Saturday, February 9, 2008

Bathroom Monologue: Ill-Advised

"I know I don't have cancer, and telling those people that I do is technically lying. I've got M.S. And maybe it's wrong to substitute one medical nightmare for another, but when I say I have M.S., people think I've got stock in the company that makes Windows. And when I explain that I've got a primary progressive case of multiple sclerosis, they think I've got a crooked spine. So unless I'm talking to someone who can prescribe morphine, I've got cancer. Even if people don't know what it is, they at least know it's bad and shut up about it, which is all we cripples can ask for."

Friday, February 8, 2008

Running Past the Airport Bathroom Monologue, or, As Punctuated as Punctual

“Why was the traffic so bad oh shit I'm late oh shit I'm late oh shit I'm late why do they play music in airports? I didn't come here for a fucking concert I can't hear the announcements! Oh shit I'm late do I turn left? Right? Left to Concourse B-C? I need Gate B-18 what the Hell is a "concourse?" Where at the gates? Left? You swear it's left? Thank you thank you oh shit I'm late oh God I'm late oh God I'm late does that count as taking God's name in vain? That's not fair getting to your plane on time shouldn't be a Goddamned vain cause! Oh God I'm late how did I sleep through my wake-up call? I bet the fucking hotel clerk didn't even make it I'll kill that -- B-72?!! Where the shit is B-18?!! B-70 B-68 B-66 Jesus, Mary and Darwin what the fuck is wrong with this place? B-56 B-54 gonna have an asthma attack B-48 B-46 what do you mean I have to be there 20 minutes before departure to get on? B-36 B-34 I can't breathe it's only ten minutes to take-off B-26 B-24 - A dead end?!! Who the fuck put this here?!! I need B-18! Right? You swear? No I didn't see the sign but God bless you and your ugly, screaming baby! I fucking hate this place I want out I want out they're not going to let me on B-18 B-18 it's B-almighty-18 oh goodness gracious thank creation itself... excuse me I know I'm late but here's my ticket and I only have a carry-on and... "DELAYED?" WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN "DELAYED?"

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Bathroom Monologue: Things I'm not Necessarily Proud of, but will Probably do Again

-Yell at the pasta I'm cooking for sticking together because, "You're living in sin!"
-Make "mew" noises at hungry cats until they look like they don't know what I'm talking about and leave in frustration.
-Compare the mentally handicapped favorably to millionaire rappers.
-Lose my mother for twenty minutes in the grocery store when we only needed to pick up two items.
-Get offended on behalf of a religion I've never even thought of joining.
-Imagine how Hercules would have handled the Sermon on the Mount, how Jesus would have handled the Lernaean Hydra, and whether God or Zeus would have won the bet.
-Wash my hair with Strawberry Essence shampoo, use Tropical Explosion bodywash and a fruity deodorant, then go down to the juice bar and try to coax a vegan into cannibalism.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Bathroom Monologue: What Gets Onto These People?

At three years old she was playing in her mother's make-up. They gave her her own lipstick for her fourth birthday. She got a make up case and everything to go with it at six. She was tweezing her own eyebrows by 7 (mostly for show), and wearing nail polish and lip gloss to school every day by 8. At 11 she was depressed to need glasses, but thrilled to exchange them for contacts at 12 - she'd always wanted blue eyes. That same year she was devastated to need braces, becoming so depressed that her mom helped her dye her hair (blonde). She was dyeing it herself by 13. By 16 she went from shaving to waxing, and this newfound attention to her skin sent her on the pursuit of the perfect tan. By the end of high school she hit the tanning salon every week. It took a lot of cajoling, but she got breast implants as a graduation present (b-cups had been the bane of her existence). She picked up a few new tricks in college: hair extensions, crash dieting, and eventually, liposuction. When she was finally out on her own she got a collagen injection to give her the lips she'd always wanted, and perhaps to make her bastard ex- jealous. It didn't work, and she got depressed again. She got a nose job to make her feel like a new woman. It didn't work, and a few months of ice cream later she needed a tummy tuck along with the usual treatment. By that point artificial tans had damaged her skin so badly that she had to visit the spa twice a week, and abuse a host of oils and creams. After her car accident her knee was so badly damaged that the doctors built her a new one, out of titanium. Rehab went well, but her back problems worsened, and rather than have her artificial bust reduced, she went through therapy after therapy, and wound up with pins in her spine. Then in her ankles. Time got away from her in a haze of eyeliner and facelifts. It seemed no sooner had she bleached her teeth then she needed to replace a chipped one, and a short while later she needed dentures. And a prosthetic breast to replace the one cancer took. Every day of her last ten years she wore so much foundation and so many supportive undergarments that it took her three hours to get from bed to breakfast. Afterwards, the mortician was so lost that they had no other choice than a closed casket.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Bathroom Monologues: What Gets Into These People?

Faye Boswell is widely regarded as the greatest journalist of her generation. From her coverage of the greater and more entertainingly dubious messiahs, to her defiance of the Kyle Empire's sedition laws, to her quirky movie reviews, she has always been willing to risk herself for a story, be it a dictator or director that would come for her head afterward. Yet one must wonder how someone who weighs only ninety pounds and has no self-defense training (revealed on camera during her series on the National Archery Association) could have survived all her brushes with wyverns and angry fanatics. The truth lies in the dozen contracts on her life. After her first breakthrough story (exposing the anarchist ninja cult that was bent on toppling the stock market), she realized she would need protection. She contacted the dozen most successful and boisterous bounty hunters in the world, and in the most morally ambiguous case of attempted suicide in history, hired them to assassinate herself. However, they were not simply to jump her in the parking lot - they had to slay her on her 100th birthday. Should she die a stroke of the clock sooner, they would receive no payment - but if she was successfully assassinated on that date, each mercenary would receive 100,000 Deutsche Marx (TM) for every year she had been alive. So Faye Boswell's dirty dozen has spent the last thirty years saving her from the trouble she brought on herself, fending off trolls, testing her food for poison, and even giving her diet tips. They'll be damned if they don't collect, which means you'll have at least one story to look forward to on the evening news, at least for the next fifty-three years.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Bathroom Monologue: Weeding the Garden of American English

Speakers of English, I implore you to treat your language a little better than a truck stop bathroom. "For a fraction of the price" is meaningless, because 1/1 is a fraction. So is 2/1. It’s just rude to say something is "literally" happening when it isn't but you don't care because "literally" has become the oral equivalent of bolding text. And when people describe a politician's "meteoric rise," do they realize that meteors don't rise? They crash, at quite high velocity, sometimes killing almost everything on the planet. You don't rise like a meteor any more than you run like a corpse or thrive like compost. If you ever rise like a meteor, get it on film. You'll get into Ripley's for sure.

These miscarriages of the language are responsible for the third greatest number of unpublishable bathroom monologues (behind politics and action figures). The worst offense is "evolution." Evolution is a wonderful theory that is so obviously at least partially right that if it is false, well, then I wasted forty minutes a day for a week in high school that I could have spent being bored in the hallway. Evolution is the sometimes-chaotic change over a period of generations in the lines of living creatures, specifically manifesting through the alteration of gene sequences that produce heritable biological traits that generally provide some benefit to the organism’s chance or rate of reproduction. Cars in this country did not evolve. Teen fashion does not evolve. The HIV virus evolves. The menu at Starbucks does not evolve, nor does anyone who has ever ordered anything off of it.

Individual human beings do not evolve. Ever. You grew, you grew up, you matured, you learned, you adapted, you expanded, you gained experience, you changed, you aged, and possibly, once in a while, you became a better person. But you did not evolve. Evolution occurs across several generations. No matter what your psychologist tells you or how much you feel like a new person after a day at the spa, you didn't evolve. Stop using the word like that. I understand that you don't want to use "change" anymore, as you've known it since you were four and it's lost its buzz, but if you're really so bored with all the accurate words you could be using, then make up a new one. Latin and Greek roots aren't doing anything tonight. Give 'em a call. Fucking "bootylicious" and "d'oh" got into the dictionary. It's not that hard. But leave evolution out of it. It's busy enough, hopefully creating a dominant life form with a less retarded way of communicating than speech. Oh, and about "retarded..."

Sunday, February 3, 2008

"The United States gave the world Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse and Napalm" –An artist whose name the BBC didn’t repeat during that report

"That's a little unfair. I like The Sorcerer's Apprentice as much as the next guy, but you could have at least bumped the fast-food clown for the polio vaccine. Putting things that way, we could say that Britain gave us Monty Python, Harry Potter and the concentration camp. Or that Germany gave us the Volkswagen Beetle, the MP3 and genocide. I know it's fashionable to define yourself by criticizing others, but the only redeeming thing about fashion is that it goes out of style, and anyone left wearing last year's design looks like an ass. I think France gave that to the world, along with ridiculously unhealthy food and worrying about your figure."
Counter est. March 2, 2008