a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. Haters

I've eaten at Chick-fil-A maybe a dozen times, usually while traveling, which means I typically go to different places. Regardless of what part of the country I'm in, I'm always met with a smile at the counter, served in moments, given food that resembles the picture on the wall, and while I ate, was repeatedly asked if I wanted my sweet tea (!!!) refilled, also with a smile. And that is in the lo...

It feels like a minute since I've had the opportunity to share a good story, so let's make the first post-restoration entry about one of the more unusual things to happen to me since being away. 

In 2021, I spent a week in my hometown, Fort Collins, Colorado. Midway through the week, I had to switch to a new Airbnb spot, so I found myself in a new neighborhood. I quickly noticed it was n...

The last few years I have spent the month of July tent-camping in Michigan. Parts of the family will join me for much of this but I usually spend a week or two alone. Every morning of this month begins with a 3-4 hour reading and writing session on the beach. As for what I’m reading, each year I choose a different topic to research and I will have a few books on that subject and will spend my mo...

PART 3 - What makes the perfect gift?
(In case you missed part 2, it is here)

The logical continuation of this conversation is how did it come to this? How does something like shopping on the bed come into existence? When I give it a few minutes thought, I can see how this might happen. Fa...

marty told me of a new workout trend where you hire people to excercise for you.

yes. you are reading that right. you stay at home. they go to the gym in your name. then they report back to you what they did. and that is your workout for the day.

before you scoff too much, you should know that this approach is getting some traction. i get that at first blush it sounds a bit ridiculous, like SNL-skit ridiculous but as with many like things, there is some logic at work. the tactic, in this case, is you get to watch someone leading a healthier lifestyle than yourself AND see and hear what goes into it. as you watch your sponsor get more fit and attractive, you start wanting that for yourself and because of the daily reports, you have a sense for what it would take to make it happen for yourself. so on paper, it has some merit and is finding some success in practice too.

for me this falls into that oft-cited "if you worked as hard at the thing you're trying to avoid as you worked at avoiding it ..." bucket. but in ruminating on it further, it occurred to me that i have been doing this exact practice for more than ten years. the difference is i don't have a workout proxy. i have proxies for social media and the daily news cycle. i know loads of people hyper-engaged in all of those matters, and i just kick back and watch all their hand-wringing and angst and consternation from afar. and when i see what immersing yourself in those matters does to one's mental well-being and personal fulfillment, i see all i need to maintain a healthy and fulfilled mental state for myself. and this is precisely what the workout sponsor does for someone. so if it is half as effective for them as my system has been for me, then get yourself a gym proxy, like, today.

and all of these mental meanderings have given me an idea for a new company that is connected to (1) my current use of social media and news proxies and (2) my obsession with time management. if you are addicted to being connected and informed and love the way you feel after giving hours of your day to social media and the news cycle BUT want that feeling without giving up all the time to stay "plugged in", hire me, or my new company rather. what we will do is send someone to your house first thing in the morning. upon arriving, they will knock on your door, and when you open it, they will kick you square in the groin, girl and boy alike. they will then toss an invoice at your crumpled frame and as they turn to leave will call out, "see ya tomorrow." that way you can fit all that gut-punch level dread and mental turmoil into your day before your first coffee is even cold, leaving the rest of the day's hours for more fulfilling and meaningful pursuits.

i took anthony to his first concert last week. it was a live show by a you-tuber anthony follows, a young man named jack septiceye. i didn't know what i was getting into but anthony (11) kept asking me if i looked into tickets AND the show was within walking distance of our house so after a third ask, i got us a few tickets.

the presentation out-performed whatever meager expectations i might have had. on one hand, it was all a bit ham-fisted but on the other hand, this 27 year old kid was surely handling his business in a much more impressive manner than i did at 27 AND had a standing-room only crowd frothing at his every word so who am i to judge. in short, it involved some humorous storytelling. that is not super remarkable i guess. a part i found curious was that the spirit of the stories meant to move and motivate the audience. again, it was a bit fumbly but i applaud the young man's ambition and attempt to help some folks out.

one common thread throughout his stories was there was a lot of drinking going on. he was from ireland and there seemed to be no lack of imbibing. the next night marty and i were at a party and i met a guy about my age who seemed very irish so i asked him if there is really as much drinking in the irish culture as is portrayed. he said, "i'm not sure but can tell you that when i was growing up, my dad replaced our kitchen sink's spray nozzle with a beer tap."

like many neighborhoods, ours is tied into a community website. i don't follow it myself, but bella keeps an eye on it in case people ask about house or dog sitting jobs. the other day she sent me this a post someone in the neighborhood made.


gotta say, if more of the neighborhood updates were this entertaining i might actually look in from time to time. and i think it would have been a little better and smarter if he had done the legwork first of finding out who this person was, exacted his revenge, and then made this post. this fellow doesn't seem like he'd be shy about sharing the name of the thoughtless ass-hat. my fear here is that he's giving the person a heads up that he'll be watching now and may have spoiled his chance of catching him/her (and i do hope he catches him/her). although, there's a decent chance the person is like me and doesn't read the site so there's a bit of hope.

another thing. how new are all of these approaches to pet-care and did something specifically usher them in? i mean, when exactly did people start picking up after their dogs. and crating dogs, when the heck did that start? i don't remember any of this when i was a kid. dogs slept all over the house and shit all over town. let's be clear, now that i own a home, i'm glad grown people tend to their creatures almost like they were children. but i do feel bad that dogs can't sleep at the foot of the owner's beds warming their feet on cold nights. i have warm memories of our family-dogs snuggling into me for warmth and comfort on those cold colorado nights. and when i hear people defend the crate-business, it sounds mildly akin to the explanations made for giving young kids phones/ipads--they make it sound like it is for the dog's/kid's benefit but in the end they, the owner/parent, seem to be the main beneficiary. i mean dog houses have been around super-forever, and dogs used them, i get that. the difference between a dog house and a crate is one doesn't have a jail door on the front.

and before you have any chastising thoughts and say well, of course, people have always picked up after their dogs and crated their dogs. to that, i would first say that, well, that is most definitely not the case that people have ALWAYS been doing those things and that the uber-practice had to start sometime and i think that time has been since i was a kid. and secondly, i saw a new/next level of first-world pet-care at target the other day. and that discovery may have marked the precise moment i became a sour old man. at the end of an aisle stood a large, glass-paned, interior-lit fridge that held PET-food. prominently, or rather loudly, displayed as it was, it looked like it contained the cure to pimples, old-age and herpes all in one convenient spot. but it did not hold the cures to all human ills. it held chilled food for peoples' animals. the furrows in my brow surely grew deeper at that moment as i stared at those privelege-lined shelves. i don't remember exactly what i muttered under my breath, but i promise you it was not fit to share.

all of this said, there has been many i time when i had pets, i'd pour another scoop from a giant bag of food into my pet's bowl and thought, sucks to be you bud, as i would hate if i had to eat the same thing everyday. the saving grace--i knew my pet, like many american pets, would have his dish peppered with table scraps later in the evening which he would quakingly engulf at the end of each day and digest while curled up against my back or on my feet as we warmed each other literally and emotionally through the night.

my most pondered question in 2015 was what to do about all of this internet porn. well, not in regard to you or me but in regard to these children we are bringing up. i come from a generation where most people HAD sex before they SAW other people having sex (via video porn). that era is more wrecked and faded than the playboy you dug out of the apartment dumpsters. for your average teenage boy how many examples of intercourse, both pedestrian and outlandish, do you think they might consume before they, themselves, first engage in the act? your options are (a) none, (b) a dozen, (c) 38,956. if you answered anything other than C then i suggest your pull your head out of the sand (or worse) and join the rest of us in the existence that is actually taking place.

you might say, not my problem, i don't have boys, i thankfully only have daughters. well, who exactly do you think your daughter is going to marry einstein?

and even if you do have daughters, i, like possibly you, thought they are immune and above such hi-jinks. i have since learned you may not be as safe as you thought.

the pre-youPorn generation likes to joke how a few "instructional" vids may have helped their game and social stock when they were figuring it all out but that joke is funny for about seven seconds which pretty much leaves the rest of your and your children's adult life to figure out how to fold their online porn conditioning into their own real-world relationship(s).

i mean consuming porn for adults who are already formed and broken and kinked in our own way is one thing but what in the world does a bottomless firehose of un-policed and un-curated and un-censored pornography do to a developing mind. fortunately for you, i know the answer: we have no idea. none. not even a start, an inkling. a fragment of a lead. all we know is it might be a good idea to nudge your children towards a career in counseling because next to tattoo removal, that is likely to be one of the most booming industries in the decades ahead.

i've got about seven months worth of things to say on this topic. i won't be starting seriously today but am giving you fair warning that this is a place we will be soon traveling so charge your phone and learn how to clear your browser history as we are going to visit in some dark, cringe-inducing and keep-you-up-at-night topics.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. advice

my favorite public/motivational speaker recently passed through town. afterwards, i checked for what happened during his stay and ran across this video which immediately took a top five slot in my favorite ET talks.



and to save a few of you from having to send an email asking about the top five, here she blows:

1. when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe - part 1
2. when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe - part 2
3. eric thomas day
4. nothing funny
5. you owe you

while driving to school one morning, bella asked marty ...

BELLA
how do you do all this?

MARTY
all what?

BELLA
all this. get up. get dressed. make lunch. drive to another day of the same thing.

MARTY
because i love what i do.

BELLA
but what if you don't love what you do?

MARTY
that is why it is so important to figure tha...

i've recently stopped spending money. i have my reasons and they are good ones. and because they are good ones, i may have a prayer at rocking this financial fast.

the first and best thing about making a serious declaration to stop spending money is the liberation that comes with it (remember this guy). it frees up like fifteen to forty percent of your mind as you get to simply dismiss all of those little nags that happen through the day in this world of shiny material and digital things, all of which are vying for your attention (and money). now i just get to say "nope, not an option" and move on. as i said, liberating.

marty fluctuates between jubilation and frustration over my new declaration. she's jubilant in that she's been trying to get me to stop mindlessly spending money for better than twenty years. she's frustrated that the answer was as simple as putting the right vision in front of me. i can't be to blame in that though. i've been a vision-centric person since my earliest memory. without an end goal in mind (an end goal i viscerally want), i can't marshall a single neuron to act. i have sixteen years of unimpressive school transcripts to support this trait. a piece of computer generated paper with an A on it held no appeal to me (granted, i lacked the vision of the potential enough of those As held for me and my future-self). but, give me a tantalizing goal on the horizon i would love to possess, and my record, to date, has been perfect.

i heard a talk by a life coach who acutely and succinctly addressed this specific foible. she talked about men who would come to her and say they wanted to get in shape. she would ask them why they wanted to get in shape. they would say so they could be healthy and live longer. she told each and every one of those men she couldn't help them. when they asked why she told them their vision was too soft and she couldn't work with it. she instead needed them to say i want to get healthy so i look hot and girls want to sleep with me. to that response she would say, that i can work with. now let's go get you laid.

it's all about that wanna-have-more-sex kinda drive that makes something happen. and i finally found mine in regard to money.

in february of 2014 i said, and in september of 2015 some really smart people said, those brits should have just called me. i could have saved them oodles of time.

i recently bought amazon's most recent technology offering--echo. it is very similar to iPhone's siri but instead of being carried around in your pocket, it sits somewhere in your home. i situated ours on a window shelf in the kitchen. it's a fun sort of toy that can play 80's music (my preference) while you cook, make note of things you need from the store, tell you jokes (anthony's favorite) or ...

when we pulled into the lot for the walter family easter event, before i killed the engine, anthony (8) announced that he wouldn't be hunting easter eggs. later, when an uncle pressed him on the matter he said, "what's the point. all you do is run around finding eggs. you eat the candy in them. you get fat. and then you spend the next year trying to get de-fat. just so you can do it all over again ...

kottke recently shared a story from a guy that said since smart phones arrived, nobody picks up coins they see on the street anymore. my smartphone observation, and one of the few true boons of the technology would be an immediate and sharp decrease in the incidents of road rage you hear about. turns out people are too distracted to get annoyed at anything.

and there is a comment marty made a few years back that stuck with me. if you recall, marty taught 9th grade science for eight years in the 90's. then took nine years off to be home with the kids. she is now in her third year back in the classroom. when she first returned i asked her what, if anything, had changed in the educational landscape. her response: "well, there weren't smart phones when i taught before." i'll leave it to your imagination to ascertain if their impact on our educational process has helped or hindered our mission to grow a new and improved generation of thinkers.

the further we advance in time, the more the movie wall-e looks like a documentary and less like a kids movie.

marty voiced something i've been wondering a lot lately but haven't trusted myself to speak about. she commented: i've had that very thought (not the early morning hour bit, but the who is everyone talking to) as i watch cars go by as i ride my bike or sit at red lights or do anything that puts me in the path of other folks. please note that this part of the sentiment is not a judgement but just an observation as well as a genuine curiosity. the logical part of my mind anwers the question of who everyone is talking to is, obviously, each other.

this is not to say that i don't have judgmental notions about people's distracted states, especially while driving (seconded by when they are conducting transactions). after our last day of skiing, an 18-wheeler drifted fully into our lane at 70 miles an hour and i had to drive my car, also going 70 miles an hour, onto the shoulder to keep from getting side-swiped. the man never saw me before, during or after his maneuver. then the next day when we were literally one mile into our 1,300 mile drive home a girl came barreling through a red light where we were turning and came inches from caving in the passenger side of our van at better than twenty miles an hour. she definitely saw me as i could see the sheer terror in her face as she saw the near collision unfold.

i continue to be struck that more is not done regarding the legality of using a phone while driving. i'm convinced that this is largely due to the fact that one of the greatest abusers of this tenet seem to be police officers themselves. it's rare that i see a cop rolling by who is not on the phone (i wouldn't say the same of state troopers i've observed). and suit/business types seem to be another high-frequency abuser of one-handed, half-minded driving. i assume some of the these folks are the ones we would turn to for help in changing the law so when the law-makers and law-enforcers are big users themselves, it's hard to think there might be help close at hand.

the frustrating part of it all is in time i think this behavior will go the way of our pre-seatbelt and biking-helmet existence. there is just no sane, rational or intelligent argument in defense of the practice. none. i just wish we'd hurry up and come to our collective senses already.

one final aside related to marty's initial question above. back in the nascent days of cell technology (e.g. car-mounted, brick phones) a friend of mine, man-who-screams-like-woman, had a scanner that could listen in on the conversations at hand. he and another friend would stay up way into the night searching for and then listing to any nearby conversations they could detect. as it was still a newish thing, i asked what sorts of things merited the need for being able to call someone from anywhere. he said that well over half of the conversations they picked up on involved people in extra-marital affairs. and this was exactly what i told marty when she asked who all those people were talking to at seven in the morning--their lovers who they couldn't talk to at seven the previous night because their wife was around. for anyone thinking the percentage can't be the same given how many phones there are in play now i would only say the divorce rate trends will not support your argument.

excerpt from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

except from a chris rock interview (source).

the recent news that microsoft was looking to buy mojang's minecraft had the elementary playground in a frenzy. at one point a kid ran up to anthony, shouted the news in his face and when anthony didn't really respond the boy grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him and screamed that he was totally under-reacting to the news. alex and i had a timely dad-lunch scheduled later that day. our entire hour was filled with talk of the sale.

after going over the perils of tinkering with something at its peak (never mess with a winning game) i asked alex what he thought Notch, the rumored hold-out owner should do. without much of a pause alex said, "well, he seems to love what he does and given how many people play minecraft i guess he has enough money to pay for his house and live, he should probably not give up the thing that makes him most happy."

to my emphatic retort of, but alex, it's a billion dollars.

his reply. i'm often struck at how quickly kids can boil down adult decisions.

after a little more digging into the story we learned that while Notch loved the creative and creating side of his minecraft project, he very much did not love the business side of things, so the release of the project made more sense than initially thought.

when the news of the sale finally hit, every minecrafter i knew, young and old alike, were visibly pensive at what was in store for their beloved technology in the hands of an organization known for fumbling easier slam-dunks than this.

ok fellas. we gotta talk.

i was recently at a reception and sat down with a friend i hadn't talked to in awhile. i asked him what was up. what was new. during our catch-up he remembered something, lifted a finger in the air and said, "oh, get this". he proceeded to tell me a story about how he, needing a computer quick, raised the lid of his teen son's laptop and found something on the sc...

on june 5th at 12:55pm in an exchange that took a total of 35 seconds, marty walter made her very first phone call from her very first cell phone.

while marty was examining the cheapest flip-phone models the store had to offer, bella kept drifting towards the sexier, smart-phone options. seeing bella's longing glances, the young salesman sidled up next to her.

SALESMAN
you want a smartphone?

BELLA
oh my god. yes. they are so awesome.

SALESMAN
what is it specifically you need it for?

BELLA (stammering)
uhhh. well. uhhh.

SALESMAN (turning to marty)
that's what they all say to that question.

the most profound quote, for me, from this year's mancation:

i've said before if i could solve one of life's mysteries, i would research the law of attraction, namely where each of us get our wiring to like who/what we like.

if i could research another topic it would be what happens to the natural joy and enthusiasm for life that our babies seem to be born with. when i drop my boys off at school, i stick around before the final bell rings and the k...