on the Best Customer of the Best Place to Get a Regular Haircut.

As an added note, the last time I saw Larry he told me that he would have to start running the clippers along my ears before long. I asked what that even meant and he explained that as men get older darkish, thickish and noticible hairs begin sprouting on the ear. Disturbed, I consulted my close friend bookguy on the matter. His response, "That's about the scariest shit he could ever say to me."

Everywhere I have lived, I have this thing I do where I find spots in the house/apartment on the floor in corners or under things and sit or lie down there and read a book or just think on something for awhile. I don't remember how this exactly started, but I remember sitting somewhere weird for some reason or another and looking up and realizing how different it all looked from that vantage point...

I have this thing with hand lotion, skin creams or essentially anything that makes my hands greasy. One of the quadrillion times Marty obtained poison ivy in the back yard she asked me to apply some soothing ointment to her back. I looked at her back and then the bottle of murky murk she handed me. I pondered the request to touch evil substance A to evil substance B with nothing more than my left or right hand. I dealt out five spots on Marty's back, smartly distancing each glop for even coverage. I then took the opening of the bottle and began pushing the mounds of goo around to all of the affected areas.

What are you doing?!?

I'm putting this stuff on your back.

You have to rub it in.

I am rubbing it in.

With your hand, not with the bottle.

What's the difference?

One is what normal people do and one is what insane people do.

Yeah, I know all of those crazy people getting this stuff all over their hands, that's why they're crazy.

Oh forget it. Give me that.

Marty sat up, snatched evil substance B from my hand and went into the bathroom to tend to evil substance A on her own. I wanted to help. I sincerely did. But, I sat on the bed unable to get the thought of either of those contaminants out of my head and the epidermal mayhem that was occurring just down the hall behind the half closed bathroom door didn't ease my anxiety. After a few minutes she returned looking a tad peeved. I asked if I could help, she said that she was just fine on her own. If she could have done it herself I'm not certain why she asked for my assistance to begin with. I decided not to mention this foible to her. She did have poison ivy and all.

The New York Times magazine has this section called "What were they thinking" and it is comprised of a picture and below there are brief statements from the people shown in the photo telling about what was going through their mind when the photo was taken. This is always one of my first stops every Sunday after cracking the seal on the blue wrapped paper. Given this and the number of photos I take in a month, week and day, I realized that I could craft a similar feature. There will be three differences between the times' journalistic practice and mine though. First, I will not interview the other people in the photos because I intuit that I will not always be greatly interested in what they were thinking. Secondly, I will interview myself because another facilitator may not ask the question I want to answer. And lastly, my photos will be of a higher caliber, technically and compositionally, than those of the paper. With that said, I offer the first installment which I simply term "Conference Call".