bella commenting on a miley cyrus disc she slid into the car stereo.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. timing

i was walking to my office when bella, who was using marty's computer, stopped me. she said i had to see this. she said it was so awesome. i pulled up a chair and sat next to her. she had a youtube video cocked and ready. the moment i was situated and looked at the screen, she hit play. three seconds into the video she paused it, turned to me and launched into a verbal dissertation that went somet...

my childhood home's first computer was one called a TRS-80. i was twelve or thirteen at the time. of the early home PCs this one made by radio shack was one of the lesser coveted models, but for someone who thought the nascent computer revolution would pass him by completely, i was seven kinds of thrilled to be part of the history. little did i know how much this foreword thinking purchase on my parents part would affect me then (and for unpredictable decades to come). much of my understanding of logic and process stemmed from the early poking and hacking and noodling i did on this unheralded footnote in the early PC landscape.

the computer, and the television it was connected to, sat on an old wooden card table in my home's basement. my dad expressed little curiosity in the contraption as he passed my hunched over frame while he moved to and from the garage. one time something on the screen stopped him. after a few minutes, he asked what i was doing. i told him playing a game. he asked what the point of the game was. i said to eat all of the dots without running into a bad guy. he asked if he could try. i said sure. i stood and he took the seat. i remember him looking uneasy and out of place at the helm of something that was so connected to me and so not connected to him. i handed him the joystick and showed him how to start a new game by pressing the space bar. his first-ever gaming experience lasted less than a minute. instead of handing the controller back to me for my turn, he reached forward and pressed the space bar starting another game. he died again in short order. this time he turned to me and commented how it wasn't as easy as it looked. i nodded in understanding. space bar again. death again. spacebar. death. spacebar. death. he became so rapt on the objective he didn't even notice when i walked away.

my mom spotted me upstairs looking sullen. she asked what was wrong. i said nothing. she asked why i wasn't on the computer (it was still new enough that it was pretty much all i had done for weeks). i told her dad was using it. surprised she asked if she heard me right. i told her she had. i went to my room and read a book.

the next time i sat down at the computer, on a tablet of paper was written a number with an emphatic underline beneath it. it was in my father's handwriting and it took me a moment to realize it was a score, his high score, to the game. it was also higher than my highest score to date. i was duly impressed. i fired up the game and sat down convicted to best my father's mark. when i did, i enjoyably scratched his number out and wrote mine below it. several nights later when i sat down, i saw that my number was scratched out and replaced with one of his. and like that my father and i for several months engaged in a wordless form of togetherness that to this day stands as one of my warmer, more special childhood memories.

i was at a lunch the other day when the topic of early computer experiences came up. it made me remember the above story. i pulled my pen from my shirt pocket and wrote the words MEGA-BUG on my hand. later that night i set out in search of the game and as usual the interwebs delivered. should you like to experience the game that brought a young awkward boy and an old-school father closer, i invite you to do so. it also doesn't hurt that to this day i consider this to be one of the most quaint and thoughtful computer games ever devised.

to play:

1. go to this link (link will open in new window so you don't loose the instructions).
2. if prompted to trust the site, trust the site.
3. click the SETUP button.
4. click the MEGABUG button from the list (12th one down).
5. after returning to the green screen type CLOADM and hit enter.
6. wait a minute or so while the game loads.
7. when given an OK prompt, type EXEC and hit enter.
8. as the story says, press the space bar to play.
9. use the arrow keys to move.
10. as in the real world, you only get one life, so make it count.

i challenge you to clear a board in less than 100 attempts. surviving more than a minute is even a bit of a feat. if you clear two boards, both my father and i bow to you in great homage and respect.

during the purge of the home next door, our kids got loads and loads of stuff that the neighbors thought might be of interest to them. we're talking magazines, stickers, paper, magnets, curious shipping containers, and on and on. of all the interesting baubles that came into our house, this old school notebook with about ten pages left in it has to be my favorite.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. short-lived

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.

these days, as we all know, i live in saint louis, which in the month of august means i live on the face of the sun. in saint louis, we have an outdoor theatre called the muny. Thin When Tan Girl and her man treated marty and i to West Side Story last night. at the show's intermission when the lights came up i looked around and thought to myself how stinking uncomfortably hot all these people looked. when i turned to my theater-mates, they looked quite startled and exclaimed 'wow. troy. you look ... awfully ... shiny.'

is it my fault i have rich, moist skin?

speaking of rich, moist skin, West Side Story is my all-time favorite musical. it holds this esteemed position for two reasons. firstly, one of the two mormon girls i was hopelessly in love with in high school played a pivotal part in my school's senior year production of it. and secondly, this same girl would sing the musical's songs to me after school when we drove around in her family's car that smelled like vomit. (this mixture of sensory input caused a real schism in some of my brain's memory pathways later in life. fortunately for me, i have rich, moist skin so i'm not expected to be all that together, mentally at least.)

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

tonight marty confided in me that she was concerned i may have run out of embarrassing things to say about myself and have moved onto her, since the last few posts have been greatly marty-centric (her breasts specifically, but her all the same).

she of all people should know that i haven't even gotten to the embarrassing parts of my life yet.

somehow, google listed my site as a resource to someone searching for information about masturbating children. i've never really considered myself an authority on masturbation but after four seconds of consideration i realized that, for reasons i'd rather not iterate through, i'm quite qualified to speak on the topic. and for an even greater number of reasons i'd especially rather not iterate through, i very well may be one of the foremost available authorities on the subject.

with this new mandate on my plate, i thought i'd spin around the web a bit and see what the competition was up to. it took less than eight mouse clicks to stumble upon this little morsel issued by our friends at the mormon church, steps in overcoming masturbation.

do i need to bother saying more is coming in regard to this document or is it as obvious as an erection in math class.

for the slow-witted or those using all their brain's resources trying not to touch their naughty parts, there WILL BE MORE COMING in regard to this document.

marty and i have been enjoying the terribly underrated freaks and geeks series together. i can't tell you how interesting it is to be watching this with someone who was neither a freak, a geek or, as with her spouse, somehow both.

although i will say i feel like a celebrity. she's so full of questions, questions i know the answers to. and she asks them excitedly, sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest, smiling widely as she works to get them out.

were there really girls who would/could push guys around? did guys really freak out about having to shower in gym? do people really dance in front of and converse with their mirror?

the answers:

1. my mom made me put the dollar bill she gave me for lunch in that funny little pocket above the regular right pocket on levis. three people knew this. myself, my mother and a girl named audrey who simply held her hand out every day she saw me before lunch.
2. at my high school, we only had to shower during swim week. me and a terribly overweight kid were the only ones with doctors notes excusing us from the program for three straight years. you see, not only did i not know how to swim, i didn't get a chest hair until i was 19, started shaving a year after that (and then only once a week until i was 25). you do the math. i was about twelve leg hairs away from being diagnosed with alopecia and advertising my pubeless groin to all of my rowdy and hirsute colleagues was simply not in the plan.
3. dammit

but don't get me wrong, i'm also learning stuff. like that the average person could feather their hair if they so desired?

although, for me, it raises another question; who wouldn't desire to feather their hair?

puberty punched me in the face so hard i was nearly unrecognizable on the other side. the greatest victim to this unprovoked mauling was my hair, which is certainly no secret to anyone who has met me since the age of thirteen. before this adolescent milestone, i had silky strands just like the other kids, but as a teenager i was the sole member of a yet-to-be-established support-group for people w...

i'm not sure who started it. since i'm writing the tale, we'll let the benefit of the doubt go to the historian which means bookguy began this mess.

the first time it happened we didn't think much of it. the second time, we eyed one another suspiciously. by the seventh time we knew there was a greater force guiding events. it began when i came into work with a zit, bookguy promptly and expectedly said something along the lines of 'nice zit'. two days later he had a festering carbuncle on the tip of his nose four times the size and three shades darker than my own.

as i alluded to, this trend oddly continued, meaning anytime one of us would harangue the other over something we knew they would be insecure about, mother wrath would deliver a much worse malady upon the offender. we termed this phenomenon as juju, bad juju specifically. the juju proved so reliable we actually reached a point of maturity, if even maturity through fear of consequence (is there really any other kind?). if you had a blemish you could see the other staring at it, the rolodex of insults spinning in their brain but knowing they wouldn't pluck a card out lest they suffer a retort from the juju god.

bookguy now lives in another state and we've missed many opportunities and facial imperfections. i think this distance gave me a false sense of security because i recently acted foolishly. he posted a picture of himself on his web site wearing a new pair of glasses. knowing him well enough to know that he'd be uncertain of his ability to pull off such a contemporary style (surely picked out by his wife) i sent him an email regarding a boondoggle we'd soon be taking; 'you're not planning on wearing your new spectacles on our trip, are you?'

i woke up wednesday morning to discover someone had relocated mount krakatoa from whatever continent it resided on to just below my right eye. this is classic juju at work. and it will not be lost on my travel mate.

fricken juju.

at last friday night's bachelor party (congrats mikey d) one of our stops included a video arcade place. for the most part i hate the modern day video house, what with all these newfangled hi-fi games. like many i'm a classic vids man. today's fare is nothing more than a bunch of space ace's lining the wall. big frills, no skills.

and as a purist in an unappreciative world i was relegated to the back corner of the room, as too often happens, where they had a stand up game capable of playing all the lost jewels from yesteryear; galaga, joust, robotron. sadly there was no excite bike. or marble madness now that i think about it. but i did get to momentarily return to my adolescent years as well as smugly inform some square 40-something how missile command was truly supposed to be played. tourist.

american beauty is a favorite film of mine. i learned last night (via luby) that moments before the movie's release, thirty minutes were cropped off the end. this is thirty minutes of fully edited and polished footage detailing a trial trying to pin lester's murder on the wife (if you haven't seen it yet, wake the hell up!). now while i totally love the ending as it is, i thirst for more of this story with every viewing. luby and i agreed that someone has this, somewhere, and that we need it. how in the hell is it not on the dvd? are they holding off for a second release to fleece their fan-base? does anyone know of this? has anyone seen this? as always, i pay top dollar for satisfaction.

in another movie note, i've been watching/listening to martha coolidge's audio commentary on the making of valley girl, another of the greatest films ever made. one of the things she discusses is how she was contractually mandated to include at least four breast shots in the film. she went on about how disgusted she felt, as a woman, having to meet this gratuitous and forced tactic just to guarantee ticket sales to a movie not, inherently, about woman's breasts. as a married, quasi-experienced, and internet-connected adult, i agree with her. it's a sad statement on the art of film-making in hollywood. but as a 13 year old watching this movie on HBO again and again and again i wholeheartedly agree with and thank the decision-makers of this film for piping those breasts into my home, again and again and again.

i like seeing things i'm not supposed to. this is not to say that you will look up one day and find me peering into your bathroom window, but it is to say that if you're showering next to me at the gym, i could later pick you out of a lineup, without ever seeing your face. i'm not sure why i'm like this but i know when it began.

i was in second grade and my after-school baby-sitter was...

i've played this game for as long as i can remember. from people i've polled i believe it to be an only child game. as for the other only children i've asked, they claim to not know it. i've concluded that it is they who are aberrant and not me. i call my game the What-If game. in this game one simply thinks of scenarios they could physically act out and then ruminate on the consequences of such ...

if you wandered into the what i'm hearing section, you may have noticed it has a new look. in spending the last few days hacking on that, i devoted many cycles on listening to music, thinking about music, organizing my music and even laying hands on some new music. in fact, this month's offering comes from bookguy. now this unemployed bloke jet sets all over the planet and the one dirge he returns with has a total of nine unique words in it, and they're not even in english. sheesh. and, of what little spanish i know, these scant words don't even seem right. i asked bookguy about this and he replied: what can i say, bookguy's smart. bookguy also doesn't question native speakers on matters of their own tongue. like i said, smart. once satisfied with its grammatical correctness i listened to this nine-word, four-minute song on repeat for one hour. i'm smart too.

well, anyway, back to these random thoughts on music. one thing i recalled dealt with how my mother never knocked before coming into my room. any women reading this, please just accept that you should not walk straight into teenage boys rooms without some sort of fanfare or ceremony announcing the visit. you'll will hear things going on behind the door before it opens. this is good. you want this to be happening. ultimately i'm just trying to save you the embarrassment my mother suffered when she burst into my room and found me standing in front of a full length mirror singing and dancing to the Grease soundtrack. i was all over every move from the Greased Lightning bit, using my bed as the car. regrettably, i had the music up so loud i didn't hear her enter and continued the mini-production until her laughter overwhelmed my Optimus speaker 'system'. and, yes i had the whole arm pointing and hip bucking thing all worked out too. i don't play when i'm getting my greased lightning going.

amazingly given this trauma, somehow, years later, i was able to overcome the shame of my mother's invasion enough to ask a girl to move around funny with me on the dance floor at a junior high, all-stag affair. jenna something conceded (astoundingly) and we weaved our way through the crowd to the beginnings of hipsway's honeythief. we settled on a spot and marked it as ours by stopping, facing one another and then moving about in a seizing manner. my mother wasn't around so my body was quick to do what it does. falling into the zone, i drifted somewhere else, my head rolling back looking upwards at the tile ceiling and the random streamers coming down as my body fought an invisible enemy. i was really starting to let go, opening it up some might say, but who couldn't, this is hipsway we're talking about. but again, regrettably, my introduction to dance with other humans was cut short when my thrusting hand accidentally struck my partner in the ribcage leaving her slightly bent, holding her side and breathing irregularly. as people stopped to look and a smallish circle formed i could tell that some people may have been embarrassed by this development but those people would not have spent a moment of their life standing in their underwear, soaked with sweat, a musical playing behind them and shouting at their mother to stop laughing, get out of their room and to try knocking next time.