Bathroom Monologue: What would I do…?, OR, Recently unearthed, one of the original Bathroom Monologues was a mental comic strip

[Panel 1]
-Jesus walks up to the edge of the land. Beyond him is lava, completely blocking his passage.

[Panel 2]
-Jesus looks down to his WWJD charm bracelet.
Jesus: What would I do…?

[Panel 3]
-Jesus looks happy.
Jesus: Oh, right!

[Panel 4]
-Jesus looks up at the sky, shouting.
Jesus: Daaaad!

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.

Spotlight on Me?

Angel Zapata wrote an article spotlighting my stories over on his blog, A Rage of Angel. He took excerpts from a few of the Bathroom Monologues that circled the internet to illustrate that I'm apparently a versatile writer. That is a relief, given I just wrote a week of the same stuff. You can check out his blog and the spotlight article here: http://arageofangel.blogspot.com/2009/08/john-wiswell-writer-spotlight.html

Bathroom Monologue: Acedia

Come, shrug off the smoke of that place. Let’s be off to the last sight to see. Nicer in this house. No one smokes. The father fought hard to quit, but we’re not here for him. We’re here for what’s melting over him, and his boy.

Every big economy needs its waste adjustors. The ones who come in and turn useless assets lucrative. Acedia really should be on par with busty Luxuria and pot-bellied Gula, but he doesn’t care for reputation. Too much work. She doesn’t do work, allowing clients to come to her. They always will. They cannot help it. They can diet and exercise, keep their energy up, meditate to focus, but eventually everyone becomes tired. How easy is it for Gula to goad you into eating another a bite or a little dessert? How hard is it to fight Superbia’s fingers around your heart when you’ve done something you know as good? Now triple that feeling, and know how hard it is not to lie a little longer when your muscles ache and your dreams are so much more pleasant than the work that waits in the world of the standing.

Alas, it’s Sunday morning and the vices are melting from our eyes. Their bodies, that is. I cannot show you Acedia: The Woman Incarnate. Already she melts into two. Soon she will be all. What is she this second? Look closer.

See that. A father’s brown eye through a crack in the white-painted door, and the fraction of his smile visible over a boy asleep at noon. How could this be vile? How could this be vice? The old one deeply proud, the young one indulging in long slumber. It’s sweet. It’s love incarnate, which we did not plan her to be a part of the tour. Love could not be a vice. Not one of the seven, at least.

And with the sun, here melts the truth of all vices, dear tourist. That none are pure evil. The boy is earnestly tired from last night’s high school football. That game where adrenaline, colorful sports drinks, the budding chests of cheerleaders and vicarious parents made every vice rich again. Was any of it pure evil? Not a drop of it, for that which is pure evil rots and crumbles from the whole. The vices abandon such investments.

They are humanitarians. You can say they write off some of their crueler work like this. Superbia can invest in parents proud of their children, and Acedia here rewards a child after long work. What romantic story does not dip its brush in Luxuria’s wells? You can say they write off their worst work in accenting the best of yours. You could also say they justify their accounts this way. Perhaps they began as good. Perhaps, frightening as it may be, they are always good, in a little way, somewhere. Humanitarians, insofar as vegetarians love vegetables.

But now Acedia has melted from the father and the son. The boy stirs, face rubbing in his pillow. Somewhere, someone sleeps. Look as we like, though, we cannot see Acedia in any of them. Gone are Luxuria in the low and Gula in the high. Gone are Avaritia, Ira and Superbia. Is that Invidia still in the corner? No, it is a doll with a dumb expression. Art imitates them all, and fools us so often. My mistake, not ours. I apologize. It’s Sunday morning, and a tour guide makes mistakes. But do you still see them? Our eyes diverge, but yours are surely still open.

Bathroom Monologue: Invidia

In the corner. When bored, she always drifts into a corner. She’s the one with the flat, amorphous features. Luxuria purposefully switches genders, changing them to hurt. Not this one. Invidia has not the features necessary to attain a gender, and resents all those that do. The more you have, the more she wants them. A flower is more of a woman than she. Her hair can never be too short or long, always cutting it to match someone else’s style, chasing originality by imitation.

The corner is the safe place to find her. When she moves into the room, she’ll disappear into another vice. Can’t actually have anything, that pauper sin. We don’t know why, but the room always seems a little smokier when you notice she’s an occupant. Even now, who has a cigarette lit? Despite No Smoking signs, she touches one man on the shoulder and there’s a haze that burns the nostrils.

A turn of the head later, and she has invested herself in them. That’s why she’s a pauper – she wants not only to be other vices, but to be full people, and she can never be either. She’s constantly watching or giving in – she can be no more. When she gets what she wants, her mortals no longer recognize what they have. When they can no longer recognize it, they search the horizon for another to resent. That toe-headed boy who returns her gaze right now? He’ll leave with nothing, unless…

Oh, she’s ostentatious tonight. Climbing into his lap and blowing on his dice? How cute, already turning her account over to Luxuria. She’s invited a few people to her room tonight, and he’ll think he’ll be the only one to accept. Tomorrow, he’ll stare like she does, staring at everyone who declined.

Bathroom Monologue: Superbia

Ira’s fight in the alley was not his idea. Up there, just one flight of stairs instead of a hundred. Near the window and the mirror. Such an immaculate man you would think he was Luxuria. Hair combed, suit pressed, muscles refined. Yet Luxuria doesn’t need so many reflective surfaces around. Even now, as Ira commits violence in this vice’s name, Superbia is watching himself.

That’s him. A little above, always near enough to see the thing done, always readily bored by that which does not reflect himself. You need to be good to be that disinterested and last in their business.

You rut and there’s a baby that grows up to rut. You murder and there will be grievance. Easy turnovers. Yet Superbia? The soundest portfolio, constantly refining self-image. Those who enroll in his plan feel him more and more. When that sense is challenged? Bare-chested Ira is there. A history with Luxuria will validate him. Or he will sidestep, let them blame it all on grubby Avaritia, and in giving up some possessions? In seeming selfless they invest in another of Superbia’s stocks. Righteousness and Avaritia alike can serve the vice in love with his own mirror.

Sunday is nearing, dear tourist. Come quickly. It will banish them from our sight, and we would not have you lose out on the last visions.

Bathroom Monologue: Ira

You muttered earlier, asking who Ira was. Perk up your ears, and surely you can hear him bellowing. Let us follow it down the street, and there in the alley beside the homeless shelter. There is Ira. Don’t think he’s always there – he’s worked much finer venues. Burned down churches and art galleries. The last time he was visible to mortal eyes, he was watching people drown from the deck of a yacht.

You’re surprised he’s scrawny? Looks mighty thin when unclothed, we’ll all agree. Shirtless, as usual. Always takes his shirt off, never knows why. You’d think him huge, but he has not the attention span to build himself up. Ira goes from thing to thing, hating whatever he can in the moment. The poor planner, this one. Every vice gets opportunities, yet he sees so little of them coming. He finds them and acts out. An improvisational economist. He lucks into his windfalls, and you can tell by how he wrings every last cent out of his accounts. Not by intelligence, but by sheer tenacity he forces Christians to blame Jews for an execution thousands of years after their man’s demise.

Religion is an easy account, like race and nationality. He needs those, and needs them as dumbed down as possible. If he has to think it through, there’s a good chance he’ll go bankrupt. No, he needs these accounts, the ones that sustain themselves, that turn even geniuses into bickering idiots. Then Ira gathers them up and makes indignation burn as bright and as quickly as possible, caring not when the sun of hate collapses into a cold, black hole.

He can’t handle the more complex accounts, and another vice is happy to pick those from his pockets. They placate him by leaving angry disenfranchised in their wake, and he is so busy jumping on those that he is none the wiser. There are always enough unhappy for him to find clients.

Now you say that shirtless thing can’t be responsible for all the violent evils. Too many are thought out. There are calculative monsters among us, it’s true. Yet those are not his designs. It’s people who shape Ira into lasting grudges and long-term dissent. Even now you can see how blunt is his nature, how ignorant of anything but the man whose hair is in his hands. What good will dashing his head against the floor do? The dead man can yield him no more profit. Ira cares not.

Bathroom Monologue: Avaritia

Down. Much further down. Street level and a little lower, Avaritia is shaking hands and swapping grins with his clients. He’s one of the few who will get in with the cattle. Do you see him, fork and knife in hand, offering as he asks if that soul couldn’t use a little more? So plump, pig-nosed and easy to mistake for Gula. Yet pot-bellied Gula loathes him, which is why you’ll never find Avaritia sitting on high. He can’t sit up there and make eye contact with his fellow vice, or he’d have to share.

Avaritia steals, you see. He takes hunger’s work and claims it for his own, and does so with any instinct he can subvert. Arousal. Fatigue. Most often he’ll sneak into Ira’s profession, as that one is the least witted of vices.

Fooling others into handing over their earnings never gets old and never yields enough, as Avaritia is neither envious of their hauls nor proud of his accomplishments. He’s never sated, not with billboards, web ads, radio jingles, television commercials, movie trailers, logos on t-shirts and Buy It Now on eBay. Merchandising is easy and you cannot want enough. That’s why he’s down there, shoving forkfuls of ham at people who are full. He’d take all of the vices into himself, if he could truly have anything to start with.

Bathroom Monologue: Gula

See that man up there? No, not in the window. The men in that window are serving Luxuria, even though they think to serve themselves.

No. A hundred flights up, standing in the room with all the windows blown out. Gula doesn’t like windows. Like pants, he finds them constraining. All he wears is that sheer robe, fallen open so you can see whatever disgusts you. Ironic that he’s got only a bit of a pot belly, no? If you’re looking for symbolism in his form, see the wind go through his greasy hair. Though his hair flutters, it’s the wind that leaves moved. Breathe deeply and you can smell him from down here.

Luxuria has it easy, but this one? This one has it like you wouldn’t believe. For while mankind must rut every generation if the game of life is to continue, they have to eat every day. In the worst corners of the world they will mix a little grain with mud merely to have something to fill their bellies. How can one compete with him in such a market?

He began with red berries, so long ago that there wasn’t a word for them yet. Then sweet berries. Tart and tangy berries. Berries with noticeable seeds that crunched, and softer, plump grapes. They stained his lips so deeply those thousands of years ago that you can still see juice at the corners of his mouth. Women invented bags to carry them home. He could take credit for consumer culture, if he cared.

Eat to comfort. Eat to commune. At the very height of blasphemy, he made them eat and drink their savior, though in turn that savior scorned him by making them take it in moderation. Just a sip and a single wafer of salvation per piece. It is one of the few investments Gula lost. Some vices gossip that he’s been compensating ever since, getting people to gorge after bloody battles to celebrate the carnage, and gorge on drive-thru in their cars, not even having to stand up to order sandwiches that come with complimentary fried goods. He’s managed a portfolio of increasing obesity against dozens of diet fads. In an environment where militant vegans measure their vitamin intake and show slaughterhouse photos to children, he’s got the average body fatter than ever. Nor is he threatened by the thin and healthy, for fetishizing diet is as gluttonous as the obese pounding Big Macs. He’s been into alternative forms of worship since people divided into hunters and gatherers. A varied portfolio is tucked under that left arm there, stained with fetid sweat, built on a habit second only to breathing in its popularity.

Bathroom Monologue: Luxuria

What a week to visit, good tourist. There are fifty-two weeks in a year, so it’s easy to toss one away for the next as soon as it’s over. But there are fifty-two cards in a deck and we all respect aces. This is a joker of a week, good tourist.

All seven vices are walking the earth for seven days. Not men stuffing their faces and bank accounts. No mere metaphors. The very vices themselves. Touch my shoulder and we will see them, these gods. Be they gods to you? Demons? Leaches on the back of greatness? To my eyes they are investors. Insecurities Brokers, if you will.

Whatever they are, we must not name them directly. Tread lightly and speak them not, for to speak a vice’s trade when beholding her will alert them all. Silence is the wisest course, as the focus of a vice is untenable.

Look now. Grip my shoulder and see her. You would know her in a crowd of a hundred harlots, though she’s the only one at this dinner. Nearest the host’s seat, hoping to occupy it with him. Let not her modern name fly. This week, let her be Luxuria.

Doesn’t it seem to always begin with her? Easiest to spot in a culture of plunging necklines and micro-skirts. Except she’s not a “her.” She comes off that way because most of her artists are men. Her slaves see the master they want, but her practitioners straddle genders. In truth she’s androgynous, slipping into your bed, getting your toes to curl, and only then becoming what you didn’t want. That’s the trick with Luxuria, making you beg for what you’ll regret. She’ll enjoy it enough for the both of you, and make you mistake being enraptured in her for the actual joy of anything.

What is sexy about her bare midriff? No mortal in the parlor can take his eyes from it. Barely any meat on her flank and they’re licking their chops. What would that bank manager do if he got his hands on it? Copulate with her belly button?

This absurdity is nothing new. Before naked bellies, it was fat butts. Before fat butts, flat ones. And always with the tits. What exactly are a pair of milk-secreting glands going to do for you during sex? They don’t serve as useful handholds. They’re erotic garnish she passes off as steak dinners. But fraud has always helped investors. That’s Luxuria’s business, turning a necessary act and a grand pastime into an industry of insecurity and embarrassment. Hers is an insured portfolio, for if the game of life is to continue, everyone must succumb at least once a generation. In the game, Luxuria can safely tithe life itself.

Bathroom Monologue: Bottle Them

If I knew why this was hilarious, I would bottle it and sell it. On the black market. No way could it be legal. If mushrooms are illegal, this kind of irrational, convulsive laughter is probably a low-scale WMD. A WLD, I guess. Weapon of Lesser Destruction. Weapon of Laughter Devastation. Weapon of Fall Out of the Chair and Hurt Your Kidney Against the Garbage Can. Which is a tough acronym, and a tougher bruise to explain. Almost as tough as explaining why the greatest laughs happen. But boy, if I could, I’d bottle them.

Bathroom Monologue: Stop the Watch

When I said the stopwatch could pause time I didn't mean you could just click the top and go rob a bank while everyone stayed still. I certainly didn't mean you could yank the batteries out and freeze the planet in place. I understand you’re dissatisfied with the purchase, but it’s user error. It's a precise mechanism, balanced and crafted down to the molecules to operate in singular fashion. It's like a woman: you've got to be careful with your touch or you're not getting anything out of it. You damn sure can't just jam the batteries back in and expect it to work like I advertised. Hey, are you listening? I said you can't just put those back in. Put them down. God knows what'll happen if you

Next Week, Vice Week

Next week there will be a different sort of serial on the Bathroom Monologues. Check in from Sunday through Saturday for a guided tour of the world of vice.

Bathroom Monologue: A Snide Moment

Cole picked a shell up off the beach and put it to his ear.

His wife snickered. “That’s too small. You’ll never hear anything in that.”

“Good,” he said, adjusting the shell over his ear. “That’s what I’m looking for.”

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.

Bathroom Monologue: “Shit rolls down hill.” –Popular excuse for insensitive behavior

The turd fell in the freshly mowed grass. It rolled for an inch before sticking to the green blades, turning them a premature brown. It clumped and stuck.

Felix looked down the rest of the hill.

“I thought it was supposed to keep going.”

Redge shrugged. “Guess it doesn’t always.”

“Does this mean we have to deal with our own crap and not just pass it on to our subordinates?”

“I don’t know. This can’t be a legal precedent.” Redge looked down at their car. “All the same, got a baggie? Or a dog scooper? I don’t want to tempt fate. Or justice.”

Bathroom Monologue: Boo

Night vision goggles that allow him to see in zero light environments. Tactile fiber bodysuit absorbs all motion such that he makes no noise. It also covers the entire body, reducing the chance of any smells. With access to that kind of arsenal, he certainly has access to odorless, tasteless chemicals that can kill us with only a drop in our toothpaste. Or maybe he'll spray it on the bed and you'll think I wet myself when you find my corpse. He spends six nights a week working at the gym, which is why he's always gone by the time you come. That's why you haven't caught the boogeyman, daddy. But he’ll be back. You don’t make that kind of investment into something you won’t finish.

My Contributions to Max Cantor's #flagofmycountry Challenge on Twitter

-The flag of my country must touch the ground, to connect with the earth it represents. However, it may never be trampled.

-The flag of my country can be stained, dirtied and even bloodied, so long as we the people maintain what it stands for.

-Also, the flag of my country comes with a complimentary Best of Queen CD.

-The flag of my country is more absorbant than a shamwow. Even when wrung it retains some juice in its patented moral fibers

-The flag of my country has many stars and one asterisk, for the places we aren't done with yet.

-The flag of my country is actually a hologram so that even if the U.N. kicks us out, we can project it onto their building.

Bathroom Monologue: Totem Polls

In recent Totem Polls, Bear came in last place with two votes. "No one votes for the second from the top. Eagle with his spread wings gets all the attention. Fuck that guy."

Bathroom Monologue: Inspector Conan, an anime about a teenager stuck in a child’s body who solves crimes, has gone over 500 episodes, OR, Could you..?

-The guy who replaces sodas in vending machine is found dead in his own soda dispenser.

-The guy who collects all the soda cans from the recycling bin is found dead in his own sorting machine.

-The guy who owns the store where those soda murders took place sells it, only to be found dead by the new owner the next morning in his old office, safe open and all the doors locked from the inside.

-NRA president chokes to death on a peanut. But he didn’t eat peanuts…

-Dog walker is strangled to death when his neck was entangled in the leashes of his flock of dogs. But he’d never be so careless!

-A Horror novelist dies of no apparent cause at all. No marks or cuts, drugs in the house or poison in her system. It’s as though… but that can’t be!

-A Mystery novelist is killed in a curious way, found dead in her car on a stretch of back road she’d never visited before. It’s curious because it follows exactly how the victim died in her upcoming book, but that book wasn’t finished. Or was it?

-Wealthy socialite washes up on a beach, seemingly mauled by a shark. But there are no sharks in those waters.

-All the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake have gone missing. People in town say a boy drowned there years ago due to counselors ignoring him, and now he’s back for revenge, but Conan is not so superstitious. Or is he?

-Crossover with a remake of The Good Son. Just have him deal with a psycho murderous child.

-Speaking of crossovers, the Child’s Play series enjoys getting ridiculous. Have Conan fight a haunted serial killing doll.

-A lighting rig falls, nearly crushing a rising pop star mid-finale. She made many enemies on her rise to celebrity. That’s always fun.

-Internationally successful marathon runner disappears on a jog and his coach seems conspicuously nervous when interviewed despite having an alibi with his other clients.

-The upfront psycho murderous child returns the same day as a neighborhood child is slain, and all evidence points towards Conan! Can he clear his name?

-A psychic helped the police solve several otherwise unsolvable mysteries, but she couldn’t foresee her own death. Now it’s up to Conan to bring justice to her memory, but if the claims are true, all his suspects can see him coming.

-A zoo keeper is mauled to death by what seems to be a big cat. Yet all his animals are locked up and there is no evidence any of them touched him. Besides, how could one have gotten into his sixth-story apartment?

-A two-part drama where Conan finds a boy identical to himself dead in his bed. The cast mourn his death and for no readily apparent reason do not recognize Conan to be Conan anymore. What happened to his identity? Is he himself?

-482-part drama where Conan goes to Chucky Cheese. Corporate America will pay.

Bathroom Monologue: Shadowing at the Oscars

I’ve shepherded many authors over the years. Agents hire me to shadow a consultant and keep him from doing anything too dumb or dangerous on book tours. Of all the drug abusers and self-destructive self-help gurus, he was the worst. One of those novelists, you know.

His book was turned into a movie, and no matter what he says, the movie was better. It was nominated for an Oscar the same year he was snubbed for a Pulitzer. Out of graciousness and idiocy, he was invited to the Oscars, and in his style, arrived ill-fit. You think straps on a dress are faux pas? He arrived on the carpet in khakis and a blue floral print shirt. I think most of the paparazzi mistook him for a tech guy – how many authors can you name by faces? – but one came over. I knew there’d be an issue, and my client tried to oblige.

“This isn’t Florida,” said the reporter with this slappably sick grin.

“Oh,” said my client, fixing the lapels of his floral and admiring the Oscar crowd. “All the young models dating old Jews fooled me.”

There would have been a P.R. firestorm the next morning, had the movie about gay ranchers not lost to the movie about L.A. being racist. Now I only work with children’s book authors. The job hasn’t changed as much as I wished.

Bathroom Monologue: Deaf Leading

It was dumb, but she was nervous to take them to the beach. She'd always had fat hips, and there was no way she could tone up her arm flab. She felt disgusting in a bikini no matter what her husband said. Even one-pieces rode up her butt uncomfortably. She settled on a humiliating combination of men's shorts, a one-piece and an optional t-shirt to wear over it if she chickened out.

And nobody made fun of her. The blind kids were just happy somebody took them swimming.

The Nearest Thing in Flash 40 Anthology

My short story, "The Nearest Thing," has been published in the new Flash 40 Anthology. It is available free at Smashwords and comes in PDF, PDB, RTF and TXT formats, so it can be read on palm devices as well as computers. My story is about two boys who grew up on and ran away from the same street without ever meeting. You can grab it here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2942