a friend recently questioned my practice of doing daily, routine things for my family members as a show of love. these things can include doing the dishes to honor marty, watching suspense movies with bella every saturday night, playing minecraft with alex a few nights a week, or reading harry potter to anthony every night before bed. my friend argued that given my consistency people would soon deem these acts as "normal" and come to expect them. the result of this expectation would be my efforts would lose their shine of specialness. i quickly refuted his claims as short-sighted and immature but can confess that since he planted that seed in my head i've now come to observe the reactions to my rituals with a new eye, an eye that is looking for signs that my rituals are carrying the unintended consequences he predicted, consequences that are injuring the very growth i'm looking to foster. how much would it suck were it true?

i am not a texter.

i have a text-able phone but it is pretty exclusively reserved for work matters. when people outside of the office ask me for my number my pat response is "you'd have better luck getting minka kelly's number than mine." and even with work, i use the texting feature namely as a pager, meaning you can send me a text but i would not suggest depriving yourself of any gulps ...

i participate in a reading program at the university i work for. the program instructs all incoming freshmen to read a book, a book chosen by a committee of folks. the book is meant to stimulate thought and conversation about a range of topics. on the day before classes begin the freshmen attend a discussion group with around fifteen of their new peers. the talk spans one and a half hours and is l...

imagine all the time and resources we collectively pour into chasing the vapid and material while we openly ignore the most fantastic and marvelous thing this world will ever offer us, our working minds and functioning bodies. if you spend five minutes thinking on it, i imagine you, like me as of late, may also observe this near universal oversight borders on criminal neglect. ...

we live near a university campus and the students just returned for the new school year. since their arrival i've seen multiple astonishing demonstrations of obliviousness due to "living in their phone-itis". the most glaring case being a guy who walked into a busy intersection at a snail's pace. aside from the slow shuffle of his feet, all of his attention was spent trying to block the glare of the sun from his screen. meanwhile a long stack of cars waited for him to cross the street. i'd say he's mostly lucky the person behind the wheel of the lead car wasn't doing the same thing he was, otherwise all they would have found was a red smear and a shattered iphone.

between blocking traffic, having unusually loud one-sided conversations in public spaces, walking into people, sitting through green lights, slowing down order lines, derailing live conversations (the most unfortunate of the lot for me) and on and on, i think we need a new term to describe such indiscretions because the words we may have used in the past, like, say, "inconsiderate", no longer convey, fully, the numb egotism of this behavior.

oh. and another interesting thing about the dishwasher bit. when the repairman, one of them at least, was at our house assessing our broken washer, after backing out of the washer, standing up and drying his hands on his rag, he explained that what we're experiencing is now rather common. he said f'ing brilliant.

our dishwasher broke. yet again. i forget the full chronology of this appliance but all i can say with full conviction is that we seem unable to buy a dishwasher that can last multiple years without issue. and i would not say we were particularly hard on dishwashers as i essentially wash the dishes before putting them in. after our third or fourth dishwasher failure in ten years marty and i decided we would not replace or repair it and just do dishes by hand. granted eight years living on a single income partly fueled this choice as we weren't exactly basking in wealth but the state of things being what they were, both marty and i accepted, gladly enough, the situation. then after a year or more of this, marty came upon an unexpected $500 and getting a new dishwasher topped her list for the cash.

so we went to the mall, chose our appliance and were embarrassingly giddy the night before as we danced and sang songs and smiled broadly that this would be the last night we would be doing dishes by hand. the install guys came the next day as scheduled, pulled our addled washer out, complained about the crooked nature of the appliance's space which marty explained a non-crooked space did not exist in the home and pointed out that the last one went in there just fine. as they wrestled with the machine, one of the two men stood up and said ...

DISHWASHER GUY
well ma'am, we're going to need to get a plumber in here because you need a shut-off valve for the washer and you don't have one.

MARTY
what? why? we've never had one before.

DISHWASHER GUY
new code ma'am. all dishwashers need a shut-off valve within two feet of the appliance.

MARTY
why?

DISHWASHER GUY
in case something happens you can turn off the water.

MARTY
why can't i just turn it off at the main?

DISHWASHER GUY
because they want a valve here as well.

MARTY
how much does that cost?

DISHWASHER GUY
i reckon no more than a hundred or two.

(minute-long pause)

MARTY
take it back.

DISHWASHER GUY
what?

MARTY
take it back. i don't want it.

DISHWASHER GUY
ma'am. why don't you take some time. we can put this in the garage. then, when your husband gets home, you can talk it over with him.

MARTY
i don't need it in the garage. i don't need to talk to my husband. i need it taken back to where it came from. today.

so our celebration may have been slightly premature. after some thought we instead had a repairmen come and fix our existing washer for more money than the new washer (but less a new washer AND shut-off valve). it worked for several months but then stopped working in a brand new way. in one regard, it's near impressive the number of ways today's products can fail.

when our home is working as it's meant to, i do the dishes on the school/work nights and marty does them on the off days (sadly for marty this summer seemed to be one long off day). marty muscles through the undesired task with a conviction few folks can claim -- though, silverware seems to be her kryptonite. i find, often, the rote endeavor a calming end to the day as you start with a full-on wreck and wind up with a pristine and shiny end product. i don't often get that quick of a turnaround on most of my work so find getting to finish a job in less than an hour oddly satisfying. and, it doesn't hurt to know marty near swoons at a clean kitchen first thing in the morning. i may look nothing like brad pitt, but i betcha i clean a kitchen better than the man.

part four is over here

someone recently turned the tables on me and asked if i ever received any good business advice. as you might guess, i'm a better question asker than answer giver, concise answer giver at least.

the greatest lesson i ever learned did not come in a moment but was instead a slow drip of learning over many years, decades really, but an over-arching message was present. my two main mentors were my mother and a female boss i worked for for several years (and i've spoke of before). the message they delivered is that success isn't solely governed by a skillset but also by a host of tangential qualities surrounding a skill set: respect, presentation, honesty, vision, commitment, kindness, persistence, belief, to name a few of the sorts of qualities included. yes, of course, you have to have the base skills but the point is those skills alone aren't enough to deliver success or fulfillment. the import of all of these factors, blended and balanced in work and in life, were repeatedly demonstrated and re-enforced by my two mentors, and their noting them, in my behavior and professional endeavors during our time together. you might call them, en masse, the intangibles.

truth is i learned the intangibles before i learned my end skillset, as i would again be taken under the tutelage of new people who gave me the professional tools i still use today. but i feel it was the presence and honoring of 'the intangibles' that helped to distinguish me among my peers early on and continue today to effectively guide me into and through new waters.

and putting it that way, the intangibles, makes me think of the quarterback tom brady. athletically, tom brady is one of the lowest graded quarterbacks to ever go through the nfl combine (the testing ground where nfl hopefuls are evaluated). yet, he has gone on to be one of the highest achieving and best-regarded quarterbacks in the history of the nfl. were you to ask him and those who coach him, play alongside him, or compete against him, you will often hear words from 'the intangibles' toolbox mentioned.

so that would be my advice to a young professional. mind the details. all of them. and if you chose to ignore one, like say proper dress or good vision, make sure you are neglecting it mindfully and for meaningful, defensible reasons as there are plenty of unknowns ahead of you and it would be a shame to let an avoidable issue slip into your blind spot that might impact your opportunities or potential.

while that may seem long-winded i promise you, it could have have been immensely worse. just ask my daughter or wife. they would confirm you got off easy.

so how about you? did you get any good business or life advice along the way that made a difference for you? if so, i'd super-love to hear about it.

part three is over here

a few years ago i asked my students to attend a talk given by a special guest visiting our school. the man speaking was an alum of the university and now the ceo of a large investment firm. he stressed, emphatically, the importance of excellence and making sure that all of your work and all of your interactions were thoughtful and nothing short of outstanding. in the class i teach, excellence in your work served as a cornerstone, if not the entire point, of our lessons and we were deep enough into the semester that my students knew being excellent and thoughtful took time, like a lot of time (e.g. to make a good, passable twenty minute presentation can take four to five hours, but to make a great, memorable presentation you're looking at more like like fifteen to thirty hours, depending on how soon the inspiration comes). to this principle one of my students asked the man, "i understand the importance of being excellent but can you speak to how one is to find the time and energy to be excellent all of the time?"

to say i wasn't proud and impressed by my student's cogent question would be a full-on lie, especially next to the other ridiculous questions being wasted on this guy. unfortunately the man's answer kinda just stuck to the rallying cry of there is no rest for the successful and they are always working and they are always excellent which was a mainstay of his overall talk.

the next day in class we discussed the talk. someone commented that they felt his answer to the girl's question was lacking. i agreed but then defended him saying that it's hard to have a bulk of questions fired at you, moments after completing a talk, and get all of them perfect (which unfortunately soils his be excellent all of the time argument). i told them given his experience and how thoughtful his talk was if he were given a few minutes to properly ponder the question he might have said something like: fact is, i wouldn't have been surprised to see this man clap his knee while in his first class seat home as he thought of a better answer to the young, eager girl's question. he might have even mumbled audibly as he realized the missed opportunity to have been excellent.

part five

part two is over here

in leading up to the interview with my uncle, i started practicing my questions on random folks i was hanging out with. before going to pennsylvania to meet my uncle, we spent a week at a beach with a few families. while out in the breakers one morning, i asked one of the dads, also a man who has had a markedly successful professional run thus far, if he ever received any advice that made a difference. he thought through a few rolling breakers and then lit up. to add support for his claim i learned he was a ski instructor in oregon while in grad school. i asked where he skied as i knew he grew up in the midwest. he said he hadn't skied. the obvious next question dealt with his 'ski instructor' credentials. the story goes, he was told a resort or school (i can't recall) was looking for a ski instructor. after talking to them (and telling them he could do it) he went to the mountain, got outfitted with some skis and started skiing working his way to the challenging terrain and skiing it until proficient. when it came time for class he proved ready and everyone came away happy. in the end i guess it's as my father-in-law said in regard to parenting "you just have to be smarter than your kids". perhaps the same holds true of teaching.

to add another important detail here, a mutual friend of ours, e-love, has also said of chris, the "say you can do it" guy, that he is the most extraordinary natural athlete he has ever seen. to support e-love's claim, after chris creamed us in tennis i asked when he, chris, learned to play and if he played in college. e-love interrupted the answer saying, "you don't want to know the answer to that question troy". of course i pressed on and e-love was right, i didn't want to know that the guy who just annihilated me in tennis and has the form of a former division 1 athlete, started playing a year ago and for the most part just pretends he's trying to hit a baseball.

part four

marty heard of a woman who flew a professional photographer to puerto rico to take a family photo while they were on vacation.

marty laughed saying we didn't manage a proper family photo until troy got a groupon to make it happen.

while that may seem bad, the other lady confessed that they'd need more than a groupon's worth of help to get such a shot of their crew.

when i was in college i used to tantalize people, usually late at night and amongst sleep deprived humans, with a fanciful wager. the challenge was this. i claimed that if given X amount of time i could begin a new religion with Y number of followers for a reward of S amount of money. Y to be determined by both X and S. people, all people, quickly dismissed my claim and confidently launched into t...

the other day kottke.org posted the following. as someone who marvels at the infinite power of photography, the image blew me away. i can't imagine a place in the world i was less meant to occupy. i mean seriously.

at my last job once a week the database guy at my shop walked the aisles of cubes collecting money for lottery tickets. everyone would hand him a wrinkled buck or two, he'd make a scratch on a small piece of paper, and move to the next. then at lunch or on the way home, he'd buy a block of lottery tickets with the money. routinely i was the only one who did not participate. routinely he was the one who would shake his head and tsk-tsk my decision, saying i'd be really sorry if they ever won because i'd be the only one left in the office to hold all of these systems afloat. to this i said if they all won, in a year's time i'd be the happiest one of everyone involved. that comment bought me many a debate on the merits and ills of an average person coming into an un-average flood of money.

my belief on the lottery system spread through the office and my lottery-playing co-workers would appear at my cube in twos, threes, and fours to confirm what they heard and question the source. i would confess to the row of bemused expressions that i did believe they would all be miserable if they won the lottery. when pressed on how that could possibly be i would explain. i would single out one of the gawkers asking about their family. parents still living? how many siblings? aunts? uncles? friends? after getting a sense for the inventory of friends and relations i'd ask what their plan for all of them was. they always had a plan which i imagined got drawn up in their forty plus minute commutes home. their presence would gain a beat as they excitedly stepped through the awards each tier of the family would get thinking they were the first to stagger the amounts with such acumen. i'd then move us along saying ... while all of my arguments were based on simple conjecture which were based on scenarios i'd drawn up in my head, after more than a decade of my lottery-conviction, i heard my first bit of first-hand evidence through the aunt of a close friend of mine (and a woman i had socialized with as recently as six months back). four years ago this woman's christmas list was 225 addresses long. then her husband died and she was awarded one point five million dollars. guess how many names were on her christmas list last year, or rather, three years after she was handed one point five millions dollars? when i asked bella this question, she guessed 1,000. i had to tell her the real answer was seven. and then less than three months after the seven-name christmas she took her life with a handgun she had from earlier times.

eating out. it's just something we don't do too much. as a family we may hit a restaurant about three times a year. don't waste your pity on us as this is up from our long-standing one time a year (usually my birthday). marty takes the family dinner table most seriously, and those that know marty know how the term 'seriously' ought to be interpreted. for those that don't, i fear i lack the ability...

and speaking of apple, i almost forgot about a recent interaction i had with them. one of the imac's in my office flaked out so i took it to our local apple store for repair. i made an appointment with the genius bar, boxed the machine up (rookie move not to keep the original packaging!) and went to the appointment. it was a few weeks after christmas and at 10am on a friday, the sprawling store looked just as crazed as it did days before christmas (buy more stock!). a man standing at the door, took the heavy box i was carrying from me and led me to the check in spot. typical apple care thus far. i reported into the ipad-equipped angsty kid with bangs in his eyes, spandexy jeans, and an ill-advised lip piercing. the apple host(ess) informed me that due to a higher than expected volume of customers today they were asking patrons if they minded doubling up with technicians. not so typical. reading this as a "share your time with someone else or don't get helped" kind of option, i said that would be fine. i was then told they were running about fifteen minutes late. i nodded again in impotent compliance.

just as i stepped back to wait my go, a man approached the two employees managing the queue and brusquely began

CUSTOMER
you can take my name off the list. i'm going to go buy a pc.

TROY (laughing genuinely)
ha. that's a good one.

CUSTOMER (looking at me sideways then back to the apple-fanboys)
no, i'm serious. i'm tired of this. every time i do this, i go make an appointment in your over-designed website only to come here to be told that you're running behind.

APPLE KID
i'm sorry sir. it's just that a lot of people are needing help with their christmas purchases.

CUSTOMER
what's the point of an appointment system if you don't keep your appointments?! i've been waiting here thirty minutes. i have places to be and i don't have time to sit around waiting for help for a computer that's supposed to work in the first place. so i'm going back to a pc. at least then i know what i'm getting!

the man left. after he was out of the hipsters sightline, they spoke under their breath to one another, saying something along the lines of "yeah, enjoy your pc mister", a quip as inventive as each of the lad's fashion sense. i smiled at getting to take in the bit of impromptu drama. i then sat back and studied the varying levels of exasperation among the mixture of folks waiting for help.

very close to the fifteen minute mark i was approached. my machine was unwrapped and setup by the tech. i was sharing my time with a man a bit older than myself. he had a laptop which he was bringing in for his college age son. we both explained our problems and the tech began his diagnostics. in the quiet of our workspace, i asked the other customer if this kid was his oldest or if he had more. he lit up at getting to talk about his children. when done he asked about my brood. we exchanged brief technology-related stories about our kids only occasionally being interrupted by the apple tech with a question. enjoying this unexpected social encounter while getting my machine worked on turned out to be a pleasant addition to an otherwise irksome task and another inconvenience apple recently dealt me that in the end, proved more satisfying than i initially expected.

i believe unforeseen advantages to be one of the hopeful products of thoughtful and sophisticated design. granted had i been paired with a loud-phone talking, suv mom complaining about the brightness of her ipad screen, i may not be fawning so. but that is another by-product of design - they can all be improved upon, which is what keeps many of us getting out of bed each day.

i was talking with neighbor on the sidewalk in front of my house. she was walking her dog. a woman approached on the other side of the street. she was also walking a dog. when the dogs saw one another they started whimpering and making lunges against their leashes towards the other dog. the other-side-of-the-street woman seeing the dog near me, crossed the street directly for us. when she arrived the dogs began twisting and sniffing and jumbling up together mixing and crossing the two leashes crazily. no one said anything. then the woman extricated her leash from the mix, said good day, and continued on her walk.

the woman i was talking to me looked at me and asked if i knew the woman. i said i did not and that i assumed she must have. the woman scrunched her face, turned to look at the departing woman, turned back to me and derisively said, "who does that?"

the phrase "who does that?" and the intonation it was delivered with at that moment became my favorite quip and i've used in no less than five times since hearing it.

passing comment made by one of my brother-in-laws

i'm been avoiding buzz about the slumdog millionaire for weeks now. i've also had multiple chances to see the movie snatched from my grasp just moments before the lights in the theater dimmed. very frustrating. so when walt and i had a friday night dinner engagement cancelled the day before, i pounced. we had the sitter. we had the evening. marty was too exhausted to voice an opposing opinion. it was on.

when we sank in the seats i couldn't believe how much effort went into seeing a simple film that runs hundreds of times a day in our city. as for the film, this film, we made it twenty minutes before walking out. a friend of marty's said we just needed to make it another five minutes and we would have been alright. this friend does not have a son that looks like one of the main child actors, so our stomachs didn't have five minutes in them. we instead went and had persian kabobs and talked and laughed and made it home at a respectable hour in that we were missing our kids after our bad movie outing and thought we might sneak in cheek kisses before they drifted off.

i spoke to bookguy a few days earlier regarding our annual ski adventure. he said he was reading three musketeers. i said i was reading three musketeers. he asked if i had seen slumdog. i said i had not yet but was hoping too. i asked why those were connected and he said they just were and he was fearful of saying more giving my neurosis about learning stuff about movies before seeing those movies. he did add though that seeing the movie would not wreck my ability to read three musketeers. we had both just started reading so we compared how far we had gotten. he said he had just read the translator's forward and was ready to dig in. i said i skipped over all forward and preface material and turned to the first page of the first chapter and started at the first word (because i like my books like i like my movies, unspoiled by insight and opinion). bookguy went on to say that the forward was interesting because the translator of his text explained how it was important to continue re-rendering and re-translating books even if this had previously been done in order to keep them semantically relevant and readable to contemporary audiences. i thought this was a sound insight but not worth risking a spoiler just pages before the real story begins.

then sometime after talking to bookguy (but before seeing slumdog) i was chatting with a colleague. they asked me if i do a certain thing. i said no i don't, i in fact avoid it like the plague. then i took pause long enough to know that i don't really spend much time avoiding plague so corrected my comment by saying i avoid it like i avoid syphillis, because i think syphilis is actually something i've actually tried to avoid in my lifetime. i think the person i was talking to wanted to say "too much information" but knew me well enough not to bother.

friday was halloween. anthony was a clown. alex was spiderman. and bella wore a self-made costume announcing herself as a star princess. our neighborhood is one of the lucky ones where halloween is still alive. we on average get about a hundred kids. this year marty stayed to dish out candy and i ushered our cadre onto the busy nighttime sidewalks.

in saint louis, the custom states that you must either do a trick or tell a joke before obtaining candy. these days enforcement of the rule varies from house to house but it is best to have something ready should the human with the candy bowl challenge your preparedness. not yet verbal enough, anthony did a trick. it was jumping up and down. sometimes he'd give people one big jump and sometimes he'd give them a flurry of quick bounces. either way it went the little blonde boy in a clown costume hopping for candy proved to be a crowd pleaser. one thing we didn't account for while practicing anthony's trick in the living room is that he'd often be doing his antic while on the top step of a short flight of cement or brick stairs. we had no catastrophes but it did raise the thrill-factor considerably. alex told a joke. his joke was, 'what did the baseball glove say to the baseball?' after people would say i don't know what the baseball glove said to the baseball alex would animatedly give the punch-line, 'catcha later!'. when giving the answer he had this great verbal peak on the backend which always won smiles. a couple of times he forgot the answer. on these doorsteps everyone would stand waiting and alex would be looking at the ground thinking hard. if somebody went to say something he'd hold up his hand and say, 'don't tell me, i know it' which also was grin-inducing. in addition to making her costume, bella also made up all of her jokes. some i can remember ... how do you compliment a cat? you tell her she's purrrfect. or, how do you compliment a cow? you tell him he's utterly awesome. bella left the boys and i in the dust about three houses in to run ahead with some of the neighbor girls so i'm not sure how well it went over but given the size of her haul, she didn't get turned away from too many doors.

the one oddity of the evening was a full-grown man dressed in a spot-on michael myers costume, mechanics jumpsuit and all. (clarification: this is the halloween movie guy and not the comedic austin powers guy). this lumbering, man wandered the neighborhood and was obviously alone. he did not go up to any doors, nor did he talk to anyone, nor did he carry a candy bag. he just roamed the sidewalks and would occasionally stand motionlessly staring at people from a distance. more than once i found him staring at me. i held his gaze from across the dark street until he'd become engulfed by kids and parents racing by or my own kids would beckon me to the next house. when i'd turn to look back he'd be gone. then i would see him several houses later again looking at me or at seemingly nothing. i overheard more than one mom say that someone should possibly call the police about him given his seeming lack of purpose or belonging. i didn't chime in but will say i wish one of them took the initiative. that guy was freaking my chili out.

over the weekend, i talked to a guy who works a federal job responsible for catching child predators. oh, and when he's not doing that he oversees child abductions. of those he said if you remove kidnappings that involve a parent or incidents that were actually homicides, there are less than fifty traditional kidnappings a year in the United States. after a few minutes of discussion the first thing i could think to say, facetiously mind you, was, "you surely must sleep well at night."

after that embarrassingly lame comment i managed to ask how he dealt with such a gruesome and emotionally demanding job, admitting that immersing myself in such matters would make me jump out of a high-rise window. his answer was precise, "someone's got to go after these twisted assholes." right he is.

the most striking thing he said was his description of a typical offender. he said people typically think of pedophiles as vile and disgusting creatures with outward signs of their illness. this couldn't be further from the truth. he described these folks' proclivities as being hard-wired and they could not define or control their attractions anymore than the average person can re-define their attraction for males or females or blondes or women who like network gaming parties. they all know their interests are societally unacceptable and for this reason they have become very good liars, this being one of things that make them quite hard to catch. in time they essentially become grifters and as all good con-men do, they learn the arts of deception. he said he never interviewed the family of a single victim that said, "yeah that guy was a real slimy asshole." instead they say stuff like he was one of the family, we've known him for decades, he was my best friend, i'd trust him with my life and the life of my children. by this day and age, this point should be far more obvious.

another thing that struck me was he said if he had to run into a burning building to save people and had his kids with him and had the choice of leaving them with four men in suits or a homeless crack-whore, he'd give them to the crack-whore every time. i thought to say that the crack-whore might sell his children to the four men in suits. believe it or not, i refrained from making the comment ... and did so for about seven reasons. such on the spot reason is rare for me but probably couldn't have appeared at a more opportune time.

i for one wish this man and all like him every professional success.

marty and the kids we're picking up dinner at a gyro house near our home. standing by the register waiting for his already placed order was a man super-rife with tattoos and piercings. in our neighborhood these sorts of folks, and there are plenty of them, are known as loop-rats. while such scenes are reasonably commonplace, you do run into the occasional over-the-top variety and marty had said this guy was that given a variety of sprawling tattoos, some running up into his face and metal balls and hoops hanging from places that didn't seem able to accommodate such artistic and weighty objects.

after ordering marty and the kids sat down at a table to wait for their food. wordlessly, bella and alex continued to look at the man. fact is they'd been gazing at him since they walked in the storefront. finally, alex leaned into marty and in a soft and concerned whisper said, "mom, i think that boy over there is a pirate." alex's serious tenor made his remark much more comical and marty fought back the release of a deep guffaw. just when she thought she had it controlled, bella leaned in and said, "no alex, that boy just made a lot of bad choices."

my kids just may be brighter than i give them credit for.

some other pirates of our time. it's impossible to cite one favorite from the terrible tatts slideshow. the best caption for sure would have to go to "Backfat Wars: We feel a great disturbance in the force".

for the most part, and by most i mean 98%, i steer clear of political battles but enough is enough. palin and her supporters have crossed a line i cannot forgive. i came to know this after running into a friend at lunch. he was walking with another gentleman and after being introduced the man i didn't know commented that i and sarah palin have something in common. assuming he wasn't talking about my creamy, stemlike gams i asked what that might be. glasses he said. it seems we share taste in the same designer. i'd like to go on record and say that i've worn the same model of glasses for nearly ten years, own two pair, and have only once met someone sporting a set from the same maker. pre-palin the maker sold 12,000 of her frames world-wide. in the last ten days they've received 9,000 orders from the us. embarrassing.

tomorrow's debate is happening about 100 yards from my office and while i don't know biden that well, based on the below video, if the result of their verbal fencing proves anything short of tarantino-like bloodletting, i'll be legitimately appalled.



huh? were you saying something? or was that a story? or a made-up language? this could explain the naming of her children. she really meant to name her son 'john' but when she opened her mouth and it went through the palin-filter, the word 'track' came out.

and as this reporter so aptly states, we are one 72-year old's heartbeat away from this woman becoming president. and, by this woman, i mean this woman.

i've dated girls with more presidential potential than palin. and as one friend noted, what a great slight to give a guy, "wow. troy. your new girlfriend is, uhm, very, uhm, presidential." i love it.

when i was young and we lived in colorado my dad had a friend he played music with. his name was jim-bob. jim-bob was every bit as affable as you'd expect from a guy with such a feel-good moniker. the only detail i recall about jim-bob, other than his persistent grin, was his academic career. he was enrolled at colorado state university so long his credits started aging off. the problem was he was...

have you ever contemplated the determining factors between the sports team you support and the religion you practice? the foundations of each have more in common than anyone should be all that comfortable with. i was two mailboxes away from being raised presbyterian, four from lutheran and eight from amish. as for born again christians, they're kinda like victims of corporate relocation.

and for anyone saying they don't have a sports team, stop being so damn literal. it's bad for your skin.