EARL
how come you never told me you won a beauty contest?

JOY
every day i walk out of my front door i win a beauty contest.

excerpt from season one of my name is earl

excerpt from Parenting from the Heart by Jack Pransky

this gets said, by me, at least once a day in our home and an easy twice on weekends. being an only child has in no way prepared me for witnessing how two siblings can interact. i mean they adore one another. really. i've seen it. but man can those waters of affection turn acerbic if the most minor of things goes sideways.

it starts with a thud in some distant room of the house. next you'll hear a raised or strained voice and then scuffling. i move quickly, far more quickly than marty, to the disturbance point. i'll find bella and alex locked up on one another. peeling them apart is about as easy as separating folded over packing tape, especially when cradling a three-month old in one arm.

afterwards i turn to marty, expressing my shock. but instead of words of consolation or empathy i get the equivalent of a college scouting report on how quick and strong alex seems to be and even with a hint of pride she may use words like 'gamer' or 'scrappy' to describe his art of self-defense. then she, the sixth of seven children, will go about her day, leaving me alone in my quiet disbelief.

on our trip to the beach last month, marty gave bella and alex disposable cameras. she explained there were a certain number of pictures and when it was done, it was done. we just now got the developed rolls back and i was impressed with alex's range.

• (top left) i've long been a fan of cattywampus composition and this shot was skillfully crafted. field of depth and division of color is wonderful.
• (top right) this looks straight out of a gap/j crew/fitch seasonal rag. it's a totally overdone technique, but if you can't nail the fundamental shots, you got no business being in the mix.
• (bottom left) the 'what's happening here' quality of this shot makes the viewer commit a few brain cycles in contemplating the action and more importantly why the action warrants being photographed. (spoiler: ethan just bested his father in a thumbwar and is counting his winnings)
• (bottom right) nailing the 'moment in time' shots is a skill any serious photog must be able to harness at will. sure, you wish the cup wasn't there and the window wasn't behind her but your gotta work with what you got.

the full collection, only excerpted here, had several shots of bookguy and his people so i forwarded the relevant ones on thinking he may like to see a photographic savant's early work. his reply ... imagine being privileged enough to also see the early steps of a future world ruler as well.

what bella said after returning from a play-date at a friends house. based on bella's description of what happened, i believe the non-kid show in question was ER, even though bella repeatedly referred to it as PM.

alex has expanded his most most used phrases (previously why and no). i present, in order of frequency ...

• i no want to go home
• i no want to go to bed
• della ... della ... where are you della?

and on that last one it is great to see bella pop her head from around a corner and yell "i'm over here alex" with a big and sunny wave of her arm. alex then head-down runs with full swinging arms to join his big and super-fly sister.

granted, five minutes after that warming scene alex returns using using a phrase which is unfortunately climbing the ranks ...

• della hit me daddy

on the positive side, it's cheaper than speech therapy.

remember what you did when you were in school and you were too tired and/or lazy to do your own work? you stole it from someone else. you know the difference between being in school and being a mature adult? you actually give credit to who you stole from, in this case my friend bookguy.

and it's really not that i'm mature now, it's just that i'm also too lazy and tired to even steal right.

this is an excerpt from an email i received yesterday from a lady i worked for many years ago. i love her dearly. my convictions and peccadilloes baffle her madly though. i prefer to think of it joann as someone with a keen sense for the annoying.

and, like there's something in the annals of this site that would deter a sensible human from choosing to sire and raise other humans. i mean it's not like they are going to eat feces off the bottom of their shoes or something, now is it?

this weekend, bella and alex had a spend the night at their grandparents. when we dropped them off bella said to my mother in a very serious manner.

BELLA
grandma, i'm going to try real hard to not say 'oh my god!' while i'm at your house because i know you don't like it when people say that.

GRANDMA
well that is true bella. i would appreciate it if you did not say that at my house or ever. i think there are better things to say than that.

BELLA
yes i know, father told me. so instead we've been practicing saying things like 'oh my goodness', 'oh dear' and 'oh bother'. but sometimes i forget and still say 'oh my god' but i will try not to.

GRANDMA
well, i guess that's all i can ask.

upon getting the sunday report, bella didn't say it even once the whole weekend. and when she saw the one-legged man at the nursing home while visiting her great-grandfather, she didn't even ask him where his other leg went. so far, five seems way more mature than four.

emma idessia hoffman-rutman
09.01.1921 - 02.25.2006

in late february my mother and her brother drove halfway across the nation to walk into a country-side nursing home in the evening hours of a sunday night to tell their father that his wife of 66 years, and their mother, had died in her sleep the day before. upon tearfully presenting him with the news he sat quietly in his chair before softly saying 'that is the saddest thing i've ever heard'. and then he wept.

family v.
bookguy and i extend our gratitude to you for sharing your warm and rich home with us for our ski trip. i can't recall when i laughed or smiled so much in a week's time (and i am blessed to laugh and smile quite often).

keri, i knew i remembered you so fondly for a reason and am glad i haven't let you permanently sneak away. you were wonderful and charming then and are even ...

we have defiant children. i'm told by some this is good. i'm told by others it is bad. good or bad, it is what it is. and, while i see they both have spit and vinegar, it is curious to watch the different ways in which they exercise their will.

bella is cunning. if you tell her to stop doing something she wants to continue doing she will say "ok. but i will stop only after you leave the room." i will let you surmise what happens after we leave the room.

alex is direct. if you tell him to stop doing something he wants to continue doing, he will turn, look you in the eye and sharply say "NOH!". if you repeat your direction the only thing that changes is the volume of his resistance. as i watch his tiny aggression my mind plays sound clips of how this dance may evolve as his vocabulary and confidence grow.

the simple NO will one day become ...
NO! I WILL NOT STOP DOING THIS!

which will become ...
I SAID NO DAMMIT! NOW STOP ASKING!

which will one day fully mature into ...
LISTEN HERE YOU SLACK-JAWED WHELP, TAKE THIS NO AND ACCEPT IT, SWALLOW IT, MAKE IT YOUR OWN OR ELSE I'M GOING TO WALK OVER THERE AND HELP YOU BEGIN THE DIGESTION OF MY RESPONSE TO YOUR QUESTION.

i just hope he's out of the house by the time he reaches this final stage. i can barely shoulder the wispy little NO's he throws at me today.

i wish i could say marty was talking to alexander when she said that but she wasn't, she was talking to me. yeah, that's right, i got THE TALK. the one virtually any man is going to get after they begin co-habitating with a lady-friend.

it was suggested that i sit down when i pee, like my friend chris. when chris first announced that he always sat to urinate when at home or friends, i was intrigued, but apparently not as intrigued as marty. little did i know she concocted a five year strategy to get me to do the same. it's so sad really because she's been architecting this move for years only to have its execution marred by the most minor of details; she pulled the trigger as we moved into the fall/winter season. the only reason i'm able to lower my cozy warm skin on the icy cold seat of our toilet once a day is for fear of soiling my pants, bookpimp style. sorry dear, but if it's any consolation there ain't no love in this world i could make such a chilling sacrifice for.

john locke from the first season of Lost

excerpt from sarah vowell's assassination vacation

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. warrior, part II

uttered by the fourth person to cut my hair since the departure of the great one.

i have a friend who moved recently. i wrote asking him how he was liking his new digs. he wrote: cafe du monde, liquid crack, porterhouse, ice cream and no wipers. i only wonder if he's ready for me to move in.

i used to work with a Jehovah's Witness. during this period i was reading the bible on my palm pilot while riding the metro to work. every now and again he would ask what most recently happened so i would tell him and he would try to guess the chapter and verse. for any ex-sunday-school stars this may sound like a no brainer but there is a catch and that catch is my descriptions came in troy-speak and troy-speak sounded something like this: to his credit, chris was quite gifted at deciphering these modern translations.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. be a warrior

i get asked to write referrals for this or that every now and again. i reckon we all do. recently i was asked to do a new sort of one though. these guys were trying to be a host family for a child coming from another country to receive a medical procedure. the child would stay with them through the operation and recovery which would last almost two months. the reference, obviously, was going to the agency placing the child. i found this an extra-challenging item to write because it was not about some dude i went to college with or used to work with nor was it whether they would make a good programmer or college student, it was an assessment of a whole family and at stake was the well-being of a young and ill child.

fortunately i like this family. i like them a lot. this is what i wrote: while thinking about what to write i had a memory of a moment i shared with jack many years ago. some of his college buddies invited him to a week in a cabin on a lake. when jack asked about accommodations for his family the friend laughed at him stating that the whole point of the vacation was so everyone could get away from their families.

i didn't have kids yet so didn't think too much about the implications of the classmate's remark. i do remember though being totally transfixed on jack's disgust towards the comment. his emotion was so visceral that i knew there was a great amount i didn't understand about being a parent or even husband for that matter (a good one at least). he and his wife have totally given themselves to the life they have chosen. now that i have kids, i understand how hard this is to do. and now that i do understand this, my respect for how they live their life is ten-fold what it was.

and for those who know me well enough to ask about jack and jill's true identity, don't bother. i'm not sharing my alpha-family with any of you wannabes because i need all the help and one-on-one attention i can get.

i met a new girl recently and asked her the question i ask all new girls i meet; has she ever seen an uncircumcised penis? her response: i feel as though if i could have gotten her to continue for seven more seconds she would have told me that she, herself, had an uncircumcised penis.

and god knows what i would have gotten with fifteen more seconds, the opportunity to see it for myself perhaps?

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.

shel silverstein's LISTEN TO THE MUSTN'TS

excerpt from the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by mark haddon