walt and i watched one of those home shows on the tele last weekend. they were discussing the new age of luxury homes. the encouraging news; we're seeing a departure from the behemoth stone-faced mansions of yesteryear for more intimate, better crafted domiciles. more intimate meaning a 12,000 square foot hovel, complete with the requisite half-court basketball and golf facility in the basement.

i wasn't sweating what we didn't have until one feature was discussed. it seems that what you and i knew as a study while growing up is now known as a knowledge nook. and it seems quite important that these cerebral crannies be 'acoustically open so kids are able to chat with mom and dad if need be'.

a flood of explanation washed over marty and i. in our defense, how were we to know we'd fail as parents without an acoustically open knowledge nook?

people do all kinds of kooky things to lose weight. my favorite, by far, never to beaten, is this one:

eating every meal in front of the mirror ... naked.

awesome in its simplicity, this plan rules. and, i figure if such a routine can help your dietary choices, imagine what it could do for other facets of your life. would you have ever guessed that as i'm typing these words to you i'm looking at myself, naked, in a mirror i hung over my desk. can you see a difference? i can.

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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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little kids masturbate.

my sister in law, who is an elementary teacher, calls kids who masturbate in class honkers. she calls the act of masturbating in class, honking. i fear my kids may be future honkers. while i don't recall specifically, odds are more than good that i may have been a honker myself. my new theory is that without intervention, all kids have the honker gene in them. i r...

a guy and i were talking at work about what it would be like to go to jail, like for-real jail. this guy is a pretty normal looking dude. normal height, normal weight, has to shave everyday, beginning to lose his hair. you know normal dude. additionally, he doesn't have a feminine thread in him. given all of this, i had to set the boy straight. now oddly enough, after defending my standing as the more appealing prison bitch, i swear this guy didn't look at me the same the rest of the day. is there such a thing as a corporate cube bitch? if so, i'm afraid i may already be spoken for.

remember the story i told a week or two ago about the 4-yr old kid in my neighborhood who peed funny and how i thought i would become a legend if i urinated like him in my office commode . i've had more than one person tell me to stone-up and just go ahead and whiz funny in the john, becoming said legend. something about how i'm always preaching memorable moments and all.

my response to them is that i would but when the legend was retold by the guys i work with it would begin like this: the up-side is they would remember me, perhaps not by name, but they would remember me, and hence the legendary status.

of the documentary-based movies i've seen recently (fog of war, super-size me) and am about to see (fahrenheit 9/11, like don't ya know) i must say that my majority feeling has been one of anger. well, and of course there's disbelief. and, i'd hate to leave out disappointment. and then you've always got good ole american apathy.

if only selfish-ass behavior was a reusable natural resource, this planet would be set for the next trillion years. assuming that the corporate or governmental agency charged with its control didn't totally screw the human race over for the benefit of the top three executives. and in considering that, go ahead and scrap the canning of selfish behavior idea because the power broker's record aint all that impressive when it comes to doing the noble and global thing.

and, don't think i'm not hip to how unoriginal this rant is. that's just how damn sad i feel about it all.

a few things i don't get...

1. people who think eating lots of food is funny.
2. my compulsion to roll the sleeves of my workshirts up like charles ingles did in little house (past the elbow).

excerpt from Survivor by chuck palahniuk

my mom rules rules the universe that contains all moms. why? because she knows more about the underbelly of this country's sex life than me and all of my peeps combined. how many of you can say the same about your tired old mom. if you recall, she works for the centers for disease control, sexually transmitted diseases division in particular.

she recently called and asked if she could talk to a variety of my friends about what they may know about trends and commercial practices within the young gay community for an information campaign they are planning. i gave her a few names of people i thought might be helpful and then called them myself to ask if they would mind helping my mother out with a project she was working on. they all agreed.

the night before one of the couples who were to meet with her called the house and got marty. the guy on the phone said that his partner asked/made him call to see if troy's mom had some kind of ulterior and/or deceptive motivation in speaking to them. specifically were they going to come home the next day to find a gaggle of baptists picketing their home. marty assured them they were fine and no such thing would happen.

i called the night after they met with my mother asking for directions to their house from the baptist church down the way just so the bus didn't get lost en route.

if i could invent one thing to give to mankind, to improve society, i would devise something called the truth box. the truth box would be infallible. it could not be deceived and could tell with absolute certainty if its subject was answering a question truthfully. additionally the truth box would have a compartment for a body part to be inserted. first offense would always be a hand, excepting se...

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.

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.

thursday morning i woke up, took my shower and then went downstairs to the kitchen wearing a towel around my waist as i'm like to do. bella was already down there sitting at the counter eating her breakfast.

b: good morning daddy.
d: good morning sweetheart.
b: there's another daddy in the basement.
d: oh is there? that's nice.

one quickly adjusts to the rocketing imagination of a young child and learns to nod and 'uhm-hum' with great frequency. so i got my breakfast together and sat next to bella at the counter eating. then the 'other daddy' emerged from the basement appearing in the kitchen doorway.

o: good morning.
d: oh, good morning.
b: there's the other daddy, daddy.
d: yes, i see the other daddy.

turns out the other daddy in the basement was the exterminator marty had let in while i was showering. marty entered the kitchen and started rapping with the guy. i decided to quickly finish my breakfast and head back upstairs to get ready for work. but, the conversation he and marty were having proved interesting enough to draw me in. it's not often that i stand in front of strange men in nothing but a towel and jaw for 20 or so minutes but (1) i didn't know he was here and (2) it is my house and this is what i do. one may ask what can be learned in such a short span between a man holding a can of bug spray and another wearing a plush green towel. here's a sample of what i now know about this other daddy.

our exterminator ...

1. was one of eight children. four boys. four girls.
2. had a nun ram a pencil into the palm of his hand when he was in first grade. the lead tip is still there.
3. is a book-writing, painter.
4. grew up on a farmhouse built where a lake used to be. in addition to several feet of water they would routinely find salamanders swimming around their flooded basement.
5. went through a horrible divorce where he sold his bar in attempt to get his two sons. he lost the petition and was instructed to give them up and pay child support. when he and his wife exited the courtroom, she pushed the two boys to him and said you take them, but i still want the checks.
6. cried when he dropped his oldest boy off at college. he almost made it out of there but as he was driving away his son looked back and waved. it was here he lost it.
7. almost died from internal bleeding after having colon cancer surgury.
8. wished he had learned to play the piano in his youth, but feared for his safety given his three brothers.
9. tried to domesticate a flying squirrel, mole and just about anything else he could catch in the woods.
10. knows a guy who looks a lot like me.

i had no choice. i told the guy i had to go to work but he would absolutely have to come over for dinner in the very near future. once at work i had the following conversation:

g: hey troy. so what's up?
t: not much. although, i just met the most interesting guy this morning.
g: who was it?
t: my exterminator.

this modest piece of banter culminated with the following life-lessons being passed down to me by a half-circle of the hunting, scratching, full-time-uber-males i work with ...

1. the man of the house should always know, and i mean always know, when another man is in his home.
2. men do not walk around their home in a towel.
3. men do not talk to strangers while in nothing but a towel.
4. men do not invite perfect strangers to their home for dinner.
5. men do not wear boxers. (one guy)
6. men do not wear briefs. (another guy)
7. men switch between boxers and briefs. (and yet another guy)
8. men shower before going to bed and not in the morning.
9. men do not run outside in their underwear to grab the paper.
10. sleeping naked is left to hippies and perverts.

i fear these guys are three minutes away from dragging me to the bathroom to prove to them that i'm actually a member of their gender club.

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.

was at a wedding last weekend and something happened.

what would you say the act of a guest passing very audible gas during the bride reciting her vows portends?

yeah, i don't know either.

there is a guy in my neighborhood some call the most anal resident but they are wrong. he is the most anal person ever invented, and he's pissing me off.

here's the deal. he has this gas powered blower and weekly he sets out to relocate every blade, grain and follicle he doesn't deem attractive away from his home. the magic radius seems to be 150 feet which coincidentally is about how far the beginning of my property line is from him (he's two doors down). so he meticulously escorts the natural varmints away from his front door and stops his maintenance in front of my home. this leaves a small wave of outdoor dust bunnies sitting on my sidewalk and street, yes he does the street too, remember we're talking about the most anal human to ever sport an anus.

now while this habit has been noticeably annoying i've never really sweated it too much, but the other day i was sitting on the front porch reading, heard something, looked up and saw him walking back towards his home. i looked into the street and saw that he had just dumped some twigs and dried leaves right in front of my house. it was apparent he hadn't seen me sitting there and he was too far away by the time i realized what happened to gig him in the act.

to my point. i'm seeking applications form the more deviant among us describing what it is you would do to this guy for me. please make your submissions generously verbose. also, include any past experience, references and what you feel would be an appropriate fee for your services. photos of previous work would also be appreciated.

and, i'd totally do this myself, but ...

marty was passing through an intersection yesterday when an suv running a red light t-boned her. the point of impact centered on the passenger side rear door and the collision sent marty's car into the neighboring lane where the car came to a slow stop.

no one was hurt. i can't even begin to tell you what kind of ziggurat needs to be erected to the germans for their automotive prowess. the center point of this collision was 15 inches away from 2 month old alex's head. he was pulled from his car seat unscathed, screaming his tiny, diapered ass off, but unscathed. it's friggen amazing. especially when you look at the car. the entire passenger side is a complete disaster with both doors having been pushed in about six inches.

when marty called me at work, and after confirming everyone was ok, i was ravenous for details. how fast were you going? 40mph. who was at fault? the other person. how's the car? bad shape. was it a man or a woman? woman. was she talking on a cellphone? uncertain but the car behind her said she was messing around with something. what did she say to you? nothing.

NOTHING?!? this was the response i wasn't prepared for. i asked marty for clarification.

t: do you mean she didn't say anything important or she really didn't say anything?

m: she didn't say anything. i never spoke to her. what did you want her to say?

t: how about i'm sorry. i'm sorry for being such a complete idiot and endangering you and your childrens' lives. i'm just sorry.

m: well maybe she was shook up too. i mean she probably recognizes what she did.

t: you see, by not apologizing i'd say she doesn't. i'd say she doesn't appreciate that she just made us a one car family for the next month. or that if they total the car, we're out the 1000 bucks we just put into it last week. that she just cost us 20 - 40 plus hours of our life in trying to get all of this squared away. i'd say that she doesn't appreciate that she could have killed your child. i mean i'm not asking for a lot here but a simple apology seems quite in order.

i can't exactly explain why i'm so enraged by this minor detail. my best guess is fear. the thought of what could have happened on this day terrifies me to the marrow and i want the person responsible to simply own that. and i know how that sounds and i can already hear mike mumbling something about me being a petty fool and the rational side of me knows all of this. all that truly matters is i've got three healthy family members sleeping in this house right now and we're not at the hospital or worse. i do know all of this.

but the other thing i know is how much i hate shopping for cars so just say your sorry dammit if for nothing else, for making me have to go shopping for cars!

i'm quite certain that i could never express how much i hate the fourth of july, after dark especially.

when they invent a firework that can be exploded at three in the morning in your backyard which i don't have to listen to, i'll share in your joyous and meaningful celebration.

you ever wonder what people will say about you when it's all over. i know something people won't be saying about me:

'there wasn't a soul who disliked troy'

i've heard this in reference to a few people in my life and must say i question it every time.

for instance the kindest, gentlest guy i've ever known was hated by another guy i knew. granted the hate guy was a totally unreasonable, irrational and self-important tool, but he did technically hate the nice guy. perhaps the epithet for those who were never disliked should be amended to read:

'he luckily never met an idiot so everyone liked him'

and just in case you're wondering if the nice guy was really all that nice, he'd sit down to pee when a guest in someone's home as to not splash water/urine all over their floors and walls. where i come from, it just don't get any nicer than that.

it was 3am on a friday night. i was going to bed which means alex was waking up which means marty was mumbling incoherently and picking up things that weren't there (once marty hits 30 plus days of deficient sleep, watch your ass).

after realizing alex wasn't going back to sleep, i plucked him out of his bassinet and stood rocking him. during this i noticed that a way cool fog had rolled in. seeing how the lights played through the mist it was a given i had to go out and get some shots. so with the little man master-blastered to my chest, i grabbed the camera gear and headed out. we ambled around for about an hour during which time we talked to a cop who warned me about being too affectionate to my kid lest they become overly attached, ran into a shopping cart guy getting a jump on the friday night trash can loot. he asked for a buck. it's sad how some people are just unable to clock out.

alex and i call the above shot 'the apartment building someone was having sex in'. my god can people be loud. or i should say, my god can this particular woman be loud. i heard her halfway down the block. she was so loud in fact i felt i had to commemorate the moment with a picture and since i had just talked to the cop i thought it may be uncomfortable if he had to arrest me minutes later for photographing a young couple having sex through their bedroom window, so you're going to have to settle for a picture of their building's entrance.

and, while setting up for this photo and listening to this woman's production, alex and i pondered why it was societally acceptable for women to make all this racket when the guys can't, or aren't supposed to at least. i mean i guess the guys 'could' light it up but i ask you, what do you think would happen to your libido if you had to take in my squeals and grunts of utter delight during your utter delight. don't bother answering that because i know what it would do to me and that's all i need to know at the moment. issue settled.

if you see me on the street and i look different, it's the belt. i've only recently begun wearing one and am very self-conscious about it. this pointless strap of leather goes against everything i believe in, clothing wise and is the one article of clothing i wear that serves no function other than to scream out to all that see me that i am a total whore to industry and too wrapped up in what others think to think for myself.

some days making a living sucks.

the war is definitely a touchy topic and many people are guarded with who they discuss the matter with. contrary to most media outlets i feel that there are more than two camps out there and the factions are more complex than the simple pro-war/pro-peace groups getting most of the press. given this, i'm extra cautious about floating most opinions out there.

but, there was this one guy i was talking to who didn't seem to have this tread lightly attitude. "they're just savages, nothing but savages, we've got no choice" he kept repeating this over and over in regard to the iraqi people. finally, i asked him if he knew what the difference between himself and one of these savages was. he said no and asked, facetiously, if i might enlighten him. of course i would. the difference between you and these savages is that you were born here and they were born there. and it's not hurting any that you were born white at that.

we didn't get into the specifics of what he did to earn, deserve or control this minor detail of his life or the benefits he enjoys by this distinction. i didn't get the sense he was ready for that. his pulsing neck veins and clenched fists helped me draw this conclusion.

there used to be this guy in my neighborhood who had this thing for lying. now we've all met people who like to stretch the truth or possibly embellish a tale but this guy truly believed in crumbling all who came before him. when i told him i was from colorado he said he went to the wealthiest school in the whole state. when i said i had a friend into rock climbing he ascended the Himalayas, twice. when i said i had knee surgery he had both legs replaced with bionic ones after a parachute didn't open after he jumped from the space shuttle on reentry. when in truth, he went to a sub-par high school in saint louis county, not only didn't rock-climb but was afraid of heights and contrary to popular belief, bionic legs were years from actually being invented for use on people (rats sure, people no), not to mention nasa still frowns upon people engaging in extreme sports on their space-bound vessels.

he may not have been a rich guy but he sure played one around here. he got married not too long ago and after his still happily deluded bride had her 2 karat diamond appraised, the honeymoon was over. having elected to marry him it's easy to see she's a little on the ego-rich side of the fence and subsequently you can imagine how pissed she was when told that the symbol of her happiness came to a whopping 87 bucks. she asked if that was U.S. dollars before ripping the larynx from the salesman.

shaken, she called a friend of her husband's to get some background data on this better half. the friend had recently written the guy (her husband) off tired of his perpetual lies so was more than willing to give him up. the conversation revealed all kinds of nuggets including that he was previously married which he had not only not revealed but actually denied earlier.

will you tell me her name she asked. he did.

can you tell me her phone number she asked. he did.

so she called wife A, introduced herself using the guys last name, which is unique enough to raise suspicion. wife A simply asked "are you all right?" and that was without hearing anything other than wife B's name.

like i said, his mission was to crumble all who came before him.

i was listening to an interview on npr about a woman who was struggling with an obesity issue. there came a point in her struggle, she recalled, that she decided to kill herself. so she walked to this bridge near her home, climbed up on the ledge and was preparing to jump when she looked over to the side and saw this guy in the bushes on the river's edge masturbating to her potential dive. she got all disgusted by this scene, climbed back down to safety, went home and has never tried again.

is it wrong that i find this funny? and sure, i can admit that i'm a little bit jealous that i've never been given the opportunity to use my powers for such good. some people just get all the luck.