a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. missing keri

marty told me of a story where a twelve year old science-fair participant did a study on five of the restaurants in her home town. she analyzed their ice cubes and toilet water, and she found that the toilet water was cleaner.

can somebody older than twelve and with a little juice call foul here and take some corrective action?

and while i support this youngster's obvious giftedness, i don't think i want to follow her success because at twelve she's already given me the perpetual shakes. there's no doubt that this girl's future thoughts and studies will work to fully incapacitate me.

several years ago, marty and i were lounging on the futon watching tv. i had an abdominal pain and kept massaging the side of my gut, groaning painfully.

what's wrong?

i have this damn stitch in my side. it hurts like hell.

it's probably just stuck poop. push on it, it will help work it loose.

she never even looked away from the tv nor did she stop popp...

if someone chooses to not use their sick days and comes to work ill, jettisoning their poisoned dna throughout the office, other presently healthy employees should have the right to use the diseased individual's sick-days (since they seem disinclined to). i mean why shouldn't the un-sick folks get to stay that way, un-sick? as for who should get first dibs on these confiscated privileges, a neurosis-based pecking order seems to make sense. what's one more bulleted list to corporate america?

granted, such an intelligent selection process would more than guarantee myself first rights to any neglected sick day. and don't think i'd only take honors in my current office because i'd win this lottery in your office, your partner's office, the office of every person you've ever known or done business with. you're reading the words of a man who can see germs as easily as i can see if you flushed the toilet in my home. and i'm not talking about detecting your day-after-the-super-bowl bowel movement, but your near-clear, post-bally's workout urine. hell, on a good day i could tell you the score without even walking into the john.

and, if i hear one more person tell me they're beyond the point of contagion i'm going to hack a spittle-laden sneeze on their keyboard and say "yeah, me too."

the teachers at bella's pre-school send a note home in her backpack every school day. these notes typically share what was done that day or plans for the next day.

earlier this week the note home read ... if you think anyone in our home was checked before me, you'd be horrifically mistaken. fact of the matter is marty had to pick through my hair while the letter laid at my feet with me repeatedly saying "do you see any? are there any? what is a nit? what do they look like? what do they do? oh my gawd, have you found any!!!!!?"

during my tremble-voiced questions bella stood in front of me, innocently looking up, saying ...

BELLA
dad, they're just like white ants and if we find some then we look for the mother or father and try to get them first so they stop making more babies in your hair.

TROY
white ants! babies! bella please stop talking while mommy checks daddy. and this is different than how mommy checks daddy on saturday mornings but all the same you got to give us a minute. marty are they really like white ants? please tell me they aren't really white ants! marty! have you found anything?

MARTY
just a little bit of dandruff. but i think you're lice-free.

TROY
dandruff! oh great. so instead of live ants i just got a bunch of dead debris living on my head. this is great. i'm going to go take a shower. and no more notes from school! i don't want to know!

BELLA
what's dandruff?

anyone who tells me they've had a vasectomy can be assured of my undivided attention for as long as they will answer my questions. i'm entirely unable to explain my quenchless need to know more about this topic, i just know to call it anything short of insatiable would be a mistaken way to describe my mood. last night i received my best account yet from a man who i will call, for the sake of this telling, the beef-eater.

first, and this i did not know, there is a pre-screening. the extent of this pre-flight check seems mostly concerned with making sure you don't have three testicles and that the two you do have are sitting in the appropriate left-right configuration. although, i imagine they would be truly interested in any number above two. and as for non-left/right options you have the very rare front/back or even more rare top/bottom alignments, either of which would certainly earn a note in the metal binder. and, there is little doubt that any of these unique scenarios would generate extra fees (esp bonus gonads) so this reality check works to prepare the subject for any special handling fees that may arise. the day the beef-eater had his pre-screening was coincidentally bring your kid to work day which means he got to answer these questions with a backpack-wearing eight year old staring up at him.

the big day has you laid out on an exam table naked from the waist down. they drape a towel over your groin area only there is a big whole cut out framing the part of you the towel is usually there to conceal (nobody better look at the naked side of my hip while my johnson is laying there lifeless, bloodless and frankly scared quite shitless). the nurse then partially knocks you out so you're awake but mostly unable to put up much of a fight or think too straight. it was at this point in the procedure that the super-attractive lady who lived two doors down from the beef-eater and was a nurse in this office, unbeknownst to him, entered the room. the best he could muster was to raise a hand and mumble the single word 'foul'. the doctor came in moments later and began. after the incisions were made he took a tool that resembled a crochet needle and pulled one of the vas deferens out of the hole, exposing it to be severed. i'm told that having your gamete superhighway lifted from its tracks in this manner produces an extremely unnatural sensation. i theorize this is the anti-erection part of the procedure, just in case all the random fumblings elicited any sort of positive feedback. it is now that they snip, burn and return the helpless tube back to its home. my mind envisions the ends whipping around like a dropped firehose or more appropriately, a writhing and injured worm.

they then sent him home telling him to lay on the couch with frozen corn on his affected part(s) for the next 24 hours. these were the last words of our conversation:

TROY
wow. is it hard to clean up all of that corn when you get up.

THE BEEF-EATER
you leave it in the bag, idiot!

TROY
oh. but, when you were done do you put the bag back in the freezer or throw it away?

THE BEEF-EATER
i don't know what other people do, but i threw mine away.

TROY
hmmm. i don't think marty would let me throw it out, groin-ridden or not.

and i can now check another fixation from my list. i found the account of this man's journey to be quite satisfying. thanks beef-eater for doing successfully what many before you could not.

given one half of my diet i should look like calista flockhart and given the other half i should look like ralphie may.

so i guess when you balance it all out, it explains why people think i look like this.

last month my momz was in the newspaper. you see, there's recently been a syphilis outbreak in saint louis and when stuff like that goes down, people give my mom a shout because she's all over knowing the score about broken and malfunctioning genitals.

in the articles my mom referred to some 'sex-oriented social events' that took place late last year which were thought to be the source of the city's current dilemma. one thing that people will never be able to say about me is that the phrase 'sex-oriented social event' didn't grab my attention. so when mom was over for bella's birthday party i asked about her comments.

let's just say i got 20 bucks that says my mom has uttered the phrase 'spanksgiving' and your mom has not.

TROY
so i think i may have hit the wall yesterday.

MARTY
what? you? you mean you call falling asleep in the middle of a party with 10 people in the room and the super bowl blaring on the tv, hitting the wall? no, that's totally normal behavior.

speaking of baby having, i just learned that the woman across the street had her second kid in a wheelchair at the entrance of the hospital. below are random snippets from our conversation.

me: so you didn't make it to the room. were you in the lobby, the parking lot or what?
her: yes. i was sitting in a wheelchair but could reach out and touch the door of our car.

me: was anyone around?
her: it was noon at the main entrance of a large city hospital on a workday. yes, there were people around.

me: did anyone just kind of stop to watch?
her: twenty people applauded when the kid fell out of me.

me: what was the first thing you said afterward?
her: can i please have a robe.

me: after having a kid on the front steps of a hospital would you give an ounce of shit about a totally silent tampon wrapper?
her: a what?
me: yeah, that's what i thought.

i am starting a business. i'm going to be a Nula. to answer your next question, a Nula is a naked doula. and, if you don't know what a doula is, it is someone who helps a woman have a baby.

why does the doula have to be naked? well, simply because the woman having the baby is naked, or should be naked at least. and why should this naked woman have to be surrounded by a bunch of folks who are dressed. i strongly believe everyone in a delivery room should be naked and this is my contribution to this missive. i will show up at anyone's delivery, undress in the bathroom, walk out and say "now let's have us a baby" while rubbing my hands together excitedly. this is the service i will provide.

and lucky for me i have two friends days from having a baby. guess that do-it-yourself brazilian waxing kit isn't going to go to waste after all. only question is will jenn or tracy get to see the goods first.

when i was being put together my ears came from a plywood box marked REFURBISHED. this would usually be cool had the worker responsible for testing my previously opened ears not been both hung-over and suffering from ADD. resultantly, i on occasion have funky things go on in my aural cavities. as for what kinds of things, i'm talking of things that would send most falling back from their bathroom sink in abject disgust and horror. but for someone accustomed to the host of things that have fallen, poured or been otherwise extracted from my ears, i view it as another day moments before leaving for the office.

last monday was one such day. a jet white q-tip went in and a sludgy black cudgel came out. studying it momentarily i took stock of how i felt, how my ear felt. all felt well so i moved on. by thursday my ear had swollen shut. if you've never seen an ear swollen shut, ask marty who sought proof of my ailment before letting me spend the night on the couch. if you've never experienced how an ear this swollen feels, ask ligaya who reports it to be worse than labor (and she experienced that twice).

off to the doctor i went. he, like many before him, quickly grabbed a pad wrote a name and address on it and said 'go here'. off to the ear-nose and throat guy i went. you haven't lived until you've seen the host of cool gadgets these fellas have. if these gurus would open weekend spas where they cleaned out your ears and other crannies with their cool-ass mini-vaccums and micro-water-picks i'd be the first in line.

the first such ENT guy i went to was so nice. he asked about the problems i've had with my ears and sat through my numerous accounts, jotting notes here and there. he said things like "well, let's take a look", "yeah, i think we can get that cleaned up for you" and even stuff like "now you let us know if that gives you anymore problems" not to mention "hello", "goodbye" and "have a nice day". below recounts what the guy i saw today said to me:

what ear is it?
you're going to feel some discomfort here.
hold still.
now you're going to have to hold still.
i'm changing your prescription.

those aren't the highlights. that's it! this guy makes endo look like dick van dyke in the music man. what a fricken neanderthal! and, sadly, his technique was about as honed as his gift for gab (thank god he wasn't my first). now to the troll's credit, he straightened my ear out. the fact that i was floppin' in the chair like nemo in the sink should not be overlooked though.

and just so all of your private ridicule isn't spent on me today, bookguy cleans his navel with a q-tip.

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.

marty grew up in a very science-minded home. her father was a cardiologist. her mother an ex-nurse. two of her brothers would grow up to be doctors. marty herself, a high school science teacher. in her house, one didn't take a dump, they had a bowel movement. one didn't drop ass, they simply experienced a bout of flatulence. and, there was nothing humorous about that flatulence. you see, terribly ...

10 days off work
16 days away from home
2,600 miles over construction-ridden interstates
48 hours in a rented mini van
4 uproarious travel partners
10 north american states
8 sunny days on the beach
9 competitive days of tennis
1 lap around d.c.'s mall
16 iterations of mamma mia on the hi-fi
1 backyard wedding
5 tetris competitions
7 episodes of world's scariest police chases
1 great house-sitter

and after all of the above blessings it was this single item

1 open flatulence rule

that turned what should have been a frolic-filled holiday into an every man for themselves version of survivor on wheels.

and, the only reason i'm not filled with hate given this tenet of war can be gleaned in that it was i who proved the victor in this improvised test of perseverance and dedication to all that is unhealthy to eat and subsequently digest.

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.

we've all heard about them. the more scholarly may have even read about them. but a scant number of us have actually experienced the fabled and legendary no-wiper. but a few, a golden few of us have seen the light and been taught the ways of the consistent and regular sans-wiper, which is technically a una-wiper but the first one is obligatory, even if unnecessary.

as bookguy's padowan, he one day took me by the hand, sat me down and bestowed on me the secret to his quiet success. it is in Kellogg's original and all-bran cereal, the all-bran muffins specifically he said in a serious voice. why the muffins you may ask, as did i. bookguy explained the benefits of the muffins portability as well as the proper portioning. he went on to reveal how this minor change to his dietary routine has earned him hours of productive time and has freed him of the laborious task of righting his plumbing and/or providing lengthy explanations to the owners of borrowed plumbing.

so now you may go and also make your business a quick business. and as to whether or not i will be posting the recipe in the what i'm eating section of d.com, what do you think this is, a proctology service. i suggest reading the box as i did, but don't plan on doing it from where you may want to because you will not have time given this newfound philosophy which some liken to religion. you'll have to do your reading from the comfortable confines of ,say, your study or bedroom.

and, if you do not know what i'm talking about, you're beyond my abilities to heal. i can only take you so far. the rest of the journey is yours to make, this journey especially.

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

i stopped drinking caffeine a few days ago ... again.

yesterday morning i wrote an email to my boss and a few peers disparaging the choices being made by a fellow development group. on this not flattering correspondence, i inadvertently included the manager of the department in question on the sending.

my phone started ringing within 30 seconds.

i'm back on the caffeine ... again.

I recently had three breast feeding women in my house at once. I felt like I should have been at the door charging admission and playing a Lita Ford song on the hi-fi. While this thought was going through my mind I overheard one of the women say, "Oh, I'm sure. Like some guy's gonna get off watching me breast feed my kid."

So, so young and innocent. She's obviously never made the acquaintance of my friend Big Dog. At best, I could have gotten him to refrain from taking pictures.

Who better to contribute to this week's body theme than doctor stevie. In this latest installment of prolapsed, the doctor of diss pays his respects to the often ignored but highly valuable organs we all regularly take for granted and in some cases didn't even know we had.

New York Native (nation's most influential gay newspaper), August 24, 1981
Warning to the gay community from columnist Larry Kramer after the first AIDS cases, yet to be named such, were being reported around the country.

movie: swordfish (also credited as the movie where halle berry is topless)

should you see it: (see movie's alternate title)

best part: (see movie's alternate title) & explosions is fun.

worst part: when this 300+ git did a very ill-advised Nestea plunge into the seat in front of me. This scene mesmerized me to the point that I sat wide-eyed, watching him free-fall through the air and roughly crash into his chair. While gazing upon this escapade from my quasi-stadium seated seat I overlooked the possibility that the back of his chair would dip so far in its duress that the top of it would come crashing into my knee-cap, my bad knee mind you, setting me back about 2 months in my rehabilitation. Flying big guys suck.

My only, or greatest, problem with other people's flatulence is that if I detect something, which emanated from your person, one could surmise that an unpleasant and ejected element, even if only a molecule, that was just in your rectum is now setting up shop in me. And, in an OCD guy's mind, you might as well pick me up and insert me, head first in an ally mcbeal like antic, into these vaporous confines that jettisoned this waste product in my direction.

If Kathleen Madigan stops at a town near you, consider her a must see. I caught her show Saturday night and the woman who is often called the funniest 'female' comic in the country, may very well check in with the top 10 comics, gal or guy, in our illustrious and demanding nation sharing slots with the likes of carlin, miller, rock and seinfeld. Her unique delivery leaves you feeling as though you've just hung out with her at a party for an hour and she floored you with her valley drawl and self-deprecating tales.

The opening comic of the night, whose name evades me, actually painted the best image of the evening when he compared the water in a hot tub at a strip joint to the liquid aftermath of making a hot dog. If you've ever gazed into the murky swill left behind one of these phallic shaped burgers, you know exactly what he means.