Best friend Mike, known around these parts as Bookpimp, recently turned 50. To mark the milestone, he had planned a gathering of his three best buds, which techinically is two best friends and a brother. The original celebration got axed by the pandemic but was salvaged in late 2022 when things started normalizing. Months before the gathering, I reached out to the other two invitees, unbeknowst to...

this week's capri confession spawned a couple interesting email threads.

excerpt from an old friend, buddy james:
my excerpted reply:

and then an excerpt from a new friend on the other side of the world:

and my excerpted reply:

and yet another email mentioned japris which are, obviously, cut-off jean capris. how beyond brilliant is that? and how surely are a a pair of those in the cards for me, to marty's future chagrin. and lastly, yesterday i bought two more pairs to backstop my first pair. why the need for so many you ask? because a lot can happen in ten years of daily wear.

i received the greatest book quote from buddy james. from his email:

in my response to him i shared that because of my age and a primitive hunting cabin in the hills of pennsylvania my family has ties to, i can claim experience in both an outhouse (a two-seater one at that) and a chamber pot. sadly i think i was too young to hear the more colorful descriptions it may have had.

bookguy calls it noun-challenged. to be noun-challenged is to be someone who can't remember people's proper names. between he and i, it's unclear who is more severely afflicted. as per usual, he would claim the title and i would claim he is wrong. either way, it is a fierce race.

as evidence to my condition allow me to turn to my proclivity for nicknames. i give people such monikers for three reasons; (1) to insulate them from embarrassing things i may say about them online, (2) because i can't remember their name at all, or (3) because i can't remember the version of their name (mike, michael, mikey, m-bag) they prefer or more importantly, they greatly dislike. and on that last item, i've argued many a time that mike, michael, mikey and m-bag are entirely synonymous and should be freely interchangeable.

to recap, some of the past characters, several of which you've heard of countless times ...

• bookguy
• bookpimp
• e-love
• man who screams like woman
• doctor j
• the way with words girl
• chavez
• smart ryan
• buddy james
• thin when tan girl
• the why the hell wouldn't ya guy
• the doctor of diss
• guy with mussed hair
• and of course, girl who dates guy with mussed hair

here's a few i've never shared online and use mostly when talking with walt (or rather marty) ...

THE FAKE MOMS
a group of highly augmented ladies who hang out at our pool.

NEWSPAPER DAD
a guy who sits at the park with his four young children reading the ny times and shooing his kids away anytime they near him.

HOLD MY BABY
actually bookguy-coined this gem but it is a fast staple in our home and i'm not really in a position to speak to its origin.

SMILING LADY
i see this lady all over the place and she makes the joker look morose.

BAD, DRUNK MOM
she's not just bad and she's not just drunk, she's both and therefore gets the double-bill.

YELLING MOM
the yelling mom scares me and is not too surprisingly married to ...

THE QUIET GUY
i got ten bucks that says this fella comes out soon.

first, buddy james took to the needle.

next, bookguy went under the scalpel.

to keep up in this attention-competitive community, i fear i may need to bifurcate my own penis. disappointed there's no link on my future condition? don't be. accept my every assurance, i'm doing you a super-huge favor.

there's a lot of words floating around this here internet. of the loads added daily, the ones this guy is stringing together make me smile more often than most.

and i quote, haphazardly ...

somewhere outside of hillsborough, i realized that i was in a really good mood. it was that same kind of clarity, that surprised self-awareness, that babies and hippies get when they discover their hands. the last few frames of FISH! flickered across the screen and the consultant, hired for the day to talk to us about how we could incorporate fun into the workplace, felt his way across the back wall in the darkness, his meaty paw pat-patting for a light switch. i met a boy named fate yesterday. as so often happens when i think of something to write about in the middle of a workday, i scribble the idea down on a slip of paper and stuff it into my pocket. for the rest of the day, i thought about how interesting it would be, if i were in a car accident or run over while crossing the street, for the medics to arrive and, while searching my pockets for identification, they would find a single piece of paper that just had the word FATE written on it in block letters.

and i know this guy.

i've sat on his bed.

i've used his bathroom.

i've made sweet music with the dude.

he once even said nice things about me

hell, my daughter's even broken bread with him ...

as my old friend big dog would say, i thank you for the humor buddy james.

in college i majored in english. unfortunately i was not a member of the cool and sexy camp of creative writing, that was better left to the james kelly's of our world. my specialty was in analyzing the literary greats. while my first college roommate wrote a three page study on the black jellybeans left in the base of his mother's easter dish i was dissecting d.h. lawrence's rocking horse winner, explaining how the young boy was having sex with his mother and dying on the cross all while madly riding his wooden, rope-maned steed (the key was in the eyes, the boy's eyes crack the mystery wide open). i didn't exactly seek this discipline out, it's just what came easy to me, it's how my mind operated, and by the end of it all i was pretty good at it if i may for once make this site about me.

last tuesday night i was forced to use my powers not on the likes of Nabakov's Lolita but instead on Frankel's Once Upon a Potty. the task at hand, making isabella understand what was passing through the main character's skull when she defecated not in her potty but right next to it. many would think that explaining this simple scene would be an eyes-closed kind of exercise for someone trained in the craft. but i spent forty minutes on it before looking into bella's tired eyes and giving up. i accept that in the very near future i will find a tiny, toppled turd on the floor inches from bella's very own portable lavatory, all because i was unable to effectively convey the nuances of prudence's thought processes to my eldest child.

furthermore, when i find this misplaced turd on the floor, somewhere in my home will be a content and proud isabella. when i find her she will be smiling and by the time i pick her up i will be smiling too. but, i won't be smiling for the reasons you may think. my grin will come from the fact that i will feign ignorance of the mishap and marty, ever true to her nature, will be the one to scrape human feces off our breakfast room floor with a not-thick-enough paper towel.

as per usual buddy james takes what is already good and makes it better as seen in this email excerpt referring to yesterday's post. we best not get into how buddy james has such carnal knowledge of this little known fact about myself.

the other day i expressed my love for a close friend, michael (02.06.2003). today i must also divulge that i have an equal amount of concern for this very same fellow.

in example, you can see how a moment of inspiration moves michael and his cohort, buddy james.

i wish that i could just once get an email from buddy james that didn't make me smile, laugh and hate him for his unending wit and charm. hate the buddy james.

this site is know as many things to few people. my favorite moniker-maker is "he-who is-not-afraid-to-use-naughty-words-in-his-blog-ed". in addition to his current descriptor of "the whole life catalog", he previously referred to my site as "troy has his whole dang life online". thanks for the kind and apt descriptors f-bomb ed.

in addition i've recently gotten the impression, from another blogger, that i've been neglecting my viewing audience. to this, i agree. i have been taking you for granted and depriving you of the details you have become accustomed and addicted to. so in attempt to live up to big ed's nomenclature and to push the plunger for buddy james' awaiting needle, allow me to share some details from my recent life to get everyone up to speed.

more recently than i'd like to admit i wore the same pair of pants 23 days in a row. and, if you're asking the same question marty did (have you washed those this month?), the answer is a confident no.

when not wearing the 23-day pants, i wore the same pair of shorts, which i will call, for simplicity sake, the 23-day shorts. and again the answer to you and marty's question would be a second confident no.

i kicked a bella-discarded pickle part under the stove instead of throwing it in the garbage.

crouching near the ground in my work clothes i saved 8 earthworms from a post rain sun and droves of killer ants, despite many concerned looks by passerby's.

i recently watched the complete first season of OZ in two days. that would be 13 hours worth of humor for the uninitiated.

after the neighbor's dog licked my hand, i wiped the slobber off on the back of bella's shirt. (for those gasping at my lack of respect, allow me to report that she didn't seem to mind).

so as you can see, all's well and going as expected in troy-ville. thanks for your patience and continued intrigue and i promise (meaning i will try as long as it is not inconveniencing to me) to keep you better apprised of my happenings.

while i'm going to respect his request for anonymity at this time, buddy james recently found a home on the web doing that whole bloggy thing. on a recent update he was kind enough to recognize your humble host. i'm sure glad michael's name was also in this short list else it would read: influenced by troy and a litany of girl weblogs.



while i personally do not take issue of the noted company in any negative vein and while i'm fine with the amount of grunting and scratching i do, buddy's choice of wording would not serve me well among some of my more testosterone ridden mates. case in point, the other day bookguy and i were going to play tennis and he was displeased with the amount of doddering (his word) i was doing before getting out the door. when i, finally, slid into the seat next to him he looked at me and said: i'd love to know who messed up on the human assembly line and gave you a penis.

what can i write ... reliable help is hard to find.

ever wonder what happens when bookpimp and buddy james are left alone, bored and online over the weekend? allow them to put your whirling mind to rest with their recent creation.

after reviewing our touring schedule, i'm releived i didn't throw my terry cloth thong out after all. especially since the stain is only visible when i'm not wearing it.

below are three questions that were asked of buddy james last week. [preceeded by the type of person who asked]  

1. [kind of slow teenaged boy] do you have "children of the corn" on video?
2. [an oafish white girl in her twenties with a "transformers" hat on] do you have any books on may-hee-co?
3. [a japanese guy in his thirties with 2 kids in tow] do you have any cookbooks on CD?

editor's note: the only thing i'd pay more for than my very own transformers hat is to see an oafish white girl in her twenties wearing a transformers hat. i wouldn't go as far as to call it a fetish, but i just want to make it clear i'd pay a lot to see the/a girl.

Bookguy is not Bookpimp, as Sir Chavez thought. and Buddy James is not Man Who Screams Like Woman, which no one has yet thought. but Walt is Mart and Mart is Walt and Walt and Mart, who are the same person, are both female so when i talk about Walt or Mart or even Marty i'm not referring to my gay lover Walt but instead my wonderfully striking wife, Marty and i fully understand if you need to meet Walt as Mart before taking my word on this as Bookguy did because until Bookguy met Walt, the woman, he was torn on my sexual direction, which is left. left for debate that is, given that i'm always talking about this Walt character which i reference almost as much as Bookpimp and significantly more than the misdirected Bookguy but far less than Chavez or Man Who Screams Like Woman or even Martha who is Marty who is Mart who is Walt but Walt is not Bookguy nor Bookpimp as Bookguy is not Bookpimp and vice versa.

Please blame chavez for this, not me, assuming you know who "me" is.

Mike and Buddy James stopped in over the weekend on their way to Charlotte, NC from Smallsville, KS. While sitting around re-hashing old tales and witticisms I thought Buddy and I were going to have to give Mike the hindlick maneuver when he started laughing uncontrollably at a story of a guy I went to high school with who had a horrific case of dandruff. The cause of his ailment came about because no one in his family bought shampoo for several months. This guy's interim solution was to wash his hair with a bar of Coast. While this innovation may seem sound, over time it resulted in drying his scalp out to the point of having white flakes falling out of his hair like snow and hanging all in his beard as if he just ate a loaf of Wonder bread without the use of his hands. I'm sure it was a "had to be there" kinda moment, but thanks for pulling through Mikey in that had you fallen, we would have been forced to reference the incident on your tombstone.