i owe a personal customer a major site addition by wednesday. i owe work two site mockups by friday. and then of course there's that modest time-drain called the everyman which will be available to the public (and judges) on tuesday of next week. the above is to say i will most certainly be out to lunch the remainder of the week.

and any who see me during this run do not be alarmed by my disheveled appearance, unshaven chin whiskers or maniacal grin. i'm a closet masochist. reminds me of college. marty hates me when i self-abuse. but, marty didn't like college too much either. and for those that warn me of the pending crash given my elevated levels of sugar and caffeine, you can't come down if you never stop the intravenous delivery of said sugar and caffeine. it's children's math really.

and when i get in these jags i totally feel like ray liota at the end goodfellas. unfortunately i look a bit like him too. do you know what it takes to look like a guy strung out on cocaine when you're not, yourself, using cocaine? it's no minor achievement, i gotta tell ya.

three things i try to do everyday:

1. walk on grass
2. make my children laugh (giggling and/or tittering counts)
3. not die

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.

something difficult to do in my home; keep the roll of toilet paper hanging next to the commode dry.

and, it's wet for different reasons than the roll at the shell gas station down the street is wet ... or at least that's what i'm repeatedly saying aloud as i'm sitting on the john delicately pulling the moist plies of paper apart so i can use them.

as for why i haven't engaged the issue more aggressively; i've never felt more fresh or pampered.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. warrior, part II

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."

hey cocker.

hey jack.

what can i get you?

pastrami, hoagie roll, provolone.

what kind of soup you want with that?

no soup today, but thank you.

hell with you! go to the back of the line. (then to the decrepitly old lawyer standing behind me) what can i get you young man?

this is how the lion-share of my transactions began at two...

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.

TROY
yes there was a hiccup and the archives didn't happen for about four months.

EXECUTIVE
four months! that's one hell of a hiccup.

TROY
true enough. let's call it more of a wet belch.