odds are you are not going to like this.

a lot of science has come out in the last few years about the power of posture, namely on our mood. the classic example being smiling helps your mood in a number of ways, in fact it is impossible for smiling to not improve your mood (TED the hidden power of smiling). then there was this reasonably popular treatise about how you can change your complete emotional state by simply altering your posture (TED: your body language shapes who you are). i'm mildly embarrassed to admit to trying this before a few important encounters i had a few years back and can report there are definitely some merits to the claims which i will also report surprised me more than a little.

a friend recently turned me onto the newish tim ferriss podcast. he is the 4-hour workweek/body guy. his shows are long and he talks more than he maybe should (i assume his interviewing and editing skills will improve as he does it longer) but there have been a couple of affirming and revelatory bits of info pass through thus far, which for those who are familiar with ferris is surely what one would expect to happen given his dense and intense way of approaching things.

i won't bore you with the affirming parts as no one cares about that except me. but one of the revelatory snippets talked about people and their cellphones. it turns out that any person engaged with their phone screen is in a classic "losers" position. think of someone who just lost a tennis match. head down. shoulders slumped. disengaged from what is around them. and if you give any credit to the body position and framing studies above, this is doing you no kinda favors. and now when we see older folks grousing about all of these losers and their smartphones, it turns out they are a little more on point than we may have first given them credit for.

and lots of science has also verified that people's connection to social media is a fraught and losing psychological endeavor--put differently you will never win the psychological health award by playing a game that never ends and hosts an endless stream of players. now, not only are people losing emotionally, they are also losing physically.

this will give me a new game to play as i wait on people sitting through green lights, blocking sidewalks, and holding up checkout lines because i know, based on the above ted talk, smirking is better than scowling.

the scene looks like many american backyards on the weekend, with a dad doing lawn work. the predictable part of the picture is interrupted by a second story window being cast open and a partially eaten apple being chucked from it. the father watches the apple, land, roll, and then stop in his freshly manicured lawn. later when the father polls his children about the apple, the eight year old boy confesses to being the thrower. when challenged about his choices. he said mom told him to do it, or admittedly, said he could do it. to the question of why his mother would tell him to do it he said, so they could see what would happen, but only after guessing (or hypothesizing--science teacher and all) what would happen to the apple in the days ahead. and now they were testing their guesses (or hypotheses).

i wonder if any of them hypothesized that their father would come chirp at them about chucking fruit out of second story windows.

Two sentences from Thomas H. Greer's A Brief History of Western Man, a book that has many, many more that are almost as tantalizing.

we went camping about a month ago. marty suspected that one of our twin blow-up mattresses had a leak in it. when we returned home she and boys brought it up to the living room, blew it up and tried to find the leak. marty, the former biology teacher, ran the kids through all the various way in which they could test the mattress and locate the leak. the boys sat on it and marty looked. marty sat o...

did you see the recent report claiming masturbation prevents prostate cancer. if this is true, i think i'm more likely to get ovarian cancer before prostate. it's nice to know there's at least one malady out there i'm entirely immune to.

last night i was on the tail end of reading books to alex and bella when marty rushed into the room. she went to the back window, peering out of it. after a moment she called us over to see the lunar eclipse in progress. the kids quickly scrambled out of bed joining her. marty began explaining what was occurring. bella and alex stood on the windowsill taking in the scene while marty and i looked on from behind. three-fourths of the moon was already dim.

while we waited marty and alex began a guessing-game about the people traveling on the walkway behind our house. he would call out when he saw someone approaching and we would first try to guess their gender and then their name. my guesses of cornelius and pumpernickel were met with chastising looks from bella. between pedestrians, i got some paper and sketched out for the kids what makes an eclipse an eclipse. intrigued bella started asking questions about what direction things were moving in and what other things were possible out of this (i.e. solar eclipse). marty interrupted my lesson to point out a man dancing in his third-story bedroom across the way. we all silently watched this older man gyrate and swivel to music we couldn't hear. while no one announced it, i'm sure all four of us were squintingly trying to see if he was naked. in time he paused, walked to the window, seemed to peer at us peering at him. his arm came up and he twisted his venetian blinds closed. we returned to the moon and watched the last slivers of brightness fade. when it was done it seemed anti-climactic. slowly, people drifted back to their routine spots resuming their routine acts.

for as uneventful as this unique diversion proved, i have a sense that the twenty minutes the four of us gathered around a window in a dark room to watch the earth roll between the moon and sun will hang in a framed picture in my head for much longer than one would think such a mild-mannered event should or would.

when my mom worked for the CDC in colorado, she worked with doctors who flew all over the world treating epidemic illnesses. in their journeys they met all sorts of folks practicing all sorts of medicine. one technique a doctor brought back was a cure for hiccups. the fix went like this. for someone experiencing persistent hiccups you would pinch them on the arm or leg. the pinch would be firm so the person knew they were being pinched but not so hard it would hurt them. while pinching them you'd ask a series of questions. like the pinch, these were to be hard enough to make them think but not too hard that they couldn't answer them. the other night while putting alex down, he started hiccuping. i asked him if he wanted me to make them go away. he did. so i explained what i was going to do, pinched his arm and began my questions.

TROY
alex, whose house did we eat dinner at last night?

ALEX
sebastians?

TROY
no, not sebastians.

ALEX
uhhmm.

TROY
you don't remember where we went last night? we went there to watch a game. and you played with their little girl.

ALEX
uhhmm. i don't know.

TROY
ok. different question. what friends came over to play this weekend?

ALEX
sebastian?

TROY
no. not sebastian. it was a brother and a sister.

ALEX
sebastian and sophia?

TROY
no. these friends have red hair. and their mom does too.

ALEX
uhm.

TROY
the girls name sounds like heaven.

ALEX
i don't know.

TROY
ok. new question. when we get up in the morning and get dressed, where are we going to go?

ALEX
sebastians?

TROY
no. not sebastians. school! we are going to go to school!

ALEX
(hiccup)

not only was this the first time this has never worked, ten minutes after leaving the room, i found i had the hiccups.

on October 8th, awareness of scrotal lift technology hit the mainstream. being google's number two hit for the term my logs spiked in response to peoples' sudden curiosity. unfortunately my dissertation on the topic does not seem to be hitting the mark with these information seekers because such visitors only stay for an average of 15 seconds, which is not nearly long enough to take in my enlightened commentary on the subject.

based on other google offerings, my guess would be they're actually after the site discussing the related Scrotal Drape and Support product page. i made them one click stronger at least.

marty told me of a news report she heard discussing open-flatulence policies. as we know in america, public and especially audible dispersal of one's bowel-air is collectively frowned upon. but, china, marty tells me, is a country that believes holding one's gas in is an unhealthy practice and they have, as a society, agreed that any pent up air is to be loosed on the room without reservation.

first off, i agree it is unhealthy for one to sit on a giant ball of methane for a workday, but can one not argue that it is also unhealthy for others to breath what was just in someone else's colon? i reckon the studies have not been done, but i gotta think too much second-hand ass has some real down-sides. why is something so unfit for your rectum so ok for my nasal passages and lungs. a part of this logic is escaping me. furthermore, i'd like to say it is clear that none of these folks in china have ever worked with some of the system administrators i have because i know a couple of fellas who could single-sphincterly change a nation's politics and do so in short order.

lastly, let me share a friendly life-lesson i've picked up in my travels; if you meet a guy with an oscillating fan beneath his desk, pointing outward, get the hell out of there because trouble is a brewing. this warning goes double after lunch.

on very cold nights, our home has one less blanket than it needs. which bed comes up light is about as predictable as who will be resting in any of the various sleeping spots our house has to offer.

obviously, you'd think the adults would carry the advantage being bigger and smarter and all. but, little people move quietly and have more to fear if caught. so blankets get tugged back and forth across a bed and even drug from room to room in the night's silent hours. but that's not all that gets transported. i once saw alex pushing a miniature baby stroller down the hallway at 3am. i looked just long enough to verify my blanket wasn't in it before flopping my head back on the pillow, tightening my grip on the corner of my linen and going back to sleep.

three nights ago i drew the short straw. while sleeping in alex's bed (which is pushed up against bella's bed), i got bested by bella who wound herself up so tight in my comforter, my fatigued arm couldn't work her out of it. so i spent the night in and out of sleep, curled up and shivering. i gave up on sleep around 5am and headed towards the bath for a steamy shower. in passing my nemesis, i cast a scornful look at the blissfully warm and sleeping girl. i swear i saw a contented smile form on her rosy face as i stumbled by tightly hugging my naked chest. while i stood waiting for the shower's water to get hot, i noticed something about my body; it felt lean and my skin was super-taut. it was almost as though my body's futile attempt to generate warmth caused me to loose three pounds in the night. then my mind recalled a suggestion from a health magazine where it said drinking ice cold water, instead of tepid, burns forty extra calories per glass because your body has to heat the liquid once in the stomach.

it seemed to make sense. at least to my un-rested and slightly bella-jealous mind. instead of gyms having saunas they should have seat-lined deep-freezes where old rich guys could go in with their buddies and sit around naked debating last weekend's games while chattering and rubbing the tops of their thighs for warmth. granted if these did exist, i wouldn't actually get a membership, because between having a wife who doesn't like to turn the heat up past 60 degrees and a daughter who outfoxes me with frustrating regularity, i'm already paying a mortgage on my very own seat-lined, bed-scattered deep freeze.

and as clarifying note, marty is the exception to this rule. she (a) always sleeps in the same spot and (b) never goes without covers. everyone living here knows not to lie on mom's clean patch of sheets and to never slide a blanket off her sleeping frame. even bella won't tangle with that sleeping lioness. and that's saying something.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dinner-table biology

this is unfortunately not an atypical dinner conversation at our table

BELLA
dad, you're going to die first.

TROY
what? me? why do i have to die first?

BELLA
because you're the tallest and the tallest means the smallest life.

TROY
well, i'm not such a great fan of that.

MARTY
it's ok troy. someone has to be first.

BELLA
and mom, you're next.

i was eating breakfast, marty was making lunches, bella was elsewhere and alex was sitting on a portable mini-toilet in the corner of the kitchen. an impressive burst of gas reverberated in the plastic compartment beneath alex's bum breaking the morning still of the room. he smiled widely at the echoing noise, marty grinned and i chuckled. we are a house of innocent pleasures.

ten seconds later alex made a face, pinched his nose and asked 'what's THAT smell?'. marty, never even looking away from her cut orange, naturally and medically responded 'that's your gas alex'. at this news his body slumped incredulously in the chair 'noooohhhhhh mom ... ' and then he pointed to me saying ' ... daddy gas'.

having my children associate all foul and wafting odors in the home back to me is not exactly how i envisioned my fatherhood. i cannot say why i position myself above such stereotypical unfairness, especially since 19 times out of 20 they'd be right in their aromatic hunch. this admitted, i still find the notion that i must quietly accept blame for every bout of flatulence that happens between my bouts of flatulence quite unjust.

marty told me of a story where a twelve year old science-fair participant did a study on five of the restaurants in her home town. she analyzed their ice cubes and toilet water, and she found that the toilet water was cleaner.

can somebody older than twelve and with a little juice call foul here and take some corrective action?

and while i support this youngster's obvious giftedness, i don't think i want to follow her success because at twelve she's already given me the perpetual shakes. there's no doubt that this girl's future thoughts and studies will work to fully incapacitate me.

several years ago, marty and i were lounging on the futon watching tv. i had an abdominal pain and kept massaging the side of my gut, groaning painfully.

what's wrong?

i have this damn stitch in my side. it hurts like hell.

it's probably just stuck poop. push on it, it will help work it loose.

she never even looked away from the tv nor did she stop popp...

i was talking with a guy, he's an older guy, as in over 60 older. he expressed an interest in cycling. i told him to just do it. he said he had a problem. what? bad knees? gimp back? tweaked shoulder? whatever it is, biking is the sport for you. it seems i'm a suck guesser because i learned his specific problem is he sits on his testicles when he bikes (yeah, like you would have guessed that). wel...

it was only recently that i learned why worms came out and lined the sidewalks when it rained.

the real reason is because the water floods their tunnelways and they can't breath.

the reason i always thought they did, to wash all of the gross dirt from their bodies.

what you are looking for is over here.

statement of fact:
mcdonalds coke tastes better than anyone else's coke.

statement of fact:
the reason for this is the fat straw.

go ahead and sick the myth-busters on it. i'm right.

smart john once told me that a leading theory about yawning is that we yawn when our bodies aren't getting enough oxygen. you do this a lot when you're tired because your body is getting lazy and not drawing in enough oxygen.

smart john went on to say that yawning is contagious autonomically; a biological survival deal. if you see the guy sitting next to you yawning, your body vibes that there isn't enough oxygen in the room/cave/space and thinks it also needs to yawn so you can get a big ole mouthful of air as well.

i have no idea if this is true but i liked it when i heard it. it's become a rubik's cube of sorts sitting on the coffee table in my brain. a curiosity picked up a few times a year and spun aimlessly, knowing i have no prayer of making sense of the riddle but oddly compelled to study it for a few yawn-free moments every now and again.

excerpt from the introduction of bill bryson's, A Short History of Nearly Everything. detail here

i recently heard a commercial advertising a new product, the totally silent tampon wrapper or as they put it 'you would need bionic hearing to know this tampon was being opened.'

3 seconds after hearing this i thought ...
'oh lord, you've got to be kidding me. what next?'

42 seconds after hearing this i thought ...
'but wait a minute. is this akin to plopping in the toilet. i know some people can't drop their payload if others are in earshot and do things like hold it to the point of discomfiture or padding the water with a few squares in attempt to absorb the sound (and we all know that's only about a 50-50). is announcing to others in the room that your endometrial lining has begun sloughing from your uterine walls equally embarrassing? i can see wanting to avoid advertising that.'

2 minutes after hearing this i thought ...
'i just don't know. in some respects it seems like it would be a far more embarrassing admission but i've never gone through with it so cannot say. must begin asking women if menstruation is embarassing.'

2 hours after hearing this ...
'i wish i had something that required a totally silent thing that someone needed bionic hearing to hear me using.'

1 day after.
'i never get any cool stuff.'

scientific footnote: i have always likened the sloughing of the endometrial lining to large shards of an iceberg sliding into the water even though i know that the female version must be a much more gelatinous affair but i just can't come up with a better comparison. and, don't get me wrong, i'm thankful each and every day for not having a better something to visualize this against.

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...

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

e-love and dr. j are expecting their first child. congratulations e-love and dr. j.

with that out of the way, let us now move to the interesting part of the news.

e-love describes the vaginal sonogram instrument as highly phallic. i'm not sure what he or i expected from such a tool but we agree it seems like they'd try to do something to make it, well, less obviously phallic. we surmise they feel they're dealing with childbearing age adults and should be free to let such a detail slip by. e-love and i further surmise, they assume wrong.

now in the application of the sonogram, at least they use protection. i mean of course they use protection. this is america, you know, the styrofoam country. but the question is ... if you were a medical professional working with reproductive systems and had to sheath an item that was the shape, of say, a banana, what do you think you might use?

and before you answer, let me assert that these folks are on the baby birthing side of the fence and not tooting the prevention horn as much but i gotta think they're hip to the fact that a condom just might fit this tubular rod like a glove.

can we agree on this?

well, we may, but they do not. instead of getting something to fit the instrument like a glove, they instead use A GLOVE. and when does a glove not fit something like a glove you ask? when that something is shaped like a penis.

and for those who are as inquisitive as me, they use the pinky finger of the glove. and like me, that poor vaginal sonogram device just can't catch a damn break.