Bathroom Monologue: Imagine a chef with the Pope’s hat

“To me, religions and philosophies are restaurants. You eat at them if you don’t feel like cooking for yourself. Some people only eat out on Sundays. A lot of people stick with the same food they grew up on, while others run screaming from the mere smell of Roman Catholic cuisine. Not everyone craves the same thing and the menus of popular places usually offer enough to please enormous crowds of disparate pallets. It’s common for two people to go to the same diner all their lives seeking different entrées. More sophisticated consumers can go from restaurant to restaurant without much issue, while some very immature people just have to make a scene, and there’s always a condescending view of cheap franchises. A few poor consumer reviews could cripple an expanding business. Food poisoning is a concern with restaurants no one’s heard of before, and it’s hard to shake a bad reputation. Sometimes there are kitchen fires, and suddenly the Jews are driven out of Russia. Myself, I like to go out every once in a while, but mostly I mostly eat in, making whatever sustains and satisfies my appetites. The major difference between philosophy and food is that a chef has the manners not to tell you how to cook at home.”

Bathroom Monologue: Labyrinthine

When you think about it, the labyrinth is one of the worst excesses of resources in human history. A giant, subterranean maze with walls so thick that the Minotaur couldn’t pierce them and so tall that he couldn’t climb them. Then Theseus killed him. I’m not casting aspersions on this entire nation of people who were too dumb to stab the man-bull in his sleep, but that makes the construction even dumber. I like to think that the labyrinth was put to use after that, rather than just being a tomb. If you’ve ever looked at the schematics of an apartment building and a hedge maze, you’d realize the maze is a ceiling and a few doors short of rent control. True, the labyrinth was underground, but that should have been in vogue for alternative lifestyles. If Jordache jeans can become fashionable, so can subterranean penthouses. Witches, lepers and hippy artists would have jumped at it. And several kilometers of fashionable real estate beats the Midas touch, especially when those touched turn to gold at the first of every month.

Bathroom Monologue: I’m not projecting on Homer here, so I don’t know what I’m really doing

HOMER,
OR,
I’m not projecting on Homer here, so I don’t know what I’m really doing

"Homer, aren't you done with your epics yet?"

"Well maybe if somebody would invent paper I wouldn't have to do it all in my head!"

"We gave you listening boys--"

"Because when I'm composing, what I really need is brats rolling their eyes at my epic meter!"

"How can you tell? I thought you were blind."

"You don't know because nothing has been recorded about me! I only gave you the foundation of European literature."

"Bitter, old--"

"Is it recorded that I'm deaf now? Get out and don't come back until you've developed something more durable than parchment. I want this stuff written down, but I'll feed myself to the dogs before I let it get lost in a library fire."

"We don't have dogs in our--"

"Do I have to invent the fucking metaphor around here? It was hyperbole! Get out!"

When it sounded like the intermediary had left, Homer sat down in the cool shade and rubbed his temples. When was someone going to invent coffee?

He began again, "Muse, sing to me of..."

Bathroom Monologue: Adaptation

“The principle difference is that you want to make fairytales dark, and I want to make myths light. You make Little Red Riding Hood into a bleak murder story and Peter Pan an exercise in pedophilia; I make Jupiter into a lovable dolt, and turn ancient wars into sitcoms. You're fascinated with elevating the grim aspects of life and spreading them to regions where we've never seen them before. I'm fascinated with how stupid that is, and showing just that wherever your kind has already been. The winner of our little contest will be whoever outlives the other. The prize will be writing the loser’s biography.”

Bathroom Monologue: In the Blink

"My best friend is Splitsecond, a superhuman speedster. I'm pretty sure that he's faster than me, but he never runs at top speed on account of his asthma. It's funny, but when your molecules vibrate a million times quicker than everything else on the planet, you can outpace everybody else without breaking a sweat. One day, just for fun, we busted out the complete works of Shakespeare. Did the tragedies in under a minute. Shakespeare is very moving when you're speaking faster than sound can travel.

“He's a media whore. I've never gotten into that moral quagmire, but he's the millionaire, so what do I know? He's licensed his name and likeness to clothing, bicycles, and sports equipment (his shoes sell ridiculously well). There's a Splitsecond candybar. All granola and healthy energy, of course. His face is on one of those NASCARs, too. It never wins. I never let him live it down, either. How could you?

“I’m bulletproof, can fly, can see through walls or just plain punch through them, but Splitsecond is much more popular than me. He's a social critter. He basically leads the team and appears at every public event in his hometown - sometimes simultaneously. He's fast and showy about it. Can sign an autograph before you know you want it (and you will – they’re twenty bucks guaranteed on eBay, thirty if it’s on one of his million trading cards).

“He scored a hot wife, a man-hating Amazon. I don't know how they get along, considering one glance at a guy usually makes her snort smoke. Looking into her eyes makes you feel like a matador, and while he’s fast... he's kind of a twig. There's no question of who the boss in that marriage, and sometimes the way she yells at him, I wonder why she hasn't outright killed him yet. It may have something to do with her pet name for him: "My little vibrator." I try not to think about it. It's best not to."

Bathroom Monologue: Rebut if you will, rationalize as you like

"I love the unwashed masses for, no matter how much money I may make, I know I'm the lack of a shower and a day of hard labor away from being one of them. It's magnificent to see how little philosophy and so-called culture amounts to when tested under a lack of healthcare and an uncertainty over how you'll eat tomorrow. General fatigue destroys most intellectual abilities on its own. The people who think they're better because they have it better are... well, they're why public executions were so popular for so long. If the unwashed masses are dumb, then the washed elites are dumb, with accessories."

Bathroom Monologue: In the Name of “Love”

Love conquers all, but “All” is quite a lot. Sometimes it’s everything. Sometimes Love will reach out and conquer just a little bit of All, to show it can. This causes a Persian princess to fall for a thief from the streets. It causes Farmer Brown to kiss her cow. And in one case, it caused an Intergalactic Zombie Overlord, Kiz’Thral, to fall for a pious Warrior Maiden, Theresa. They met in college and bonded by despising each other in Philosophy 101. Philosophy class is a great place to meet girls, since the girls will bullshit every bit as much as the guys as they furiously to defend their lives’ values against logic’s ultimate points: that everything you hold dear is arbitrary and it sucks to be under the scrutiny of a tenured professor. The emotional ambiguity Philosophy 101 brings has caused more premarital sex than the condom. Kiz’Thral and Theresa went their separate ways after college. Kiz’Thral was infected with the sentient hyperplague and became a missionary of the dark forces. Theresa pursued the peace of the blade, the simple life and whatnot. But inevitably their paths crossed, and gee did they blush. And chat. And laugh about serious matters And bond. And bump. And now they’re living together in the central metropolis, another odd couple in Love’s scrapbook. The sitcom is coming this February.

Bathroom Monologue: The Family that ****s Together, Sticks Together, OR, Calm Down, It’s Pro-Sense of Humor.

For the newly formed Family Love Union, the rational argument against incest ended with the creation of the condom.

“Really, the only logical reason against incest is birth defects,” says Barnie Hownson. “The genes don’t match up, so you have an increased risk of mental or physical defects.” But today, his group claims, this argument doesn’t work. “We’ve got birth control pills, morning after pills, diaphragms, condoms, and a woman’s right to choose. Consenting brothers and sisters who want to try it don’t run that risk anymore.”

Drawn into a debate, incest-lobbyists ask for other potential objections. “It always boils down to ickyness. Me kissing my dad gives you the willies,” says Sally Hownson, Barnie’s sister. “Well lesbianism makes me gag, but I don’t have the right to stop them unless they’re doing it in public. What me, my brother and cousin do behind closed doors is every bit as private as what the president does with a hooker.”

Incest-lobbyists are also looking to file lawsuits on behalf of the government against all non-incestual couples who have children with genetically-caused disabilities, stating they are placing the same burden on the world as incestual parents, but doing it with much greater frequency. “There are perfectly healthy children born of intra-family marriages,” says one protestor. “It’s all a crapshoot. If we can’t play craps, then neither can they.”

The Family Love Union’s stance on fecalphilia is neutral.

The lobby recently threw down the gauntlet saying that if their lifestyle really was immoral, they demanded Congress pass a bill outlawing mothers kissing their children goodnight. One poster at a protest read, “No partial-birth abortions, no kisses good night!”

If the Hownsons and their hundreds of incestuous friends have one message, they want it to be this: “We don’t pass judgment on you for marrying strangers. Don’t judge us for being more practical.”