Bathroom Monologues: Decorations

I was quite proud of my adorable scarecrows with their jack o'lantern heads, linked arm and arm on the porch. Yet the only person to compliment them was a politician going door to door for re-election, and I was fairly certain it was in her routine to compliment any decorations she saw. I could have had kittens dangling and strangling from my rafters and she would have been obliged to say, "I do so love your cats here."

Bathroom Monologue: Only publishing this one so I can claim the quote “sexual hot potato”

The Ekari have four genders, amongst which they pass seed, fertilized egg, and eventually developing life. It’s sort of a sexual hot potato. Coincidentally they don’t treat sex as very fun. It’s a lot like filing taxes for the Ekari. You might be similarly disinterested if every porno took 75 minutes to get to the good part.

Bathroom Monologue: Letter to the Editors

He wasn't sure he was God. He could manipulate reality so well that nobody noticed when he did it, and the side effects were minimal (some people saw UFO's and once or twice a virgin got impregnated, nothing big). And he sure didn't want to play God because that never worked out well for anyone, least of all for God, Whom, if He existed, wasn't answering His phone anymore. But darn it, he wanted to help. There were so many sick people. So many hungry people. So many unnecessary deaths. The suffering of humans was ridiculous, caused primarily by the selfishness and ignorance of their fellow men (and women). They needed instruction. So he crafted a message. Then removed the profane language. Then he edited it to include literary flourish. Then he re-edited it to modernize the language. Then re-edited to include that interpretability most humans needed in instruction, and seconds later scratched that out and made sure it was as obvious a command as possible. Finally, he slept on it. It seemed pretty good, and after softening his words a little (he could come off as harsh) and reading it out loud to hear how it sounded, he mailed it to reality. He hoped it worked. It read: "Love each other or I'll fucking kill you."

Bathroom Monologue: Who Was I in a Present Life?

In 2007 I dropped 64 pounds, cut my 18-inch brown hair and shaved my mangy red beard to discover that, underneath the mess, I was strikingly bland. Still a little puffy and moon-faced, still with moles in unflattering places – still too ugly to ever be handsome, still not messed up enough to be intriguingly hideous. It turned out that, under years of fast food fat and a refusal to cut my hair, I was a default model. I recognized myself, but not as the person I used to be so many pounds ago. I recognized myself from BBC sitcoms.

I looked very much like a drove of pudgy, unappealing BBC sitcom extras. We never get a meaningful role. Often we don’t even speak. We’re lucky to be reoccurring characters in the backgrounds of office or sidewalk scenes. The more I catch myself in the mirror (and the BBC online), the more I realize what a successful and overlooked phenomenon my body type is.

Only one of us has tasted real success, as the guy who plays the “P.C.” on Mac commercials. Even he is a little too short and distinct-looking for our club, though, and we’re not noticeable enough people to be the butt of that many jokes. Bless that man. May he experience all the success that none of us have the look to achieve.

Bathroom Monologue: Hate Living by Catchphrases

"I never learned anything from people who agree with me."
"Do you believe the sky is blue?"
"Yes."
"I agree! Did you know that the 1876 U.S. Presidential election was so divisive and contentious that the outcome was negotiated in a hotel, and that Rutherford Hayes was granted the presidency from his opponents for agreeing to withdraw troops from the South and promising to have at least one Southerner in his cabinet?"
"No.…"
"Well there, you learned something. Excuse me. I’ve got a bus to catch."

Bathroom Monologue: "No Pets Allowed (except those assisting handicapped persons)" -Door at Roanoke Regional Airport, Virginia

It took time a long time to build the custom glass tank, and still longer to properly train the maco shark to operate it. His wife wasn’t happy to see her blind husband led around by a shark in a gas-powered tank, but Tim was insistent. Maco (Tim wasn’t creative with names) directed the device by swimming nearer towards one of eight directional zones in the tank, which worked in wide-open spaces, but still had some kinks with doorways. He rationalized that it did get through the door (even if it demolished it), and he hadn’t been mugged once since submitting himself to the guidance of the land shark. As a bonus, Tim didn’t have to walk around, dragged by some seeing-eye mutt, but could catch a ride on one of the tank’s bumpers, so long as he held onto the rail and not the edge of the tank. Maco was loyal, but she was also a nibbler.