there have been points in my life where i feared a man's sperm supply was finite. i mean, i know everyone says this is not the case, but i also knew if there was a bottom to the bucket, i might be on a pace to get to it. i can even tell you how the imagined conversations played out in my adolescent brain between myself and an as of yet unidentified future wife.

the scene always starts moments after the doctor informed us that i had somehow used all my guys up, even though it has never been proven to be a scientific possibility. the doctor would then explain to my wife how it's really quite impressive that i found the energy, compunction and alone time necessary to entirely deplete my stock. my wife would not be moved or wowed by the doctor's opinions on the matter or that i'm, by his estimation, a medical marvel of sorts. she would instead be totally absorbed on how she was going to explain to her friends, family and as of yet unidentified second husband that the man she initially chose to spend her life with squandered all of his gametes before he was ever handed a high school diploma.

thankfully i was wrong (see exhibits one & two).

although now that i think about it, both of these children were conceived while vacationing with e-love.

sex. let's get into it. how have we not yet? bewildering. what kind of naughty stuff should we talk about? pregnant sex you say. hmmm. little peculiar but why not?

couples predominately seem to be on the same page when it comes to relations during pregnancy but i recently heard of a couple who decided, mutually, to not have intercourse at all during their first pregnancy. i can't help but wonder if they understand that you may ELECT to abstain during the pregnancy but that you WILL abstain after the pregnancy.

regardless of what your mind has previously conjured up or what you have been told, sex during pregnancy, assuming the female is healthy, is all good. i repeat, confidence is high. for quite some time your future tike is smaller than a dry roasted peanut and will not be getting in the way. and when he/she is not a peanut, they're an orange for much of the nine months. please forget your inane jokes about causing brain damage with your steely phallus, cause it ain't happening fabio. also forget about your manseed messing up the kid's house. if your deposit causes that sort of mayhem, you and your kid got way bigger problems to contend with.

now after the birth takes place, consider yourself benched. the physical trauma the female's goods go through will leave you simply amazed they'd ever work again. and consider the mental exercise of seeing a human, a gallon of blood/stuff and a placental flank steak come pouring out of your wife's girl parts. while it's not going to wreck you eternally both because it is your wife, your kid and you've been steeling yourself for this vision for nine months, it is certain to cool your jets for a short while. and obviously, the female is a little bit on the re-configured side after all this and it takes time. be patient. and, here's a totally solid piece of advice. don't be one of those eager hard-ons who asks the wife and/or doctor "uhhmm, so how long till we can ... you know ... do stuff". don't be that guy. be the patient guy. it will happen.

but, maybe the cold-turkey couple has legitimate reasons. if so, awesome. and, when you really think about it, it's so not a thing. i also forget that not everyone experienced the adolescent drought that i did. i could do two years without blinking. i could do one year without even realizing it had been one year because i was fully convinced i would never know a woman. i can be viewed as a sex-camel who could go impressive periods between pit stops. i appreciate that not everyone has been so fortunately prepared.

and i guess it's only fair to speak to when walt and i stopped ... you know ... doing stuff. it was definitely when i could see the little nipper swimming around in there, through marty's stomach. an elbow here raking left to right. a foot there dragging top to bottom, doing the electric slide as we were doing the electric, well, let's just say it was at that exact moment i said i'd wait until the third human in the room could be on the other side of the door.

in college i majored in english. unfortunately i was not a member of the cool and sexy camp of creative writing, that was better left to the james kelly's of our world. my specialty was in analyzing the literary greats. while my first college roommate wrote a three page study on the black jellybeans left in the base of his mother's easter dish i was dissecting d.h. lawrence's rocking horse winner, explaining how the young boy was having sex with his mother and dying on the cross all while madly riding his wooden, rope-maned steed (the key was in the eyes, the boy's eyes crack the mystery wide open). i didn't exactly seek this discipline out, it's just what came easy to me, it's how my mind operated, and by the end of it all i was pretty good at it if i may for once make this site about me.

last tuesday night i was forced to use my powers not on the likes of Nabakov's Lolita but instead on Frankel's Once Upon a Potty. the task at hand, making isabella understand what was passing through the main character's skull when she defecated not in her potty but right next to it. many would think that explaining this simple scene would be an eyes-closed kind of exercise for someone trained in the craft. but i spent forty minutes on it before looking into bella's tired eyes and giving up. i accept that in the very near future i will find a tiny, toppled turd on the floor inches from bella's very own portable lavatory, all because i was unable to effectively convey the nuances of prudence's thought processes to my eldest child.

furthermore, when i find this misplaced turd on the floor, somewhere in my home will be a content and proud isabella. when i find her she will be smiling and by the time i pick her up i will be smiling too. but, i won't be smiling for the reasons you may think. my grin will come from the fact that i will feign ignorance of the mishap and marty, ever true to her nature, will be the one to scrape human feces off our breakfast room floor with a not-thick-enough paper towel.

most people who meet me are hyper curious/anxious to meet marty, and not for the same reason luby was itching to meet her. first they want to see if she's really a she (marty ... marty ... could go either way). and secondly, for the same tired reason of just having to know who elected to put up with me till death makes us part.

well, for your information, the person putting up with me had a very lackadaisical look on her face when we saw two pandas having sex in a tree on the tele and the commentator talked about how the female had two vaginas. after telling marty she was at least 50% deficient she informed me that i was short one bifurcated penis as well and that if i'd work on mine, she'd work on hers.

marty then went onto say that she's often contemplated stopping to check out road-maimed opossums because they, like pandas, have this dual genital thing going on. first question is, how does anyone know this. second question is, how the hell did i end living with a person who knows this. third question is, how the hell is it i'm somehow known as the freaky one living at our address.

and, if you're curious, luby seeks to meet the partners of people he may intend hanging out with just in case the other person totally sucks because he "already has one friend he can only eat lunches with because that's the only time his wife is sure to be working and thus guaranteed to be previously engaged."

in a trip to the zoo last week, i found bella hunched over a display and pushing a button on the wall. i peered in through the smallish Plexiglas window and saw a bunch of sand and twigs. my eyes prowled for the prize. i scanned the box until i saw pressed into one of the corners a shiny, blue, three inch scorpion. AAAHHHH! i shrieked. then bella pushed the button and the box went dark. that is everything in the box except the scorpion which now glowed a dull shade of white. BBBAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! i super shrieked and bella looked up smiling largely and asked if i saw the blue spider-crab.

if you're like me you never conceived that such a creature could exist. want to know where freaky ass glow in the dark blue scorpions come from? while i'm not sure exactly where they got that one i crapped three of them into my shorts when bella hit that friggen' button.

you may or may not believe me, but believe that if i ever saw this thing out of its box, you'd need to know stephen hawking math to precisely count how many of those atrocities shot out of my ass.

darkman clued me in on a new film coming out, winged migration. it is from the makers of microcosmos but dedicated to birds instead. cosmos was a phenomenal film focusing on the greatly overlooked insect kingdom. it had two hours worth of super-duper-close-ups of insects doing what insects do which is remarkably similar to what we all do. but, the real wonder of this film is in its technical achievements. how they captured what they captured is simply incomprehensible.

my favorite scene from cosmos followed a dung beetle as it rolled a tightly packed ball of, you guessed it, crap to some private place. the sphere was about twice his size and he would stand up on his hind legs and use his front legs, arms, claws, not sure, to roll the orb from the top. during his trek he inadvertently impaled the ball on a small branch sticking out of the ground and it became totally stuck. this little guy worked his crunchy little ass off kicking dirt out from his back legs. he finally backed up and studied his parcel and i swear he looks just like your dad as he might eye a flat tire in a midnight rain. perplexed the dung beetle walks around the ball and discovers the problem. at this point he shook his head, and i mean he literally looked down at the ground and shook his head. if his little paw could have reached his forehead he would have slapped it and if he could speak he certainly would have muttered "am i a dumb ass or what." he then got up on the front of the ball and pushed it backwards off the twig, waddled back to the other side and, pushed the ball around the branch and continued his journey.

i've always said that if i won the lottery, i'd fund the arts, as i know the arts. i'd give the secret cajun band piles of money to continue making music that makes me smile. i'd financially support my cousin who can draw everything from battleaxe-wielding, cleavage-ridden warriors to chaotic sporting scenes with great realism. i'd also fund bookpimp's potential film making career, but his stipend would come with a condition. he'd have to make a film styled after microcosmos but focusing on the odd and private things about the human body. imagine a super close-up of your mother plucking her eyebrows or your college roommate pinching a large blackhead from his greasy cheek, the cloudy cartilaginous plug filling the whole movie screen as it was forced through the infected pore. and you know that if troy dearmitt's name appeared on the produced by line, there would have to be a fifteen minute montage dedicated to 'the magic of flatulence'. like i said, the arts as i know them because i'm dead certain there is an untapped fortune behind what isabella excitedly refers to as 'juicy-gas'.

so swollen genitalia are a possible side effect of the latter parts of pregnancy. comes with the territory, the cool-doc said.

it's hard to feel poorly for pregnant women because as a male, i've struggled with swollen genitalia syndrome for going on twenty years now.

this has been brought to you from the 'things you possibly didn't know about pregnant women or troy' file.

i was part of a conversation with someone recently (i can't remember who) where they were asking/wondering what one's skin would look like if it hadn't been abused by the sun for however long they have been abusing it by the sun. the listener told the curious one to drop their pants and look at their ass-skin in a mirror because this is most likely their last frontier free of skin-damage.

having done this easy-enough test i found that if i were to mimic the skin on my left cheek over my entire body, i would have many more tiny, pointed pimples than i presently do. i'd also have a stray and wispy hair about every four square inches. so my sun worship is back on. in fact, i may need to upgrade my tanning bed privileges given this new window into the world of 'what-could-be'.

a girl i used to work with once sat in our office and audibly pondered why her dog kept tearing up her underwear. "why would a dog want to mess with someone's dirty underwear, i mean how gross is that?"

i don't know what's worse; that i know why or that she doesn't.

ok, this one here's for all the ladies out there. i'm going to let you in on a little secret. ready. ok. here goes. there is no such thing as blue balls. never has been. you know how i know. well, a couple of reasons. first, i own a set and they've been through all kinds of trauma and abuse and they have never, ever taken on such a jaundiced hue. second, i've seen every In Search Of ever made and nimoy never tackled this mythic beast which pretty much confirms the veracity of the whole deal for me.

now we know all kinds of guys are going to come crawling out of the morass saying i'm wrong and that they've had them or their cousin had them or this guy up in canada got em once and how they were wicked terrible and ached so. it's bullshit. don't believe a word of it. it is a male-wide conspiracy to dupe women into granting favors of the flesh that they may otherwise be disinclined to provide. i mean believe me, i've been tormented, turned down, and left in quite a state by an inordinate number of ladies all over the planet and my sack has never gone through such permutations.

now here's the deal, should a guy try to work this con on you, ask them what the remedy is. when they say it is to get some relief, bust one or flush the tanks, tell them that they are probably more qualified to address the issue than yourself and they should go to the john or behind the bushes and handle their bidnez. because, you see, even if there was such an affliction no one ever said that a woman had to be the one to extract the demons. hell, i know a doctor that will give you a a prostate massage to the point of climax. send them there and see if the mere thought of a gloved hand two feet up their ass corrects their mood.

and since i believe in being thorough, let's say the above tactic doesn't take. tell the guy you'll help him out but that you are a little trepidatious given the colony of warts on your hands, the chancre sores in your mouth and the odoriferous yellow-green discharge your girlfriend said you should have checked out by a professional. if they're still game after that, run. run like hell. don't stop, don't look back. just run.

in attempt to explain some of my lunacy, i've told you how my mom works in the sexually transmitted division of the centers for disease control and some of the traumatizing events to come about from this affiliation (as in, monstrously large and mangled penises painted on our living room wall). should this confession not sway you in my direction, see how they celebrate christmas in the aniseptic corridors of their building as carolers in white lab coast made their rounds last week.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a little luvin’ under the tree.

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me two itchy bumps from that little luvin’ under the tree.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me three french kisses, two itchy bumps, it’s some sort of STD.

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the fifth day of Christmas my doctor said to me … Chla-mydi-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the sixth day of Christmas my doctor gave to me six penicillin, Chla-mydi-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love came to me – “how ‘bout a quickie?”, six penicillin, Chla-mydi-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the eighth day of Christmas my ture love gave to me – a case of herpes, “how ‘bout a quickie?”, six penicillin, Chla-mydi-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the ninth day of Christmas my doctor said to me try doxycycline, a case of herpes, “how ‘bout a quickie?”, six penicillin, Chla-mydi-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the tenth day of Christmas the CIS came to me “tell me ten sex partners”, try doxycycline, a case of herpes, “how ‘bout a quickie?”, six penicillin, Chla-myid-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the eleventh day of Christmas the CIS gave to me eleven HIV tests, “tell me ten sex partners”, try doxycycline, a case of herpes, “how ‘bout a quickie?”, six penicillin, Chla-myid-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

On the twelfth day of Christmas I got just me twelve latex condoms, eleven HIV tests, “tell me ten sex partners”, try doxycycline, a case of herpes, “how ‘bout a quickie?”, six penicillin, Chla-myid-a, one clinic visit, three french kisses, two itchy bumps and some sort of STD.

Someone told me this funky thing about breathing air previously breathed by others. because our atmosphere is finite, air moves around the world, gets used, recyclyed and used again. Given this, if you are 30 years old you have most likely had air that Einstein, Shakespeare, Ceasar and JFK breathed coarse through your own body. Pretty cool eh.

Before you get too stoked about it realiz...

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

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

man do i adore e-love.

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

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

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.

(holding your fingers together in a straight line, not fanned apart)

Two-times the diameter of your wrist is your neck size.

Two-times the diameter of your neck is your waist size.

(while there are exceptions to the above, an art study found this to be a fair commonality)

Awhile back I had read somewhere that the most venomous spider known to man was the daddy long legs but were not a threat to humans because their teeth were unable to pierce our skin. The other day I read an article in Natural History (02.01) discussing this very thing. It reported that this was a misreported item by the American media some time ago. Evidently, some scientists published a report about the most poisonous spiders in Australia and one of the listed arachnids was the daddy long legs. Only problem, there long legs is not the same as ours. The American source who spied this story did not make this distinction and reported it as fact. The public at large quickly leapt on the interesting morsel and it soon became the most asked question within the spider kingdom. Sorry for any I duped with the above and I apologize for contributing to urban legend, it was not my intention.

A friend of mine wrote a column for his university paper while in med school a few years back. i remember following his work via the web while he was at it and enjoyed the articles very much. i happened upon them the other day and thought that you all would find his wit as entertaining as i did. therefore, i will be offering them up from time to time for your amusement and edification. the first selected installment, A Probing Issue deals with the digestive tract, something we all use and also take for granted. carry on and happy digesting.