Bathroom Monologue: Sampling Coleridge, if “sampling” was synonymous with “bastardizing” is the word

Water, water, everywhere,
And not a drop to drink.

Water, water, everywhere,
And I've begun to sink.

Water, water, everywhere,
I'd like not to drown this day,

Water, water, everywhere,
I'm floating... Flying... Hey!

Water below, Heavens above,
My arms replaced by wings,

Water below, Heavens above,
How’d I get these things?

Bathroom Monologue: Reliable Photographer

Handy eyes-free audio edition here.

None of the other detectives will listen to me, but if you’ve just got a minute, I have photo evidence that my neighbor is evil! Look at this picture. You can see the sound waves coming through the walls of his apartment. That’s unnatural.

Not enough? Look at this one. He’s stomping a kitten to death. Vile man.

In this one he’s going to the movies with Satan. You can tell it’s Satan because his jacket is on fire and his hair is pointy.

In this one he’s pushing his mother down the stairs of our apartment complex. There’s no handrail because the superintendent is a lazy bastard. You should arrest him, too.

Here he’s standing over his fallen mother, doing the cabbage patch. I’m not sure if the stole he’s wearing is made from the same cat I photographed him killing, but it’s definitely cat fur.

And here he and Satan are resurrecting Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon through a black portal to Hell. See the steam?

And here the four of them resurrect the cats he’s killed by the same dark ritual. That seems nice, right?

Until you see this photo, of the four stomping the cats to death with heavy, metal boots.

Now before you say anything, I know the other detectives said these aren’t photographs, but drawings I did with crayon. I swear to you they aren’t. His music really is that loud! Please, just follow me home!

Bathroom Monologue: Got to read to…

"You memorized the spells so you wouldn't have to carry around the book. Thought it would look cool to do it no-hands style, impress some girls. I did that when I was your age, too. So did all the boys in my class. I'm the only one alive now, though. Funny how it works. Or, funny how it doesn't. You see, spells don't work without the book. It's more than the mere words uttered. It’s about a pact expressed with the man and the world, his tongue and his book. The words are a bridge between the truth that is written and the will that is voiced. You can know the incantation for raising an undead army backwards and forwards, but if you don't have the script, you're liable to become another body in that army. It was a nice idea, punk. Nice idea for you, much as it was a nice idea for me when I was your age. I've smartened up since then, so that when I show up to a duel without my book, I carry a revolver. Like this one. Care to read its inscription before I cast the trigger's spell?"

Bathroom Monologue: Intellectual Middle Finger

After the sermon the pastor went to the door. As the flock proceeded out, he leaned to each and whispered something in their ears. Emil averted his eyes. He was only here to impress his Catholic girlfriend and felt awkward enough before looking into the eyes of a guy in a skullcap and dress.

The pastor leaned in, face full of aged freckles. Emil tilted his head to one side and the pastor whispered to him.

“God bless you.”

“I…” Emil began to respond, then lost his sentence. The pastor didn’t move, and suddenly he had to say something.

“I don’t actually believe in God.”

He could see the pastor’s body. He imagined the guy’s face contorting in disgust, but his shoulders didn’t so much as tense. The pastor whispered again.

“May an unusual number of good things happen to you for what appears to be no reason.”

The pastor patted him on the shoulder with one hand, and waved for the next person in the procession over. Line etiquette forced Emil to walk away, though he stared at the man as he descended the steps. Had that old man given him the intellectual middle finger?

Bathroom Monologue: Two Love, OR, Dedicated to Trevor McPherson

Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy. The little mermaid wanted to be a real girl. They met at a bar, and ever afterward were simply themselves.

Bathroom Monologue: Fundamentally

“I was thinking this morning about how I'd like to be gay. Not for the sex - that all sounds nasty. But as it is I have to deal with men because they're my gender, and I have to deal with women because I want to boink them. If I was gay, that's roughly 50% of people I wouldn’t have to talk to anymore. And I'm white, so I'm already cut off from blacks, Asians, Hispanics and so-on. It would really be less than 25%. I'm Methodist, so if I went hardcore gay, I could go hardcore Methodist too, and cut out all the other religions. And since my priest is a total homophobe, I could get excommunicated. Then I wouldn't have to deal with my neighbors anymore. I'd probably work from home and get TiVo, if only I was gay.”

Bathroom Monologue: "For thematic material and smoking." -Explanation for I’ve Loved You So Long’s PG-13 rating in its MPAA rating box

The following film is Rated G for uninteresting anthropomorphism, for teen heartthrobs that you can’t comprehend why your daughter finds attractive, and for dialogue so sugary it will test the kidneys of the strongest constitution. There’s a mature film that will engage your emotions and intellect without going all art-house or social-damnation on in Theatre 4. Run now and I promise the clerks won’t come by checking your tickets. I’ll watch the kids. Go on. You let the television play nanny over them from 3:00 to dinner every weekday, so why not me? Look how colorful I am. Listen to those nasal voice actors. That’s right. Just walk up that aisle and let me take care of the rest.

Bathroom Monologue: Bullhonky

“They say human evolution ended with the development of reason in the brain. That’s bullhonky. Evolution started ending as soon as it granted primates the thumb. It had relied on the pleasure of sex as a trick to get things to procreate for eons. With dogs and cats, you got social pleasuring, specifically finding a she-wolf with which to get your fun on. That carried over all the way up to the social sex scene in chimps. But chimps also got the thumb, and suddenly all the guys could pleasure themselves. Masturbation subverted the great engine of genetic inheritance. Who knows how many amazing adaptations were spilled on jungle floors because evolution was dumb enough to give a chimp an opposable finger. Evolution never thinks its inventions through very far, and so it slowed on down, barely cranking out a less hairy, slightly more upright version of the other things that had thumbs, and there it gave up. The amazing human intellect gave rise to increasingly efficient tools for killing other amazing humans to get their stuff, an economy in which to sell that stuff, the proceeds paid for bandwidth to beam Asian porn to American homes in seconds. They’re all modifications on nature’s gift of self-gratification. We slowed right down in the hunter/gatherer stage, and now look. The communal hunt slowed down to the family dinner, which withered into single-serving foods you could buy in a supermarket where no one looks you in the eye. There’s even self-check-out. Stage acting was replaced by movies, removing the presence of actors, and movie theatres were replaced by home theatres, removing the presence of audiences, and the average occupancy of homes was split in half by rising divorce rates. It’s like God and Mother Nature stopped talking when they realized they could masturbate. I don’t know what it would take to get them sleeping in the same bed again.”