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.

Bathroom Monologue: If you edited a short story collection…

If I could have my own personal collection of great short stories, it would open with E.B. White’s short poem, “Critic.” That poem reads:

“The critic leaves at curtain fall,
to find, in starting to review it,
he scarcely saw the play at all,
for watching his reaction to it.”

Then the first three stories would be:

-Mark Twain’s “Cannibalism in the Cars”
-Eudora Welty’s “Where is That Voice Coming From?”
-Stephen King’s “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet”

The interesting hitch is that, besides them being three writers I love and three stories I can’t stop re-reading, Welty studied Twain and King studied Welty. In a very abstract way, you’d start the collection with a literary descent. It would also help that Twain’s story is delivered from a questionable narrator, whose questionability is strongest as it ends, Welty’s story was written by such a strong and inexplicable voice that she actually titled it to admit she didn’t know how she was coming up with all of it, and King’s story is literally about where inspiration comes from.

After that, we’d go to:

-Percival Everrett’s “The Fix”
-Gabriel Marquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”

I don’t know enough Gabriel Marquezes to use his middle name. You’re among friends here, Gabe.

-James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
-George Kaufman’s “Annoy Kaufman Inc.”
-Ray Bradbury’s “Zero Hour”
-Ron Carlson’s “The H Street Sledding Record”
-Steve Martin’s “Changes in the Mind After Fifty”
-Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
-Jonathan Swift’s “Battel of the Books”
-Philip Dick’s “The Eyes Have It”
-Roger Zelazny’s “The George Business”
-Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”
-Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question”

I would close it out with “The Things They Carried,” being such an amazing piece of voice, but Asimov’s story about reversing entropy is too fitting an end. As not to spite either modern American literary tradition or science fiction canon, though, I’d actually close the collection with Fredric Brown’s classic short short, “The Last Man.” That goes:

“The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…”



I’m going on another trip, folks. I’ll be back on the 25th. I may post fresh Bathroom Monologues from the road if I get internet access, but I have no idea if that's feasible right now. If you would do me a small kindness, list some of the short stories that would be in your personal collection in the Comments section. With any luck I'll have a lovely little reading list when I get back. Themes are very welcome.

Bathroom Monologues: "I like how certain sides of your brain are female." –Randall Nichols

Some weren't just female, but downright hermaphroditic. Reggie Dickens figured it was best to keep one’s mind as limber and fertile as possible, and that meant keeping every piece of the human mind operating. It provided him a prolific career in American letters, though his family only discovered this through his estate when he passed away at 63. While he'd never gotten his crack at the Great American Novel published, he had published many lesser works, under two separate names.

Christopher Pytens had a decent line of hardboiled mysteries, notable for their gruesome murderers and shrewd caricatures.

Regina Delacroix had published a good wealth of poetry in regional magazines, and had two novels about growing up in the South - rather interesting considering Regina was actually an overweight man from Oregon.

His sisters were quite surprised to find that Regina Delacroix had even done book signings, and one of the store managers they tracked down said she was, "a simple delight, if clumsy. She was such a big woman, you know."

The Dickens sisters were afraid their mother would find out her son had been a cross-dresser, until they found he didn't own any dresses. Or make-up. There were no secret panels in his apartment or skeletons in his closet (except the plastic one he put on the porch at Halloween).

And the Dickens sisters were positively mystified when one store manager mentioned that Regina Delacroix had done a book signing with Christopher Pytens.

"For two people of such different subjects, they really seemed to get along. Rather adorable to watch that slight man chat at her," she said.

They tried to track these phantoms through the publishers, but there wasn't a single lead or photograph, even on the dust jackets. Apparently they’d managed everything through Mr. Reginald Dickens.

A strange anonymous couple showed up to Reggie's funeral, though: a small man and a moose of a woman, both in black, both wearing veils. From all sights, Reggie’s death had really broken them up inside. They sobbed and whispered something before the coffin, and were out of the place before either Dickens sister could snag them. Only their mother got the chance to chat the couple up, and she reported that they were just fans who had been, "touched so deeply by Mr. Dickens' writing," that they'd just had to come up and say their goodbyes.

Their mother couldn’t say anymore about them without bursting into tears. You see, they'd had his eyes.

Bathroom Monologue: Absurdist like...?

-Absurdist like using Mars as a can opener?
-Spanking a lobster?
-Paying income taxes on your imaginary jobs in Monopoly money?
-The internet using the public library to browse humans?
-Bitchslapping a dominatrix with a tulip?
-Planets dwarf-tossing asteroids?
-Someone using a remote to mute a live opera?
-Our cavalry being overrun by giant white statues of horse heads that only moved in L-shapes?

Bathroom Monologue: Get Out, and Close the Door

“Not everyone who’s having a good time is some tortured soul covering up their inner darkness. We’re not all suffering children with a hedonistic exterior, damaged at the core by hard, crumby lives. Some of us just want to have a good time with the people around us because we’re good people. Some of us want to enjoy the time we have. But you won’t accept that. You want to make us like you, and you’ll do it one way or the other. The one way is posthumous psychoanalysis; when we’re dead and can’t tell the world how wrong you are, you simply argue that we lived lies in the face of your bold, self-righteous truths. But until we drop dead, you try to win out the other way. You doubt us, browbeat us, tell us we’re in denial, pretend humor is inferior to seriousness, and bring us down at every chance you get until we stay down, like a kid playing with a balloon, only tiring when the helium runs out and we lie limp on the ground like the rest of your toys, unhappy and unable to get up on our own anymore. And that’s what makes you like every other supposedly grand thinker: when it turns out you’re wrong, you take it out on the people who made you wrong until you’re right.”

Bathroom Monologue: Things I'd Like to Know

-How the field goal kicker feels after his team loses 42 to 3.
-If light ever slows down just a couple meters per second for a few seconds, just to spite us.
-If any of the telemarketers I've been called by are actually sasquatches trying to fit into the modern economy while living in anonymity. If some are, I'd like to know where they picked up the Indian accents.
-If the sun has a magical property that kills vampires, or if light energy kills them - and if the latter should be the case, if they could be killed by being run over by a solar-powered car.
-How many people would have to be incapacitated for the head coach of the Chicago Bears to be appointed temporary president.
-Why people take the uniqueness of snowflakes as truth without personal empirical research, and what it would mean for physics if three identical ones landed all at the same time - in Stephen Hawking's left eye.
-How many copies of The Collected Works of Jonathan Swift we could print if we recycled every lollipop stick in the world.
-How many awesome forts we could build if we pulped and recycled every ice cream popsicle stick in the world.
-How much money a band would make if they recycled every blank white shirt in the world as their own post-modern limited edition tour shirts.
-If -just once- everyone in the world blinked at exactly the same time and some cosmic being turned off the sun for that splitsecond, and turned it back on before anyone opened their eyes.
-If anyone objected to the above ludicrous situation because video cameras around the world would pick up the moment of darkness.
-If anyone objected to the above objection because a cosmic being capable of installing a lightswitch in a star could probably outsmart a VCR.
-If a rapper has ever pulled fake ebonics words out of his ass while making an album and pulled it off so well that people just made up definitions based on inflection and context, quickly changing them from nonsense to cutting edge street talk.
-If there is life anywhere else in the universe, and if so, what they thought of The Godfather II.

Bathroom Monologue: “I’m having trouble thinking of a plot for National Novel Writing Month.” –Michelle Ann Fleming

Title: Sincerely, Abe
Tagline: “A.L..” Does that stand for “Abraham Lincoln” or “Alternative Lifestyle?” You decide!
Genre: Historical fiction/sappy romance/science fiction
Synopsis: Abraham Lincoln is gay... for Jesus. And he builds a time machine with the help of sentient garden gnomes to reach his one true love. But a cruel conspiracy of slave-owners and Da Vinci Code fans are out to ruin alternative history’s greatest romance. The ironic twist ending sees John Booth crucify Jesus, and Pontius Pilot shoot Abraham Lincoln... a smile!
Subplots: The garden gnomes turn out to be reincarnations of a primordial force, “The Supporting Cast.” In previous existences they were the Apostles, the seven dwarves, and during the end credits we see them become the guys that bankrolled the Titanic.
Themes: Redemption (gnomes), love (Abe/Christ, Booth/Judas, Grumpy/Doc)
Comments: I’m so clever.

Looking for the huge branch mom said fell in her yard Monologue

Where is this blasted branch? This supposedly enormous fallen bough? I can spy it not on yonder side of the property, yet I examine every bush as a hiding place. Perhaps her feminine eyes scried what they wished or feared, rather than that which was truly there. It is one of the features of her gender, and it is my experience that it runs doubly so for the eyes of mothers. Indeed, the lumber must have manifested in her mind when she heard tell of reports of last eve’s heavy winds, which impregnated her mind with the concept of an object all too large for her to lift. A romantic distress. It may well be time we treat of retirement from her… oh, there it is.

Bathroom Monologue: The Wind Turns Leaves Over

The story on the A.P. wire that morning finally convinced Aubert to change. For months he’d noticed bad habits: taking advantage of the feelings of others, cutting people off in traffic, getting short with people on the phone. One time he even walked into the street and started knocking off people’s hats for no apparent reason. For months he noticed these habits, and thought he should change.

Then he read, “Man Charged in Death of Good Samaritan” on the A.P. wire. Someone had stolen a tip jar, jumped in his car, and ran over the customer that tried to stop him. And while Aubert didn’t feel like he was that man (and knew he wasn’t), this bothered him so badly that he had to go out for a walk.

Aubert never went for walks, so he got lost. He wandered by some shops, until he saw one with a peculiar sign in the window. It read: “NEEDED: ONE MORE GOOD MAN.”

Not even, “WANTED.”

“NEEDED.”

He went inside and couldn’t think what to tell the clerk.

She asked, “Did you read the story about the Samaritan?”

His eyes went wide, but then nodded. He helped her clear a couple of tables and said, “Yes. And I’m here now.”

They never took down the sign.

(Inspired by: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080308/D8V93M9O0.html )

Bathroom Monologue: Expenses List for the Break-In

Expenses List
Day 1:
Ninjas (7x)
Black jumpsuits (6x)
Tye dye jumpsuit (1x)
Pressure-tested grapnel lines (400 meters)
Replica bank vault
High-tech infrared cameras (3x)

Day 2:
Higher-tech ultraviolet cameras (2x)

Day 3:
Plastic explosives (200 lbs.)

Day 4:
Ecological pamphlets (9x)

Day 5:
Hazardous materials disposal
Biodegradable natural explosives (200 lbs.)

Day 6:
Service truck rentals
Eco-friendly smoke bombs
Electromagnetic pulse generator

Day 8:
Bail (8x)
Legal representation (7x – screw the hippy ninja)

Bathroom Monologue: If knowledge is power, then someone define “power,” OR, I felt a lot less clever when I found Plato beat me to this

It’s Word Time again in my head. Today’s word is “know.” I don’t know what it means. Can I say that? It’s using the word to define itself (or to admit that I can’t define it). I know “think” and “believe” and “conclude” and “experience” and “remember.” Not “know.” I could say that I know there is a pair of scissors on my desk. I remember them being there, and when I look, they are there. So did I know? When did I know it? What if I looked and they weren’t there? I put them down ten minutes ago. I don’t know where they’d go if they weren’t there – but they wouldn’t be there. If I put them down on my desk ten minutes ago, then typed this, saying I knew there was a pair of scissors on my desk only to find they weren’t there, did I know? No. In that case I believed them to be there, but they weren’t. In the traditional case of knowledge, to “know” would mean I believed them to be there and they were there. But in both cases there was a point when I wasn’t directly observing and I said they were there – in one case they were, and in one case they weren’t. I was just as certain in both cases, before the fact was checked. So my mental state was identical; being wrong was a physical condition. Then knowledge might not be a physical state. Is “knowing” only believing something that happens to be true? What a weird bridge to build across subjectivity and objectivity.

You could memorize facts – memorize a whole manuscript, word for word, sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph. You could think you know the story. You could believe you knew it. And then the author could change it. If she added just one word, suddenly you wouldn’t know her book. Your information would be invalid. But you would think you knew. And this happens all the time.

Many teenage couples think they’ll be in love forever. Maybe one of them will be. Let’s say all the others don’t make it past fifteen years. They think they know they will, and then it turns out they didn’t. They didn’t really know. But what about that one couple? Did those two 14-year-olds know, even though there was no possible way of observing the ends of their claim until it happened? They believed it, and then it was true.

People claim to know things based on favorable probability all the time. If they’d had culture, the dinosaurs probably would have known that no meteor would take them all out – except if a meteor did, which we can’t be sure of, though some scientists say they know. Others say they know it was disease.

And what about all the things you’re supposed to know? You know you did your best. You know you love your kids more than anything in the world. Do you believe these things as they are said? Will you keep believing them? Are they true, will they be true, and how long will they remain true? Forever? I don’t know where my scissors went, so knowing about anything as long as “forever” seems rather silly to me. Maybe “to know” is a joke – something else’s idea of a joke. We make jokes to make each other laugh. What’s laughing at us for making us think we know?

Bathroom Monologues: Possible Headstone Inscriptions

-“Welcome.”
-“Cobras aren’t poisonous, right?”
-“Third base.”
-“Never buy your brakes and your headstone from the same person.”
-“Do Not Disturb.”
-“Best 2 out of 3?”
-“He will be missed (unfortunately too late; if only he’d been missed by that bus)”
-“Based on a True Story.”

Bathroom Monologue: Nobody Has Ever Had It Worse

Adina finally began to wind down her rant with, “So Michael dumped me for an Israeli girl. Maybe they’ll move off to the Promised Land together. Now that it’s out, I’ll never make branch manager. You can see it in the way the higher ups look at me. It’s like they’re punishing me for not being Jewish enough.”

The shade of her ancestor nodded and stroked his long beard.

“Yes, the life of a heretic is hard.”

“Did they mistreat you like this when you were alive, Eliyahu?”

“No, no.” The shade shook his head. “They flayed me and set me on fire in the town square, but nothing this bad, bubala.”

"Something died inside me that day." –Hundreds of people on TV at various times

How come something is never resurrected inside you "that day?" How come nothing ever sits up in the casket, scares the priest so bad that he wets himself, and does a jig when it realizes how many people came to the funeral? How come a radioactive meteor never reanimates that something which just as it’s died, causing it to forever roam your body and eat the flesh of its own kind? I'd much rather something turn into a zombie than die in me, if only for the variety.

Bathroom Monologue: Do they play for the same team as us, or are they competition?

Lesbianism astounds men in a way that can only be expressed by analogy. To them it is like seeing one of the electric outlets try to plug itself into another. Men wanted to plug an extension cord in there. It makes them feel that either the outlet is defective, or they are. The analogy falls apart, though, when thousands of men pay $19.95 for a softcore video of the two outlets.

Bathroom Monologue: Love, Loathing and Odds

“Fine!” exclaimed the God of Love. “We’ll settle this universe on fair chance. Do you want evens or odds?”

“I always want odds,” said the hunk of eyeballs that served at the God of Loathing’s avatar. It would have rubbed its hands together in evil glee if it had them in the first place.

The God of Love held the dice up in his glowing palm.

“Odds and you get to end this universe however you like. But if it’s even, it gets a fair chance. Agreed?”

The hunk of eyeballs nodded.

“Agreed. To chance!”

“To chance,” echoed the God of Love, and he rolled.

“We’ll see about that,” muttered the God of Dice.

Bathroom Monologues: Re: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0uPiMeVA4&feature=dir

Laughed in pain's face. A lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0uPiMeVA4&feature=dir

Bathroom Monologue: Did you get good marks?

At that point in the country’s history to be unscarred was to either be a child or of the royal class. Medicine and hygiene were so primitive that any injury, even the every day abrasions of work, left permanent marks. Only someone who never performed manual labor was scarless. It wasn’t until Prince Gungriel burned himself (he just had to light one of the fireworks at the festival) and went about a campaign of vanity that imperfection became an acceptable part of aesthetics. In a disturbing trend created by the royals, scarification became an art style, with specific designs like tattoos. This marked the first major break between royal fashion and commoner fashion, as commoners began to respect simpler scars, ones that looked like they came from labor, more than those of art. The royals scoffed at the shallowness of the commoners. Famous cultural critic Mardeiger said this couldn’t be shallow, as, “if it were too shallow, it wouldn’t have left much of a mark.”

Bathroom Monologue: I can’t think of a pun title for this one, and it needs one, Or, Sorry to George Michaels

Well I guess it would be iced
If I could make your coffee
I know not everybody
Makes coffee like you

But I’ve gotta think twice
Before I give the maker away
And I know all the beans you use
Because I brew them too

Oh but I need some time off
From the locomotion
Last cup left me twitching on the floor

And when the last drop comes
Without some creamer
Well it takes a strong man, baby
But I’m showing you the pourer

‘Cause I gotta have… tea.

Sorry for the Songs and Puns

I’m not sorry for anything I’ve written in the Bathroom Monologues about theology, technology, epistemology, politics, science or the grand religion of literary tradition, but I am sorry for the puns and song parodies. I can convince myself that most of what I’ve written was partially true or would be funny to someone, but that’s not the case with the puns and song parodies. These creep up on me, and like a dead mouse in the mouth of a house cat, I can’t help but wander around the premises and show it off. I believe it may be a neurosis.

Bathroom Monologue: You’re all dear to me

Tom had a way of calling his wife, "My dear" in a way that sounded much more like, "Medea." This strange accent tended to pop up when she criticized the groceries he bought or ordered him around when he was driving. She never got it, but their friends thought it was very funny.

Bathroom Monologue: May Noah and Pratchett Live Forever, not in their own memories, not in mine, but in the printed word

A friend just instant messaged with me, and after discussing some silly internet fads, she IM’d, “Noa rgument.” This is a run of the mill typo, but I have the irresistible urge to pun off of typos – both my own and those of others.

I responded, “The Noah Argument? I believe that goes, “Fine, don’t believe me. I’ll go build a boat.””

Fortunately, she laughed at that one.

I’m not sure why the ghost of Terry Pratchett hovered over that typo pun. Why is Mr. Pratchett a ghost when he isn’t even dead yet? I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s writing a novel about it.

Bathroom Monologue: New Program - Cutting Slack

I think people should be allowed to get away with things based on a certain amount of crap going on in their lives. For instance, if you look like you've had an awful and exhausting day, I won't curse at you for cutting me off at an intersection. If the bank is foreclosing on your house, you shouldn't be held liable for kicking in their window on the way out - or the windows of the bank manager's Mercedes, if it's parked reasonably close to the window.

In this scheme, there should be a deluxe package for people who get seriously boned by fate. If you have terminal cancer, or you will be in chronic, unmedicatable pain for the rest of your natural life, you don't have to pay attention to stop lights, you can gas and dash all you want, and if you feel like believing something, like maybe Marxism could work out or that Mormonism nailed it, you get to believe that stuff without contest for as long as you like, with no obligation to buy and unlimited opportunity to exchange. We actually encourage you to believe as many things as possible, and to switch whenever the whim strikes. We’ll even provide message boards accessible exclusively to people with the proper entitlement passcode, so your belief will not be challenged. Instead you’ll be allowed to converse with like-minded people, at least until one of you decides to change your mind from Jainism to Freakonomics. We’ll send you a brochure every month with all the newest ideas and paradigms that you can try on, so long as you promise not to force them onto anyone else. This is all you (and the other guys at http://www.solipsism.webboards.gov/).

Healthy people won’t be allowed into this service because their health makes them cocky and insecure in ways that prevent such mental plasticity. They need to be sure their one thing is right and never goes unchallenged so that they can go on living the model life that you’re incapable of sustaining. Somebody who doesn’t have to worry about how to afford chemo can afford to be a dick to Creationists. Meanwhile, you may find believing Creationism for a weekend to be refreshing. If not, there’s always evolutionary psychology on Monday, flat earth on Tuesday, and extraterrestrial conspiracies for your spare time. I figure if the universe fills your uterus with tumors, then we, your planetary roommates, can afford to give you belief-Netflix.

Bathroom Monologue: Oh, Venerable Masters

“Remember three things,” said the venerable master.

His disciple waited several moments, but the master said nothing.

“What are the three things, master?” The disciple asked. “My mind is open.”

“Uhm.” The venerable master stirred his tea nervously. “I was hoping you’d remember them.”

Bathroom Monologue: Really, really too proud of these puns

"John, could you hang this up for me?"
"Where did Robin Hood hide?"
"Huh?"
"Sure would."

Bathroom Monologues: The Virtue of Society

"Society is what the smarter animals use to get things done. If you're useful to other animals, you get to be part of the society. It doesn’t matter how you are useful. You can be physically useful, emotionally useful, economically, inspirationally, politically, and on and on. Family is one module. Businesses are another. Being a caring brother, having a job, owing a mortgage – these are all ways in which you are useful. But sometimes people are not useful enough. These people do not get to be as big a part of society. Society takes parts of them: their possessions, their values, their self-esteem. For instance, the mentally damaged are not useful enough. They are not emotionally useful to their families or physically useful to the workforce. They get put in little rooms where they get to live out their lives, in a filing cabinet in the back of society until they can be made useful enough to warrant letting them out. These animals still have values. Things are still important to them. They still want possessions and relationships to other animals. But they don’t get to, because they aren’t helping society get things done. This is the compassion of animals.”

Bathroom Monologue: “For the sun, even a million years is a blip in time.” –Narrator, History Channel’s The Universe

“A blip? You think a million years is little to me? Why is it that you humans think something with a longer period of existence cares less about time? A million years is a treasure trove to me. It is a million units of how far my radiance can reach. The measure of my grasp. Every microsecond my atoms collide and fuse. Millions, billions, trillions of reactions a minute, and I know every one of them better than you know what you behold with your eyes. My core is denser than solid lead and hotter than gaseous metal, down to the atoms, expanding broader than your planet, all the time. I am a miracle. A million years is not a blip. It is a kingdom of radiance. It is a very long time. It is only a blip in relation to the time I waited for you.”