Bathroom Monologue: Ms. Logic

“Don’t bring logic into this! She was doing fine minding her own business outdoors. Now she’s going to tango in and start cleaning. You know, she never lets me leave anything where I put it down, even though that’s exactly where I wanted my points and suppositions! And let me tell you, when it turns out everything I want is irrational and I kick your ass, she isn’t going to lift a finger to help you. I will put a severe ass-whipping on you, too. I’m bigger and get mad when people talk smartly down to me. Here comes logic now, through the door – you better tell her we didn’t really need her in this conversation if you know what’s good for… Hi, logic! How are you today? That’s a nice dress. Very mathematical.”

Bathroom Monologue: Magic Carpet Dried

“All the attention goes to the jackass who sells magic carpets at the bazaar. None goes to the industry that produces those carpets! Do you know how difficult it is to sheer a flying sheep? To embroider a decent pattern on a rug that’s flying fifty miles an hour underneath you, often heading straight at brick walls? How about just dyeing anti-gravity cotton? Normal cotton is easily dipped into dye. Lose your grip on anti-gravity cotton and suddenly there’s a bright red splotch on your wife’s ceiling, and she’s already pissed at you because you haven’t made the rent on account of the slow sales in flying furniture.”

Bathroom Monologue: “Uh, I dropped your piano.” a non-teacher to a teacher in Chalk

The music teacher perked. The two gym teachers were immediately ready to bark, but she raised her hands like the conductor she’d wanted to be as a child, and silenced them.

She fixed her eyes on the husky piano dropper. “You know why you dropped my piano?”

“Well, we were horsing around…”

“You dropped it because it wasn’t built to be lifted. It was built to be played delicately and passionately. To be tuned and polished. Actually it was built far more with polish in mind than lifting in mind.”

The gym teachers looked as baffled as the boy piano dropper.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, unable to look her in the eyes. “Are you going to kill me over this?”

She rose and swept the triscuit crumbs from her skirt. “No, I’m not going to kill you. You are a teenager, and a big one, but not big enough to lift a piano by yourself. You came here alone. That means you’re the only one who’s responsible who came to fess up, and before we even knew something was wrong. Now, come on. Show me where you dropped it.”

Bathroom Monologue: Misreading Abbreviations in the Bathroom, OR, “Wall St. Fraud Leaves Charities Reeling” –Stephanie Strom, New York Times

The Wall Saint shrugged.

“Not my fault.”

The nuns rang their hands.

“But we donated bricks for a hospital!”

“You didn’t read the fine print. The contract clearly expressed that I would build hospital walls. These are clearly walls fit for a hospital. I even put a chart on that one. But nowhere in the contract does it say the hospital walls have to be in a hospital. In this case I’ve made a very nice house for myself out of hospital walls. And you’re trespassing. Shoo.”

Bathroom Monologue: "Drop 47 pounds!" -Some magazine at the checkout counter

First you pick up two twenty-pound dumb bells. Take one in each hand, that gets you up to forty. Then you get one five-pounder, and put these two little one-pounders to top it all off. Now walk to the edge of the apartment building. Wait for it... Wait for it... See that guy who just came out? Yeah, that's my ex. Cheated on me with my sister. That pip. Anyway, hold out your weights and release! Phew, listen to him scream. Who knew losing weight could be so satisfying?

Bathroom Monologue: C.C.C.

Charles Cameron Cullen was a rogue. He was a rogue political surveyor, which was not in vogue in his day. Indeed, even today to claim to be a rogue political surveyor means men ignoring you and women closing their legs to you. But in his time Cullen was an inspired political warrior, traveling the budding country to re-survey the property of wealthy landed elite and disqualify them from voting in a particular district. If you crossed a man like Cullen you were likely to find the government auditing you for extra real estate tax.

His greatest feat was in Rhode Island, where he so thoroughly redistricted it that even today people mistake it for the smallest state in the union. Cullen knew better; even now it actually contains more land than the entire Louisiana Purchase, but only Cullen could show you the math to understand it. Small minds and political liberation have since eradicated his craft, and he has taken his geomancy to the grave.

#classicsontwitter

A Sunday bonus, the transcript of last night's #classicsontwitter from www.twitter.com/Wiswell. The game was to adapt classics of literature onto Twitter. It's very similar to a project I did in college, "ObLiteration," which may have to come back.

Tonight we remake classics of literature for Twitter!

Moby Dick: Crew and crazy captain look for a white whale. And look. And look. And look. Then it kills them.

Grapes of Wrath: Family is poor, needs work. Travels west. Everybody is poor. No jobs in the west.

Great Gatsby: Rich guy is sad his girlfriend married another. Misses her. Hooks up with her and is shot by her husband.

The Iliad: Greeks can't get into Troy. Achilles won't help. His buddy dies. He helps. Greeks still outside.

Huckleberry Finn: Boy flees father, slave flees master. Hijinx ensue until dad is dead and slave is emancipated. Whoops!

Catcher in the Rye: Boy leaves school to whine at hookers and family. Winds up crazy, apparently.

Hamlet: Prince feigns insanity to cover up king's ghost told him to kill people. Everyone dies.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest: Sane man in an insane asylum. Hates nurse. Hijinx ensue. Gets lobotomized.

The Metamorphosis: Man turns into a giant bug. He dies.

The Scarlet Letter: Hester has a child out of wedlock. She is ostracized. She dies.

Crime and Pushiment: Poor guy kills rich woman. Gets sick, gets caught, goes to jail in Siberia.

War and Peace: Several aristocratic families rise and fall during the Napoleanic conquest. Most fall.

Gulliver's Travels: Man visits and island of tiny people, then giants, then talking horses, then goes crazy.

1984: A man has sex with an insurgent. The government brainwashes him.

Romeo & Juliet: Two teens are in love. The parents disapprove. She fakes dying. He kills himself. She kills herself.

Cyrano de Bergerac: An ugly but brilliant man uses another guy as a puppet to tell a pretty girl how he feels. He dies.

The Aeneid: A soldier without a country woos a queen, ditches her, fights monsters and founds Rome.

Bathroom Monologue: Missed the deadline for Field & Stream's six-word story contest

Webbed foot cocks rifle, preparing revenge.