some things i believe:

television killed the american family.

air conditioning killed the american neighborhood. *

and, irresponsible amounts of available credit killed the american society.

* television didn't do our neighborhoods any favors either.

john locke from the first season of Lost

excerpt from sarah vowell's assassination vacation

three things i try to do everyday:

1. walk on grass
2. make my children laugh (giggling and/or tittering counts)
3. not die

there is a game of sorts marty and i have engaged in since the early days of our relationship. we refer to it as THE CHIP. i don't recall who started it or even if it was an original invention. i just know it showed up one day and has been used 3-5 times a year since its inception.

how it works; each of us began the game with an equally scant few chips. chips are given when one of us performs an act of personal sacrifice at the request of the other. for instance, if marty were going out with her girlfriends and asked me to go i could, and oftentimes would, decline. if for some reason my attendance was important to marty on a particular outing, she could simply say my going was worth a chip. with the offer of a chip, it told me that this was, for some personal reason that did not need to be explained, an important matter to marty.

another thing about our chips; the offering of a chip has never been refused.

back in the day chips weren't traded immediately. one person may burn through three chips before ever getting presented one in return. this is not so much the case these days because these days you always got a chip or two you could toss on the counter. and while chips used to mostly involve family functions or events requiring shirts with buttons, they now take a much more pedestrian form. an example of a chip exchange today looks more like this:

MARTY (walking into kitchen where i'm doing dishes)
you got something?

TROY (laughing)
do i have something? sure. go.

MARTY
stop leaving your wet towels on the bed in the morning.

TROY
hang the broom up in the pantry after using it.

MARTY
done.

TROY
done.

and, people say kids complicate life. pre-kid chips were never this simple and painless. for us, kids have simplified our days down to the lowest common denominator of life; survival. and i'm not talking about driving a leased-suv and having the summer place in the outer banks kind of survival, i'm talking about the crouching scared in the back of a dank cave kind of survival.

clarifying points: the chips aren't real, like poker chips or something. they are figurative. no official scorecard has ever been kept because no one has ever thought to abuse the chip system. and this is not out of fear of getting caught (which you would get caught) but out of respect for the good deed it has done for our time together.

excerpt from How not to buy happiness by Robert H. Frank as published in the MIT Press.

i'm laying face-down in bed being woken, prematurely, from a strong sleep by a relentless alarm clock.

through the stupor i realize the object on my back is my sleeping two-year old, himself unmoved by the grate of the alarm clock.

it was at this exact moment that my mind experienced its most lucid thought ever.

the sensation lasted less than a second but in this blip, ...

marty and i know a young man. i find him to be quite spectacular because he is unlike most people his age. perhaps my affinity to him comes from sharing a proclivity for never fitting into the peg we're told we're supposed to fit in, by the society around us at least. but he ... he is one of the most introspective and beautiful people i know from and because of it. below is an excerpt from an email he sent to marty. and, for once, i am posting it with his permission, albeit anonymously.

i'm coming off two weeks of being off. going into it i had large visions of all the stuff i would accomplish. while i started out strong i petered out about 79 hours into the sabbatical.

as for what i do have to show for my vacation; one partially painted dining room. unless you would like to include pulling four inch-plus hairs from my neck.

this man's new year's resolution: so we all know i'm pretty fricken good at this already. for me, life is a game and happiness is nothing more than knowing how to play it.

as some of you prepare to enter the self-improvement routine in this new year, know this; franklin covey, the time management / self improvement gurus, made a multimillion dollar business by preaching two basic tenets:

1. if you need to do something, write it down.
2. if you have written something down, do it!

practice those two rules and i assure you, life will improve. and you don't even need one of those fancy leather-bound franklin planners for it to work.

one difference between this year and last is that last year i didn't eat breakfast in the shower.

getting older is all about getting better and here it is just a few days into the new year and i've already satisfied my 2003 improvement.

someone recently asked me about the key to my success. for those saying "what success?" i hear you, i really do. but it's all relative and this person was seven years old and well, cut me some slack. after thoughtfully rubbing my chin, ruminating on it and acting successful all the while, i proffered the following sage words to this young lad.

my success is a product of a whole lot of sitting very still and being very quiet in the corner of whatever room i occupy and making interspersed quips about circumcision, digestive disfunctions and revealing very intimate details of my life with total strangers.

ok, so it's a borderline homeless/psychotic strategy but when plied properly it provides stupendous results.

11 minute walk from home to metro

14 minute metro ride to downtown

2 minute walk from metro to office

(work)

2 minute walk from office to metro

14 minute ride on metro to delmar station

11 minute walk from metro to home

20 years added to life for getting through a work day without tapping a brake pedal, touching a ...

Billy Gates gets honest to a group of high school students. While his 11 rules smacks of a Chris Rock spiel I gotta homage the guy for leaving his politically correct promotional machine even if only to garner some press buzz.