if i could invent one thing to give to mankind, to improve society, i would devise something called the truth box. the truth box would be infallible. it could not be deceived and could tell with absolute certainty if its subject was answering a question truthfully. additionally the truth box would have a compartment for a body part to be inserted. first offense would always be a hand, excepting se...

everytime i turn around this week, i'm hearing someone talking about wal-mart. not wanting to get left behind, yet again, i thought i'd throw my wal-mart experience into the ring, even though it's not exactly my experience.

me at wal-mart, pah-leeze.

from the ever-reliable chavez, one of the better joke emails i've received as of late. but, perhaps it speaks to me in that special way given the number of times this very thought has run through my mind.

Employee: "I'm sorry boss, but I can't come in today. My doctor says I'm suffering from Anal Glaucoma."

Boss: "Anal Glaucoma??? What the hell is that?"

Employee: "Well basically, for the next few days, I just can't see my ass coming in to work."

my garage door is broke. since having a garage we've had the clicker, openy thing. when it stopped working, i just stood there, in front of it repeatedly pushing the button on the wall, with no results. after about ten minutes of this, i did what any cold-blooded american male would do, i went and asked my wife what i should do.

m: pull the red ripcord to disengage the door.

t: then what?

m: then open it.

t: how?

m: with your hand.

t: no button?

m: no button.

suffice it to say, she may has well told me to reach shoulder deep into a water buffalo's birth canal to look for the television's remote control. if it were the 20,000 pyramid the answer to this scenario would be 'things troy just doesn't do'. when i asked marty about replacing it, she said we don't have the money, right now, for a new garage door. i assured her the new opener would be way cheaper than the small child i was prepared pay to stand at the door all day long waiting for me to pull up so he can raise and lower the door for me. marty told me to find a cheaper child.

bella spent last weekend at the betty ford clinic, the grandparents house for any newcomers. with only one kid in our care this meant marty and i were free to light it up, get it on, tear it apart. if you're wondering what such an unbridled weekend looks like for such an unbridled guy, let me give you a glimpse into my full-throttle life:

friday night after work i ...
watched the italian job
and then walked up to the local cine to take in monster

saturday i ...
watched episodes 1-6 of curb your enthusiasm
helped to host a marty dinner party
watched episodes 1-3 of the west wing

and sunday i ...
watched episodes 4-8 of the west wing
read 20 pages of my 600 page book

i know, i know. crazy. and had i not had to participate in the previously scheduled dinner party i certainly would have gotten the star wars trilogy in, had i not watched it the weekend before which means i could have and would have watched the godfather trilogy.

without the dinner party i may also have read 30 pages of my book instead of 20.

and did you know that they are finally releasing freaks and geeks on dvd? as if it's not bad enough they had to cancel the show in the first place, they have to torture us with this embarrassingly latent release.

just as my campaign against circumcision was ebbing, i learned that i had my first admitted/documented conversion. and by this i mean when these new parents were having the discussion about to chop or to not chop my name came up, and in a positive way, a convincing way.

now some of you may be thinking that for all the raving i do, it is amazing that this is my first conversion. i know that's what i thought when my jehovah's witness friend told me that after knocking on doors every week for ten years he had yet to convert someone. i thought what conviction, what perseverance, what a lunatic. in fact, his dedication proved sturdier than mine because i was ready to give up the foreskin fight after just three years of rejection. but, the most disheartening fact about it all was not the futility but the near-believers. the people who nodded in agreement. the people who saw the logic before them. the people who could see the flaws in the process and still decided, in the end, to take the knife to their infant boys.

for those who want the converts' names, whether your intention be congratulatory or inflammatory (for rekindling my faith) forget about it. all of my client information is kept in the strictest of confidence, especially the clients i like.

while fighting a production fire on my work laptop, i accidentally hit some random keystroke combination. my windows installation now thinks i'm legally blind and partially deaf. at least i believe this to be the case because most of the fonts are set to 76 dpi and all the beeps are dinging at bloodletting decibels. two hours into this mysterious and seemingly irreversible setting i can now claim both of these ailments after facebutting the keyboard numerous times.

when we asked bella to draw pictures of her great grandparents to be mailed to them, she said no problem. later, when she handed her sketches to us we were pleasantly surprised at her eye for detail and said as much. she then instructed us to turn the pictures over. when we asked what was on the backside she explained and we were pleasantly appalled (see exhibits 2 & 4 below).

after bella returned to the breakfast room to draw more, marty and i had a brief discussion about who was to blame bella's overly thorough renditions. marty's firm belief in the scientific facts hurt her. my conviction to the pedestrian nature of our bodily functions didn't do me any favors. in the end we agreed to consider the other at fault realizing we were equally unswayable.

sorry grandma and grandpa but i'm not one to interfere with another's artistic expression or its public display no matter how personal ... to people who are not me.

exhib 1. great grandma | front


exhib 2. great grandma | back


exhib 3. great grandpa | front


exhib 4. great grandpa | back