marty woke up 20 minutes late. i woke up 30 minutes late. what we were waking up late for was sunday brunch. guests were arriving in less than an hour and we were still bleary, un-showered and food-less.

marty made it to the kitchen first but was slowed down because alex wanted to help her make the custard french toast and bran muffins. after getting the fire going, i was soon hobbled by anthony nipping at my heels while working on the bacon. bella was yelling something indecipherable down the stairwell. the phone rang. it was marty's mother calling from florida. marty left her food station to gab ... for twenty minutes .. while i juggled food and humans. bella appeared in front of me seemingly out of thin air. she stretched her hand out forcing on me a full-size sheet of paper. once in hand, she turned on a heel and marched back upstairs. i read enough of the page to see it was a set of demands. i tossed it to the side and continued my circus act. marty hung up the phone minutes before our guests arrived and when she walked them into the kitchen made some crack to the room about how i should be cooking the bacon differently. our new audience was about to get a marital show-down, and i said as much, but comically announcing the point brought enough levity to pull us out of the spousal nose-dive and we went on to have a wonderfully homey and smiley day with friends.

after stomachs were full and the general fervor ebbed, i noticed bella's note on the counter. she was now beyond her funk and running about the house with her visiting playmates. i took the moment to read her text in full.


translated:
i decided that my webkinz is being cramped in their bed so until i can play webkinz again i'm staying in my bed and i will only come out when a movie is in or to play on the computer.

p.s. if you want me to come out you'll have to let me play webkinz again.

i'm hungry.

BREAKFAST ORDER:
oatmeal
mcdonalds
waffles
toast
pancakes
daddy cereal

for mom and troy
from bella

the true source of her angst is apparent given her use of "mom and troy" in the closing. bella lost her computer privileges a few weeks back and has been fretting for the webkin horse she received for christmas. for the uninitiated (read spared), you care for your webkin pet in this online environment, routinely giving it love and food and toys. after meting out the restriction i had a premonition that when bella did again log onto the website, she'd be met by a decaying, fly-covered horse carcass with cartoony fumes coming out of its sunken abdomen. another parent told me this is not possible in that the site is quite liberal with children's oversights and the worst she'd find is a pouty and tearful version of her horse. i think this is just another example of how our society is coddling our children to unhealthy degrees and years from now when bella finds some neglected real-life-pet molding in the bottom of an aquarium she will surely express surprise if not complete shock. and when her crest-fallen face turns to me for answers i'm going to be the one that finally delivers her the truth, "you should have stuck with those bullshit webkinz."

in regard to my wistful helmet-free bike memory yesterday, i'm in a bit of a snit over this. i predict that within twenty years all children will wear helmets while simply walking around out of doors. why? because some kid in minnesota will have tripped on an uneven seam of sidewalk thus illuminating the obvious perils of cement-based ambulation. and our children will then share their wistful recollections of a youth rife with chasing lightning bugs and playing hop-scotch sans headgear.

on the positive side, head sheaths of the future will be much more stylish and unobtrusive.

and speaking of head-related peril, i recently had one of my most surreal conversations ever. me and this guy, breckenridge pete, were talking about the sopranos and he was telling me about his three points of contention with the show. if you haven't watched the whole series and plan to ... stop reading because spoilers follow ... he primarily cited three plot-lines he was dissatisfied with:

1. the lack of closure on adrianna's disappearance.
2. the lack of closure on the pending rico case against tony.
3. and like many others, the lack of closure with the ending itself.

i defended the last point by saying there isn't a follower of the show that won't remember HOW the sopranos ended. he quietly nodded in agreement and then went on to add:

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
and, i didn't like the phil leotardo hit either.

TROY
why not? too wacky with the car and the head and the puking youngsters.

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
no, not that. it's just that a human head is stronger than you think.

TROY
WHAT! are you telling me that an SUV wouldn't have rolled over a guy's head like that.

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
not if it was just rolling out of gear like that. no way.

TROY
really?

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
really. it would never happen. the human skull is actually quite rigid.

TROY
you say this with some level of conviction. do i want to know how you've come to believe this?

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
i'm guessin' not.

and i'm guessin' breckenridge pete might buck some current day notions were his kids were still members of the trikes and skates contingent.

bella clips her own fingernails. toenails too. has been for well over a year now. she's quite adept at contorting her hands and feet in all sorts of crazed poses to get just the right cut. the thing i love most though is how meticulous she is about cleaning up. as clippings drop she plucks them from her thigh or shirt and adds them to a small pile of prior victims. and, if a shard jettisons through the air she tracks it with eagle-like awareness and then retrieves it, even getting up to recover the runaway if necessary.

another thing about bella is she's an improver. she often devises methods for doing things faster, smarter. at some point bella deduced that instead of handling every nail piece individually, it would be quicker to hold her foot or hand over some sort of container. this way, the debris, aside from the occasional shooter, would fall right in thus saving her a step. while you would think we could all celebrate such a handsome improvement i was quick to identify a slight flaw in her process. her receptacle of choice is my work shoe.

now it's not that bella is inconsiderate. when done, she carefully picks up the wingtip and empties it into a nearby trash can. after the initial pour, she'll peer into the dark recess of the shoe with squinty eyes. if she detects any hangers on she'll give it another tip and shake, possibly even clanging it against the side of the bin. when satisfied, she returns the shoe to it's home beneath my dresser.

this leads to a second issue in bella's workflow. if she's in the middle of her grooming and neighbor-molly sticks her head in our door calling for her, the clippers get immediately dropped and the shoe left in place as bella hurriedly scrambles down the staircase excitedly calling "coming molly. i'm coming." then at some later point in the day marty will walk by, see the shoe in the hallway, pick it up, quietly curse me and haphazardly toss the footwear in the direction of my dresser.

the next morning i will slide my socked and unaware foot into the loafer moments before dashing down the stairs to usher the younglings to school and then myself to work. i may notice something straight away but in the a.m. fervor don't take enough heed to do anything beyond wiggle my toes or shift my foot around. it isn't until hours later when i'm sitting in my office discussing some mundane matter with a colleague that it again occurs to me something is amiss. it is here that i roll my chair back, remove the shoe and tip it over. as i watch the translucent pieces of human waste tumble through the air before disappearing into the dull-colored carpet my mind screams "noooohhh!" i turn to look at the face of my alarmed co-worker. it is clear they feel are too near someone with an exotic disease that makes their toenails brittle and crumbly. and my condition appears so dire i can't even wait until i get home to attend to my illness privately and on top of all of this, am inconsiderate enough to just cast my withered body pieces all willy-nilly about the workplace.

have i mentioned that bella will also on occasion trim her own hair. that particular habit has 'night in jail' written all over it.

raking leaves in our 87-year old neighborhood is like wiping sweat off the brow of a heavy guy treadmilling. nonetheless there are some lawn-purist out there who insist on battling the fallen debris. i think marty put it best when she simply said "why can't they just enjoy it". apt point because it is a rich tapestry of color out there. so vibrant and alive, ironically.

i'd love to pratt...

i once read that mcdonalds restaurants were designed to make a person want to leave after twenty minutes. something about the molded chairs, brilliant colors, plastic art and the like. i never gave this theory much credit until i saw a target store's effect on my wife. within seven minutes of entering a target marty will need to defecate. and i'm not talking about a subtle sensation that needs answered in the next half hour or so. i'm talking about an urge so swift she grabs waify high school employees by the arm and commands them to direct her to the nearest restroom. i think their new store designs, which place the bathrooms up front by the checkouts, are in direct response to marty and others like her.

i on occasion get the feeling that having a website may have run its course, then i get to post some cherry life detail (about someone who is not me), like how target's color scheme makes my wife's sphincter go limp and i wonder what i'd do without such a viable and diverse platform.

yesterday i bumped into a friend and her three-year old son leaving his pre-school. after introductions i had the following conversation with her boy.

TROY
so ravi, how'd school go?

RAVI
good. a fire truck came.

TROY
oh, wow. a fire truck. that's pretty cool.

RAVI
i didn't cry.

TROY
well, that's ... great. firemen do good stuff, there's no reason to cry.

PRIYA
he says he didn't cry because half his class did after the firemen put on their uniforms.

did you know this? that kids are freaked out by firemen. i had no idea. fortunately our fire professionals are a little more in tune and make it a point to tour their communities acquainting kids with the process. can you imagine busting your ass through a burning house only to have the little human you're trying to save shriek, turn and scamper under a flame-engorged bed. if it were me i'd be as alarmed as them by their reaction and think there was someone else in the room they saw and i didn't. odds are i'd dive under the bed right behind them to get away from the scary thing. it wouldn't be until they screamed, again, scurried away, again, and locked themselves in a burning closet that i would figure out i was the scary object in the room. and this is only one of the reasons i'm paid to type on a keyboard all day long instead of rescuing humans in peril.

additionally, if you remove the fire-element from the above, the scenario has way more similarities a marty-troy date night (before children) than i'm willing to share in such a public venue.

any of you catch the latest round of women against public milkings? my favorite quote was from this en-lighted pioneer of human rights out of kansas ...

I was offended and it made my husband very uncomfortable when I left the magazine on the coffee table.

which was almost trumped by ...

Another reader said she was "horrified" when she received the magazine and hoped that her husband hadn't laid eyes on it.

i assume by these women having this magazine in their home they are about to become or recently became a mother, which makes the reaction all the more surreal. i mean if this is your position on the matter shouldn't you be in a confessional asking forgiveness for the tingling sensations you occasionally experience 'down there' instead of pining your time away educating yourself. and, perhaps your husband's discomfort stems more from the fact that you never leave the house, granting him ten minutes alone with your bleeding-edge girlie mag because i'm going to go out on a limb and say these men just may not be receiving an adequate amount of intimacy in their life. but then again, leaving the confines of your safe and always dressed home may expose you to someone wearing a strapless halter or biking shorts thus casting you further into your psychological tailspin.

i'm finding it hard to go on too much about the never-naked ladies cited in this article because i out-loud laughed more in reading it than i did watching four hours of kevin smith candidly answering questions from college kids. well that's not true, but i did laugh quite a bit, alone in my office and was thankful no one popped their head in to ask what was so funny because lord knows what ogling such outrageous pornographic materials in the workplace would do to my career path.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. remedial self-help

these are a few of the women we know; sole, ligaya, jona, pilar, geneva, celina.

and these are the men they are married to; john, joe, danny, steve, eric, and john again.

there's nothing magic about this sampling other than to highlight the collective gutlessness of our society when it comes to naming our males. i can't say i'm studied up on the psychology of it but i'm sure there is some identifiable secruity-related culprit lurking in the dark alleys of our minds. and as per usual marty and i have a host of girl names but again find ourselves empty-handed boy-wise.

names and clothes are a woman's game in our ethno-centric country.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. look before you leak

i used a public restroom yesterday. there was one other person in there. i was going number one. he was going number two. he was also talking on a cell phone while going number two. as i attended to my matter, i listened to his end of the call (like i have a choice). i tried to discern if it was a professional call or his wife asking him to pick up a ham steak on the way home. it seemed like more than ham steak. i finished my duty and let my hand rest on the flush handle until i was sure the guy on the other end of the phone was in the middle of speaking. i didn't want to compete for microphone time with the squatter. and then with balletic-precision i dropped the hammer lighting up the small-tiled room with a reverberating rush. at the sound of the commercial-grade explosion, duece-man immediately interrupted the speaker trying to mask/overwhelm/hide the jet-powered urinal. such a force of nature is not so easily quelled though.

it was never a question of wether i would do it or not. it was just a question of how calculated i would be in doing it. well that and how much satisfaction i'd derive by acting like an eight-grader who just intentionally clogged the school's commode. let's just say my already spry step had a little extra attitude as i exited said bathroom.

a local radio station in town has been advertising, incessantly, a contest where first prize is two vip passes to something called 'the party-deck'. i don't know what or where this structure of joviality is but after extensive consideration have concluded it's the last place i'd ever want to be.

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.

i've had a few folks inquire into my jaded tone towards alcohol consumption given my 'seemingly derisive' post about the guy wearing a 'GET DRUNK, BE SOMEBODY' shirt. my position is this:

in regards to alcohol consumption, i'm not arrogant enough to think someone requires all of their faculties to carry on a conversation with me, i just like to think i'm at least working with their A-game.

i assure you, it's not some biblical or puritanical assertion. i just find people who are inebriated to be less capable of meaningful or witty discourse than those who are not altered. that said, i have experienced one exception to this where i was at a party and talking to guy who the t-shirted dude on the plane would have certainly described as being wasted or possibly plastered (i'm the first to admit i'm deficient on the variant stages of inebriation and their proper semantics). this guy i was talking to led what i will simply call an alternative social life which i happened to have many candid questions about. this guy, in his state, freely answered any and every question i threw his way regarding the intimate details of his lifestyle. in this case his drunkenness assisted both of us in having a highly compelling and fruitful exchange (granted, one-way exchange) of information.

that's it. nothing too overly judgmental here. you're free to be drunk around me if it helps you unabashedly reveal things about yourself that i want to know and that you otherwise would not tell me, if this is not the case, may i direct your attention to the jug of sweet tea on the counter.

saturday while pulling into a curbside parking spot i scraped the fender of the car parked in the space behind mine. in the end the damage was not bad. nothing on mine and a scrape to the rubber fender of a honda accord. it was very, very minor and i considered just leaving it. but decided if someone scraped my car i'd want to be the one who decided how bad it was and if it needed some sort of attention or not. so, on a scratch piece of cardboard, i wrote the following. i slid the torn cardboard under their driver side wiper and went in to get my haircut. while waiting, i had an uneasy feeling and couldn't get a co-worker's voice out of my head about 'never admitting' and 'never apologizing' when it comes to matters of auto accidents. i argued that in cases where there is obvious fault one can admit and one can apologize. he tells me to ask any insurance company and they'll make it very clear ... never admit and never apologize, just call them. not often looking to insurance companies for ethical advice, i decided the note was the right thing to do and i would work through whatever came of it and i went about my day.

a few hours and errands later my pager went off. i instantly knew it was marty and it occurred to me that i didn't think to call her about the mishap or the note (if only they made a device you could use to contact others while away from home). i feared the worst. "troy. some insane woman just called raving about her ruined car and said you did it. is this true! are you back on the pipe? we talked about this! come home! come home now!" but instead this is what my pager read. when i got home marty went into more detail about the lady's phone call and how she went on about how our communities needed more mutual respect and ownership and she was so very appreciative of the gesture. she also mentioned a need for penmanship because she could only decipher about half of what my note actually said.

so there evil insurance-abiding co-worker. it seems the world does not have to revolve around fear of litigation or bloated insurance premiums ... or legible writing as far as that goes.

a curiosity about my family; they've all got impulse control issues. wether it is marty straightening the counter in your home's kitchen or alex eating your six month supply of potato chips in a single sitting or bella arranging the books on your bookshelf by size (and then color), they've, collectively, got some real and identifiable problems.

you'll notice my name missing from the above inventory. this is because i'm the only member of the clan without such an affliction. of course, i'm also the one responsible for repeatedly clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth so the universe doesn't collapse upon itself.

no need to thank me, i'm doing it to save my ass, not yours.

were you aware we just celebrated the ten year anniversary of the the OJ verdict? i didn't until i caught this great episode of frontline which was loaded with all sorts of current observations about this historic affair. one of the more poignant comments came from a ucla law professor, Peter Arenella, in regard to the performance of the defense team:

tragically, the american public doesn't seem to understand the role of the criminal defense counsel. even my first year students ask me frequently how can you as a criminal defense attorney ... represent a guilty person in good conscious. the point of an adversarial system is for the defense to force the prosecution to persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt and a defense counsel's ethical role is to make the prosecution satisfy that burden of proof by challenging the credibility and persuasiveness of the prosecution's evidence.

i could definitely be lumped into the american public referenced here and have long been intrigued by this legal circumstance. i've always possessed a pollyanna notion that skilled defense teams were meant for the innocent and it was not morally clear to me how someone could fight to free a person they knew to be guilty (this obviously assumes a defendant admits the truth and/or crime to his attorneys or they otherwise come to know the truth), almost as if the trial should happen and if the dude's found innocent AND the defense team KNOWS the person is guilty, that some member of the defense team should step forward and assert that even though we won the case, we know our client is guilty of the charge.

an admission, to anyone in the legal circle feels like it should be enough, in my utopian vision at least. and i get that the landscape would change should this method be the norm. all i'm saying is it seems utterly bizarre to me that people go free when we have legal professionals walking around who know the defendant committed the crime for which they are accused, wherever that may apply.

a few more interesting points made in the show.

upon the verdict's reading in 95, you know, when the white population collectively sagged and the black population collectively rejoiced, the whites had a sense that the celebration was over what appeared to be an obviously guilty man, who was black, getting away with the murder of two people, who were white. upon re-interviewing many of the previous celebrants today, they admit to feeling he did in fact commit the crime, and they were not rejoicing that OJ dodged a murder charge but instead that a black man beat the system, a system that has long ravaged factions of their communities. beyond the irony that OJ was a man so accepted and revered by whites, the fact that it was orenthal james simpson seems to be irrelevant. but it is this vitally important distinction (that a great many of the blacks celebrating the verdict that day felt he either did it or was in some way responsible for it being done), i feel, was not made abundantly clear by the press back in 95.

i also heard multiple people say that the great flaw in the case was that certain parties of the lapd attempted, or very much appeared to have attempted, to frame an already guilty man and had they let events unfold naturally the case would have been much more winnable for the prosecution.

the only thing the pundits can agree on; the vivisection of this event does not have a final chapter. oh, and also that we really need to get cracking on the truth box.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. go hide

we found a rabbit in front of our house about five minutes after a cat found it. it was in quite rough shape. after kicking at the cat, i moved the rabbit to our backyard and told bella we should leave it alone so it could die in peace. ten minutes later i looked out the window to find bella reading to the rabbit. an hour later, marty and bella buried the rabbit, in a shady spot picked by bella.


i have a cousin who in his teenage years used to kill cats. he killed a lot of them and he killed them in all kinds of ways. with his car. with his guns. with his slingshots. and, almost without doubt, with his bare hands. i used to think this was terrible. i'm now thinking about hiring him.

excerpt from Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

excerpt from Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

on wednesday i had lunch with some people i just recently met. one of the girls at the table was complaining about the state of her dating life. i gave her the typical 'just got to keep swinging' propoganda speech, you know the one that ends with a hearty, yet assuring, clap on the back.

she responded to my spirited pep talk by sharing a moment from her last outing where her date left her sitting alone at a table while he stepped out to engage in some medieval combat using a weapon made from pvc tubing.

on the good side, at least his mom was letting him stay out late, and this in addition to borrowing the car for the night.

afterthought : if i had to guess where the traditional clap on the back business comes from, i'd attribute it to homophobes who were unable to give hugs to their other phobe friends. if this is true, giving a clap on the back is almost like throwing hail hitler salutes around the workplace. no more claps on the back from me. you are either getting a full-body contact hug or you'll have to lick your wounds all on your own.

as people moved through this traveling museum looking in on some of the most terrifying of human moments and while paying homage to the craftsmen who have devoted their lives, occasionally literally, to capturing these unique and momentary events, you'd think, you would just think for a moment that out of respect of this event and those trying to experience it, you could turn your fricken cell phone off for 60 minutes. or hows about a compromise and we just say set it to vibrate you self-absorbed hard-on(s).

i heard a news story today about a lawsuit against a school district. the plaintiffs were petitioning for the right to place stickers inside the school's science books. this insert intends to correct any misinformation the textbook and educational facility may attempt to convey to its students regarding evolution.

were i the decision maker in this squabble, i would grant the zealots their request with the single condition that i get to place my own sticker inside all of their fancy, leather-bound bible books.