Bathroom Monologue: The New Anti-Science

It was the new anti-science, worse than the old anti-science because it knew a little and used the perch of knowledge to condescend. It was meaner than the jokes about teaching apes Math instead of building flying cars. Now they ragged on the role science played in so many old wars, and in every new one.

These folks got into every community, and so both legitimate and conspiracy theories abounded on where HIV and the mammal-ready super-flus came from. If someone designed meth and cocaine, where did he learn it?  Suddenly everyone who defended Global Warming’s existence was met on the other side of the argument with a hipster blaming chemists and engineers for the problem occurring in the first place.

An index of such things showed jokes about Marie Curie’s demise quadrupled in one year. At some point a generation grew up swearing, “We’re empirical, not scientific.” There was a righteous demand for the separation of Lab and State, on both funding and less comprehensible levels.

“GO TO THE MOON,” protest signs instructed, “NOBODY WANTS YOU HERE.”

It was not a good time for science, but then the contrarian mind never thinks it’s a good day until everyone else thinks it isn’t.

Letters to Nevertorial: Chicken Big

Your paper commits a cardinal offence all too common in our society with the claim, “Homeowners scurry like chickens fearing that the sky is about to give way.” (“A Third Mortgage Crisis,” April 18th). Your article made passing reference to the popular story of “Chicken Little” as though it were as erroneous as natural selection or Siddhartha sitting beneath a tree. Isn’t it suspicious that the story of the sky falling is so widespread? Positively everyone knows of it. My family does in particular, for in 1963 two of my great aunts were slain by falling bits of sky. The family lost most of the farm and is still awaiting the promised government funds to rebuild. The wait is its own indignity. Your paper’s pretending we were never struck, or that only chickens bore the weight of this tragedy, is egregious.

Bathroom Monologue: Overweight smoker, 93, outlives third doctor

Franz K. Thurber is 93, not an uncommon age for this era in science, but certainly uncommon for a man with his diet. Since 1924 Mr. Thurber has had a steady intake of bacon, ham, raw eggs, potato bread and butter, with beef every Sunday, only breaking for war rationing. The biggest change to his diet was the addition of three beers a day after he turned 17.

Born at a low birth weight, little Franz concerned his mother, who hired a wet nurse to force-feed him. "To bring me up to stock," as Mr. Thurber now quotes her, adoringly. "Soon as I could eat grub, she was heaping things on my plate, and I never disappointed."

According to county medical records, Mr. Thurber hasn't weighed less than 260 pounds since the Great Depression. Today, tipping the scales at 281 pounds, Mr. Thurber espouses the same beliefs that have been driving his doctors batty since the 1950's. "I seen the time when eggs was good for ya, and bad, and good again. Bread went from a staple to a no-no. I still don't know what the **** a calorie is."

What's puzzled M.D.'s most about Mr. Thurber's case is that despite his weight and high cholesterol, he is in perfect health. "Heck, I ain't even had a cold since Eisenhower was in office," Mr. Thurber jokes. He's maintained such great shape despite poor diet and little exercise (he boasts that he only does ten sit-ups a week, and only to prove to his beer gut that he can).

"This ain't the life for everyone," Thurber states sagely in his recliner, "but I just saw my third doctor drop dead. They mean well, saved me from polio, but everyone's body is their own. Mine doesn't work the same as yours. You gotta know the ins and outs of the body you got. I know mine. If'n I went all no-carbs and vegan, I'd probably be lying next to those docs in a week."

Bathroom Monologue: Green Witch, CT

In the latest exaggeration of their anti-Paganism, today Salem dumped Greenwich, Connecticut into the ocean. It turns out the landmass, which was home to over 62,000 Americans, does not float.

"That means it wasn't a witch," says a Salem representative. "But it's not our fault. They put a homonym right in the name."

A few hundred people survived the dousing, but Salem residents beat them with sticks to keep them in the water until they drowned. "We could not risk the buoyant witches casting hexes on us once they got ashore. People who float serve the devil."

Anyone who was out of town for the weekend is warned to stay clear both of Connecticut and the boroughs surrounding Hell, Michigan. The Salem representatives would not say what their plans were for it, "but I'd go to New Haven instead if I were you."

Bathroom Monologue: Monologue for a chipper Ian McKellan sitting on a picnic table

“Every scientist I’ve ever met believed in intelligent design. No decently observant man can deny it. It’s more a feature of the world than natural selection these days. Look around you for examples.

“See how the trees frame this park? How the flowers compliment the pines in color and fullness? The lawn kept an inch and a half high?

“How about my phone? Tiny. Network accessible miles from town. Complexity explicable only by a designer, and a designer who gets up on stage to sell you new things every year.

“Did you catch the Westminster Dog Show last night? All of those dogs, winners and losers, was the result of strenuous breeding for traits their masters wanted.

“From landscaping to calculators to poodles, intelligent design is everywhere. I gather we avoid the term out of modesty – we’re kind of incompetent designers, what with all the extinctions and oil spills. Maybe ‘well-meaning design,’ or, ‘decent-effort design.’ ‘I’m-sure-somebody-wanted-something-out-of-this design.’ Intelligence is in most of this. Misplaced, misused and misunderstood, as it likely is, but it’s affecting things.”

Bathroom Monologue: Make Her Reaper

Tragedy tonight at a downtown theatre when a magician made his assistant disappear. The Russian stage man was making his first English-language performance. After a few minutes of having the audience look for her, he gave an incantation “to make her reappear.” Because of his heavy accent, the assistant instead returned in a robe and scythe. There were no survivors. Commuters who absolutely must drive through downtown should be on the lookout for a buxom vision of death in a sequined cloak.

"Hold Down the Fort" at Muskoka River

Today I have a story and interview over as Muskoka River.

This is one of the first times I've been interviewed. We covered the origin of the Bathroom Monologues, my writing habits, and some of my favorite American authors (guess how many are dead). I also asked my audience an important question that I'd sincerely like answers to. Cathy Oliffe did something very amusing with my answers that followers of the Bathroom Monologues should enjoy.

The story is "Hold Down the Fort." It plumbs that peculiar phrase and whips up an absurdist history to explain its existence. It features Davey Crockett, Paul Bunyan and anti-gravity pirates in zeppelins.

You can read both the interview and the story by clicking on this text here.

Bathroom Monologue: France Bans High Heels

After long deliberations, this evening the French National Assembly voted unanimously to ban the wearing of high-heeled shoes in public. Many women wear high heels in order to improve the appearance of their legs and buttocks, though opponents have complained about their links to arthritis, sprained ankles and back problems. The shoes have long been controversial amongst conservative Christians and politically correct secularists for being detrimental to women.

“This is a blow for the rights of women against male authority,” read the official statement from the National Assembly, which is roughly 85% male. “No longer will women don this shameful footwear just because men make them feel they have to.”

The legislation bans wearing of “the heel” in all public places, including government buildings, restaurants, subways and on the street. There is a substantial fine for violators, while husbands who are caught shoe shopping for their wives may spend up to one year in prison.

Some pundits protest that freedom of dress should be a right in any democratic society. Dr. George Lytton of the Madup Institute told our reporters, “So what if a fashion guru says they have to wear the new Chanel stilettos this season? Ultimately women choose to wear these things. If a man is physically forcing women to wear them, deal with him. Penalizing her and removing her choice is an afront."

“Preposterous,” was the first word out of Assemblyman J. Clouseau’s mouth when asked for comment. “Women only wear them to live up a chauvinistic cultural norm that objectifies them. Any woman who wants to wear such an uncomfortable thing has been culturally conditioned into psychological sickness. We are freeing them from social bondage. Only now are they free to wear what they want.”

Later in his press conference, Clouseau framed the issue as a national concern. “High heels are linked to a multitude of medical problems, which put undue strain on our healthcare system. They are costing the French taxpayers millions of euros every year. It’s becoming a national security issue.”

Some have defended the heel on religious grounds. “God didn’t give me this ass so I could hide it,” says Angie Dunning, an American immigrant to France. She is Roman Catholic. “If this keeps up I’ll move to Germany. They’re way more tolerant there. I met a couple of guys at a hostel who said they would totally help me learn the language.”

Angie is part of a movement to repeal heel-banning legislation. The petitioners claim Parliament is unfairly targeting attractive people and people with good senses of balance. Spokespeople for the National Assembly denied that the legislation was targeted at minorities.

Bathroom Monologue: Did you kick out His secretary, too?

In an unprecedented move this morning, the Vatican excommunicated God on the grounds of heresy. The Holy Roman Catholic Church has long acknowledged the theory of evolution to be true, but had never before taken action against the creator for committing evolution when scripture plainly says that everything happened in seven days. The Church's panel found that while it would be legal to start evolution today, having done it when the Holy Roman Catholic Church didn't know of it or disavowed it "was a severe retroactive heresy."

When reached for comment, God said He was working on other projects. When asked about those projects, He pretended He was listening for a while, then revealed various things that our senior reporter hadn’t confessed but should have. Our senior reporter is now in therapy.

God was last seen on Mars, where He was reportedly working in “mysterious but more explicitly obvious ways.”

Bathroom Monologue: No Militaries in the Gay

Listen to the MP3 edition of our news report here.

In a radical reversal of roles, today the U.S. government banned the military from gays. War will no longer be allowed to be declared where there are any gay people, to avoid exposing soldiers to what one White House staffer called, “uncomfortable environments.”

The Prime Minister of Iran quickly explained that earlier speaking snafus were mistranslation and there are indeed homosexual people in his country. In fact, he added, “I may be gay, or may have a gay person near me at all times!”

In related news, the governments of North Korea, Sudan and Venezuela have begun importing people of alternative lifestyles in bulk. Massive tax credits, free upscale housing and ludicrously generous civil unions have been offered to lure these sexual expatriots, or "sexpatriots," as bloggers have begun to call them.

North Korea and China entered a bidding war this morning to attract the cast of the now-defunct Bravo television series “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” hoping to have them spruce up their capitols. Anonymous sources close to the bidding war say government heads hope to make their populations look more fabulous and thus render their countries even more immune from military action.

No officials would confirm these allegations.

“We’ve been planning this for a long time,” explained one North Korean insider. “Our tight borders have left us unfashionably stuffy. The glorious leader is a longtime fan of Queer Eye. This has absolutely nothing to do with avoiding being attacked by a major superpower.”

More as this story develops.

Bathroom Monologue: Take the Other Side

Of all the controversies in abortion, none is so contentious as the decision of several fetuses to abort their mothers. These super-intelligent fetuses argue that they didn’t agree to be here and ought not to be the ones who get flushed. Their lawyers liken the current mother/fetus legal paradigm to slavery, with things only getting worse as they near birth and will soon have to deal with global warming, meteor showers and girls.

“It’s very stressful, thinking of living a life I didn’t ask for. I’m not a vengeful man yet, but the option to abort my mother for it seems fair,” said one fetus, by tapping Morse code on his mother's abdomen. The fetus is not anonymous by choice. His parents have not yet chosen a name. It is one of his many grievances.

His lawyer, Sherman Goldstein, argues, “If his mother has the right to abort him, then certainly he ought to have the right to abort her. That’s like saying only one combatant in a war has the right to shoot.”

Mr. Goldstein is currently arguing for fetuses to have the first choice on whether or not to abort mothers before the South Dakota Supreme Court. The Justices declined to comment.

A hotter judicial topic is late term mother-abortion, which is only legal in three countries, and only in cases that put the health of the fetus at risk. In one country this has recently been broadened to include mental health, a dangerous loophole as labor draws near and fetuses, as M.R.I. prenatal brain scans suggest, grow more nervous.

One mother argued her own case in a French court this April, claiming she feared her baby would terminate her just because she couldn’t promise that the doctor wouldn’t spank him. While not so extreme, other expecting mothers have resorted to contract negotiation, promising to carry the baby several trimesters after the expected term in compromise for a “cease fire” agreement.

I feel There Will Be Blood was the weakest of the Saw films

The famed "Jigsaw" killer was arraigned today on 35 counts of kidnapping and reckless endangerment. The District Attorney, Patrick Straus, said the state may also bring him up on charges of whatever that law is that lets thieves sue homeowners when they slip on their property.

"We figure, if legally a Wal-Mart is liable for you slipping in the Produce aisle, this guy is screwed."

"Jigsaw" is famous for his M.O. of abducting seemingly innocent people who were somehow related to him being sad he got cancer, and then trapping them in houses full of booby traps that force them to either mutilate or kill themselves and each other. The classic argument has been that the killer doesn't actually do anything.

"The idea that a guy puts a bear trap on your head and gives you sixty seconds to choose whether it kills you or just rips your jaw off seems pretty fucking semantic to me," says Straus. "Apparently someone in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has gone senile and said we couldn't try him for Homicide. So after we try him for every trivial thing possible, which ought to drag him into court to sit and watch people think he's nuts for twenty years, we'll try him for Manslaughter."

Manslaughter is the class of crimes where someone is intrinsically related to a death without having actually caused it. "Of course, Jigsaw would know that if he'd watched an episode of Law and Order," said Straus. He concluded his address to the public by saying that even if the terminally ill killer won't be tried for Homicide, "it's good that we can stop people from saying the fucker didn't do anything."

Bathroom Monologue: D.A.E.

Demons Against Exorcism is a grassroots organization that is either entirely composed of demons or has no demons at all, depending on how skeptical you are. The demons in question have 100% willing and agreeable hosts who do not want to see their companions evicted.

“It’s my body, my choice,” says Sarah Stockman, who will have been possessed for six years next month. Her parents were initially uncomfortable with her lifestyle, but grew to accept it after her demon ceased making her writhe in public. Following a popular tolerant trend, the Stockmans have nothing against writhing in private.

The demons provide no rent, being incorporeal and generally bad at finances. Unlike poltergeists, they are not very helpful at moving things around the house.

“A possession isn’t a business relationship,” says Paul Pensly, who has been passionately possessed for two years and doesn’t see the honeymoon enthusiasm fading. “It’s about companionship, knowing this infernal buddy of mine will be there when I’ve had a long day, lost a bar fight, or whenever I just need to talk. I never go to the movies alone now.”

Some people do note advantages to the possessions, however. Sarah Stockman landed a job in the Foreign Languages department of a community college thanks to her ability to speak in tongues. An anonymous Indian-American possessee in Ohio claims his demon once possessed Aristotle and now helps him breeze through textbooks. College Board is currently devising a counter-demon measure to prevent possession-based cheating on its SAT exams, a measure Demons Against Exorcism calls “the worst kind of bigotry.”

Bathroom Monologue: Dwarfs on Stilts

Society said the stilts counted as cheating, but dwarfs weren’t fooled. If lithe elfs could wear corsets that hiked their diminutive boobs up to their eternal chins, they could wear lifts. Even the humans wore shoes, and if the shoes had heels, who were they to question an eight-foot dwarf?

For weeks the giant wee folk wandered around stores and asked strangers of other species, “How’s the weather down there?”

“Don’t worry. Maybe you’ll hit a growth spurt at your midlife crisis!”

“Sure, this is nice, but you have your advantages. When you trip, you have less of a way to fall!”

“Need to me reach that for you?”

They said that last one a lot. Within the first week there was nothing left on the top shelf of anything in any store, even stores where dwarfs had no interest. One dwarfish nun was so taken with the idea of taking things off the top shelf that she cleared out the upper tier of an entire sex toy shop.

She did penance by only wearing high heels that weekend.

Bathroom Monologue: Refried Griefers

There’s this one videogame habit called “griefing,” where players go to online games, partner up with strangers, and then purposefully play poorly, or play annoying sound effects through their microphones over and over again, or in some other way generally try to annoy the other players. Griefers are sometimes called the parasites of entertainment, leaching off normal players, but if they are parasites, then the Refried Griefer is the immune system.

Refried Griefers track the ISP numbers and find the identities of griefers, then steal their personal information like bank account info and social security numbers, empty all their savings and max out their credit cards.

On what do they spend this stolen money? One Oklahoma Refried Griefer spent a regular griefer’s life savings on a giant array of speakers to blast annoying sound effects into his apartment building.

A south Florida refried griefing unit used one griefer’s credit cards to pay for a fleet of street limos that were dispatched when the griefer went out driving, specifically ordered to drive in back, in front and at the sides of her car, and to do so slowly and erratically. It had something to do with the way she’d griefed on World of Warcraft. Something about “mounts.” I guess you’d have to play to get it.

Bathroom Monologue: The F.o.S.P.

Friends of Sexual Predators is a controversial lobbyist group. They want to change the name by which individuals who commit sex crimes are called, claiming the group has created “true” sexual predators.

“Some guy messing with kids at a bus stop isn’t a sexual predator,” says Dr. Samual Shelby, an MIT graduate with a focus on theoretical biology. “He’s a deviant. A monster. The true sexual predator is a life form that can subsist off of sex, like the people we’re trying to grow in these test tubes.”

Shelby and his fellow researchers claim to be working on a new system of digestion that runs the body entirely on sexual intercourse.

One of his assistants explains, “The orgasm is a heck of an emotional kick. It produces a lot of energy. The sex drive is already almost as strong as hunger, so why not tie them together? It’ll trump veganism before long.”

Dr. Shelby nods. “No more senseless murder of soy plants. Just because it didn’t scream doesn’t mean you didn’t kill it.”

Dr. Shelby is a happy omnivore, but claims to look forward to “a more moral future for dining.”

Bathroom Monologue: A Thmale’s Pace

Currently it is not legal for same sex couples to exercise the privileges of different sex couples in many states. The biggest issue for many couples is a same sex partner not being allowed to visit his or her spouse in the hospital or make decisions for him or her when he or she is incapacitated. This legal right is reserved for different sex couples and is the topic of some dispute. For those trapped in this dispute I recommend not moving to some crazy hippie state, but simply inventing a new sex.

Take me. I am male, heterosexual and some day might get married. However, being rational and having great experience with many women, I have no desire to let one do whatever the heck she wants with me if I’m in a coma. Thus I will happily cohabitate with her, but will instead partner with a man – preferably a Quaker ACLU lawyer will study me like I’m the Bible in order to carry out whatever I might want.

But you may say, “Hogarth, this QuaCLU lawyer may be a male!”

True enough, but I will not be male for the marriage. Instead I will add some tufts of hair to new parts of the body (I’m thinking along the hamstrings and my collarbone), and add some new genitalia I’ve designed using a scented candle and half a bottle of Mountain Dew. Henceforth I will be a “thmale.” I won’t share the design because you might then steal it and copyright my personal form of sexual liberation.

When one studies the human body and realizes that the external differences are little more than the differences between an innie and an outie, it shouldn’t be too hard to invent your own gender at home, in the deli, or at an arts and crafts class.

Reproduction with your new sexual identity may be more difficult. I recommend adoption, and sterilizing your new genitalia before application. All the penicillin in the world won’t take the embarrassment out of explaining thmales to your doctor.

Bathroom Monologue: Obsessive Compulsive Order, OR, Love You, Deirdre

Husna Selznick suffers from many conflicts. She is a second-generation Pakistani immigrant that married a Russian Jew, a publishing agent that constantly tries to sell Literary novels to her contacts at big agencies, and a pork-lover that cooks Kosher for family. These conflicts, she says, are “arbitrary amusements” in the face of the one thing that has truly pursued her. Some call it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, though if you mention the complex to her she will correct.

“It’s Obsessive Compulsive Order,” Husna says in her living room, minutes after vacuuming over the steps my socks made in her carpet. “I obsess. I am compelled. But I am obsessively compelled to order, and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

She has a series of hooks for brooms, moops, vacuums and steam devices on the back one of closet door to prove it.

Husna was diagnosed with OCD some twenty years ago. In her first series of treatments she realized much of her disorder was intentional.

“I liked things being clean. My compulsions were mostly conscious,” she explains. “Even when I was bitchy down on my knees re-grouting the kitchen, I was happier than I was thinking about fighting with Papa or figuring out credit bills. The funny thing was that afterwards all the stress was gone and I could react reasonably. Plus I actually felt happy. There’s a buzz to order.”

Aaron Selznick, Husna’s husband, adds, “Beats Zoloft.”

Aaron does not suffer from OCD or OCO, but claims to sympathize with it thanks to a life in Accounting. He likens her perfectly aligned series of clay doves on the living room windowsills (which she attended to twice during the interview) to the squeeze toy in his desk.

“When I get worked up over something, he tips something over,” she says, eyeing a part of the floor that looks as clean as any other part to the mortal eye.

During the interview Aaron, her husband, explained that she’d been very nervous to meet me and have a photo printed. When she got too nervous he simply squirted a little ketchup on the floor. When Husna was through yelling at him and scrubbing it, she didn’t feel any anxiety. They spent the rest of the night watching Monk.

Bathroom Monologue: Un-Life

In some cases “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice” simply do not cover all the ideological ground on the abortion issue. Take for instance “Un-Life,” an ideology diametrically opposed to the Pro-Life stand that demands all children be aborted as soon as possible. They have garnered a small degree of press on major news networks for staging protests at hospital nurseries.

“We’re in a global overpopulation crisis,” says Samuel Lenshner, spokesman of the Connecticut chapter of Couples For Un-Life. “There isn’t enough food to eat in Africa. India’s population is exploding. Taking the subway to work yesterday I had the little rats crawling all over me. One soiled himself. The mother was exhausted and unable to contain them all, and all I could do was look at her with pity and think – abortion could have prevented this.”

Lenshner and fellow Un-Lifers blast Pro-Choice for being too liberal.

“Just the option of abortion for women is not enough. That still gives them the option to keep their womb-infection.” said a woman who requested to go unnamed, perhaps because of a bulging belly. “Pregnancy is hazardous a woman’s health, ruins her figure, and results in a little tax exemption that doesn’t even begin to cover how much the little bastard will eat.”

Another anonymous woman added, “Does life begin at conception or birth? We don’t know, but we do know that nuisance begins at crying.”

Lenshner weighs in further, saying the existence of adoption disproves the need for choice. “I like to think of myself as Pro-Choice. Pick any kid out of this brochure. But why make a new one? That just adds to the problem. If one of these whining, running, constantly demanding beasts has to exist, use one we have in stock. But keep it out of public.”

Links to and addresses for various orphanages are available at www.un-life.net, a non-for-profit website devoted to “preventing you from making the worst mistake of your life.”

The Un-Lifers consider China’s one-child policy to be too liberal, but are open to select “breeders.” Under the policy espoused in a 44,000-word essay on their website, the Un-Lifers explain that people living ten miles or more from anyone else and who are willing to sign contracts promising not to bring their “young” into public before “the age at which they can tie their own shoes, walk in orderly fashion in supermarkets and will shut up in a movie theatre,” may be permitted one child.

The Un-Lifers are actively pursuing mandatory sterilization as a “kinder, more sanitary alternative” to enforced abortion. A vote on the policy will be brought before the Vermont state legislature in March.

Bathroom Monologue: All That’s Old…

In comparison to the New Age movement, the Old Age movement gets little attention. Everyone’s heard of the New Age infatuation with crystals, healing vibes and postmodern concepts of the divine. The New Agers even have sections in bookstores. The Old Agers? It’s a cruel joke that they share shelf space with the Mythology section. Patrons of the Old Age movement have shaggy hair and crazy beards similar to New Agers, but they wear togas with their Birkenstocks, and that funky smell on them isn’t B.O. It’s slaughtered goats.

These backwards-compatible spiritualists are significantly forward-thinking. They point out that Hera was a pioneer of women’s rights long before Susan B. Anthony or Saint Joan. Regardless, the National Organization of Women has voiced concern over some of the rights they espouse for women (including the primary right “to walk in on their husbands mid-adultery,” also called “The Medea Clause”).

Other organizations are synergizing with the movement. McDonalds intends to market on-site vomitoriums, similar to how they introduced in-door playgrounds. While the Independent Film Channel has denied Old Agers' request to play Jason and the Argonauts during Documentary Month, they say they will invest in more ancient Greek-oriented programming. Old Agers also own significant stock in several “green” energy companies, and are fast at work on channeling the north wind to reduce our need for oil. The Old Agers are very sensitive to our conflicts with the Middle East thanks to something about “the Peloponnesian War.”